BELLINI La sonnambula • Maurizio Benini, cond; Eglise Gutiérrez (Amina); Antonio Siragusa (Elvino); Simone Alaimo (Count Rodolfo); Sandra Pastrana (Lisa); Gabriella Colecchia (Teresa); Gabriele Nani (Alessio); Teatro Lirico di Cagliari O & Ch • DYNAMIC 55616 (Blu-ray: 141:00) Live: Cagliari 2008

For those of you who may hold the opinion that Vincenzo Bellini was rather a minor composer, you need to see and hear this opera, La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker), particularly the last 15 minutes or so. The music transcends the heavens, it surpasses anything written by Rossini, Donizetti, or even Verdi. Okay, I guess my enthusiasm is showing a bit, but I truly love this music, however it stacks up in the pantheon of consummate 19th-century Italian composers. The story is simple. The betrothed young village girl, Amina, is discovered in the bed of the local Count in his room at the village inn, he returning to his native environs for the first time in many years. Everyone is shocked, horrified, including the prospective groom, Elvino. Lisa, the young mistress of the inn, also smitten with Elvino, takes advantage to whisk the tenor hero away from his now disgraced intended. It turns out Amina sleepwalks, which the townsfolk and Elvino eventually discover, and after a ravishing double aria for the leading lady in the finale of act 2, all is set well again. The simple tale is charming and if you enjoy bel canto, it doesn’t get any better than this.

I was pleased to get this disc for review because I have been hearing the praises sung for young Cuban American coloratura Eglise Gutiérrez for a few years now, and have not had much opportunity to see or hear her. (She was the fairy godmother in Massenet’s Cendrillon, which I enjoyed, but that opera is hardly prime bel canto land.) I am here to report Gutiérrez is the real deal. Vocally she harkens back to the days of the true Bellini divas, to Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran. The young singer’s top range is incredible and solidly in place, everything is precisely on key, sung easily and cleanly. Vocal agility is excellent: Gutiérrez has not the slightest problem with Bellini’s pyrotechnics and she ornaments tastefully and often, like the best of bel canto songbirds. If her acting and stage presence are at times rather ordinary in this 2006 rendering, we should remember that La Sonnambula does not require the histrionics of a Tosca. The young soprano’s portrayal is very charming here, certainly a plus for the production.

Sets are kept simple and traditional, with rustic pastoral settings evoked by a grassy forestage and colorful painted backdrops. It is lovely to watch and far outshines its more famous Metropolitan Opera counterpart (to be seen again this April with Diana Damrau). The costumes, if anything, seem a bit too lavish and colorful for peasant wear, but sumptuous to the eye; I am not complaining. Staging is strictly traditional, as this little charmer of an opera almost necessarily requires. The visual realm is almost completely in service to the music here, and when La Sonnambula is performed in this fashion cannot fail to please even the most jaded opera goers.

Warning: now comes the caveat! Unfortunately, the tenor Elvino is disappointing. Antonio Siragusa sings well and with excellent pitch control, but has an annoying nasal vocal tone, especially when he pushes the voice, that quite spoils his part in the proceedings. It is something you can get used to when he sings alone, but next to the ravishing voice of Gutiérrez and the other fine voices on this set in duets and ensembles, it is continually noticeable and jarring. The Count Rodolfo is sung by veteran Simone Alaimo, who still brings plenty of rich baritone beauty to the role and just the right touch of innocent paternal concern for the beleaguered Amina. Another standout vocally is young Sandra Pastrana as Lisa, who also handles Bellini’s fioratura with delightful expertise and is a big asset to this production. Smaller roles are likewise filled with quite good singers, and the orchestra from the Teatro Lirico Cagliari gives us an impressive rendition of Bellini’s wonderful score. The chorus, a particularly integral part of La Sonnambula, also turns in a first-class performance. It really seems a shame to me that Gutiérrez could not have been paired with a tenor who could at least have gotten out of her way here, let alone the hopeless wish for a Juan Diego Flórez or Lawrence Brownlee in the role. If that had happened this would be a La Sonnambula for the ages; as it is, it’s still very good.

As is to be expected these days, the Dynamic Blu-ray is quite sharply detailed and in exceptionally vivid colors, with state of the art audio formats providing excellent sound. The only current Blu-ray competitor is a recent release to be found on the C Major label. I have not seen it, but soprano Jessica Pratt is also a rising young coloratura star and from what I have heard on YouTube, is very, very good as Amina. The tenor is also promising. Also worth your attention is the VAI DVD issue with Anna Moffo from 1956. Moffo doesn’t have a clue about bel canto style but her young voice is ravishing, the production charming, and she is very lovely to watch, even before her famous nose job. Check out what all the furor was about! The Mary Zimmerman-directed production from the Met has a great cast, but archly ridicules the original story while failing to make much sense itself. As for this disc, it could have been a world beater, but if you can get used to the nasal tenor, it is still very enjoyable. Recommended.

FANFARE: Bill White

Federico Sacchi; Patrizia Ciofi; Danilo Formaggia; Nicola Amodio
The Bratislava Chamber Chorus
Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia/Luciano Acocella, conductor
Denis Krief, director

NTSC All Regions
DTS 5.1; PCM Stereo 2.0
Color Picture: 16:9 widescreen
Duration: 136 minutes
Subtitles: Italian, English, French, German, Japanese

WORLD PREMIERE DVD RECORDING

This is the version of I Capuleti e i Montecchi made for La Scala, where it was first staged on 26th December 1830, featuring two female voices in the roles of Romeo and Juliet. This opera is usually performed with a tenor as Romeo, but at La Scala Bellini found a different singing troupe which obliged him to cast not the en travesti warrior of Rossinian manner (like Tancredi, Arsace, Malcolm) but a wholly female Romeo, ardent and authoritative yet at the same time languid, sensual and soft. The choice of this Capuleti at the 2005 Martina Franca Festival was also dictated by the availability of Patrizia Ciofi. This great specialist of romantic belcanto had never been offered the role of Giulietta in Capuleti, a role, which is absolutely ideal for her vocal talents.

Also available on Blu-ray

Beatrice di Tenda is a tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini, from a libretto by Felice Romani. The opera is Bellini's penultimate opera, coming after Norma (1831) and before I puritani (1835).

This is the story of Beatrice Lascaris di Tenda, the woman who was the widow of the condottiere Facino Cane and later the wife of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, in 15th century Milan. Filippo has grown tired of his wife Beatrice she regrets her impetuous marriage to him after her first husband's death, a marriage that has delivered her and her people into the Duke's tyrannical power. In Beatrice very diverse elements coexist: there are music patterns already experimented in Norma and used here to their utmost potential, side by side with new ways and techniques, which would be treasured by Verdi. Compare, in particular, Ernani's Filippo II and the dark and vacillating Filippo Maria Visconti tormented by remorse, ready to go back on his decision to condemn Beatrice, who once helped him, to death or Eboli and the anguished Agnese or Manrico in Verdi's Trovatore and Orombello at the end of Beatrice, locked in the tower's cell.

One should also note that the concluding choruses anticipate some of Verdi's rhythmic patterns, "with a roughness, even, which up to then had been alien to Bellini". Self-quotes and approaches similar to ones already used by Bellini in earlier works are undoubtedly present but do not invalidate the final result, which, heterogeneous as it may be, is worthy both from the point of view of dramaturgy - with characters and situations that are well drawn - and of the music.

The chorus plays an even more important part here than in Bellini's earlier operas, not only commenting on the action but advising and comforting the protagonists, in the true tradition of classical Greek drama.

Format: NTSC 16:9
Region Code: 0 (All)
Recorded: live from the Teatro Massimo Catania
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French Spanish, Korean
Booklet notes: Italian, English

Includes sonata(s) for piano by Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloist: Dino Ciani.

The programme presented here proposes some of the most well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi in original transcriptions for mandolin orchestras. They are mostly concertos originally written for one or more violins accompanied by a string orchestra and basso continuo. In these transcriptions both the solo part and the orchestra have been replaced by mandolins. The resulting tone colors are quite peculiar and truly fascinating. The technical skill of the soloists, who often tackle lively, virtuosic tempos, and the elegance and good taste of the arrangements make of this album a unique experience.

BACH French Suites, BWV 812–817 • Alessandra Artifoni (hpd) • DYNAMIC 757 (2 CDs: 90:44)


It always gives me pause when I encounter an artist new to me and, upon searching the Internet for some biographical background, I find next to nothing. Alessandra Artifoni has no official website and only a number of links pop up—some in Italian only—to sources for this 2012 set of Bach’s French Suites . A one-paragraph bio-blurb in the enclosed booklet doesn’t tell us much either. She was born in Florence in 1967, so at 46 she’s not fresh out of the conservatory or just off the competition circuit. She studied organ and harpsichord in Italy, and then spent 10 years in Switzerland furthering her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. According to the note, Artifoni has made several CDs and radio recordings, but I wasn’t able to find any of them listed beyond this Dynamic release, not even on Amazon’s Italian branch. So, here we have an artist approaching 50, who, for all practical purposes, emerges from nowhere to give us a recording of Bach’s complete French Suites.


How does Artifoni fare? Quite well in fact. She makes her case for these pieces by adopting just tempos, dutifully observing repeats, making clear and precise distinctions between the various embellishment types that appear in the scores, and exhibiting no quirky mannerisms. Moreover, Artifoni’s performances are further enhanced by a richly voiced two-manual harpsichord of exceptional clarity and beauty of tone. It was built in 1997 by Tony Chinnery after a circa 1702 harpsichord by Berlin maker Michael Mietke (?1656/71–1719). Records indicate that Mietke delivered a harpsichord to the court at Köthen in 1719 on the recommendation of Bach, and that it was likely the instrument Bach played in a performance of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto.


Chinnery lives and works in a villa just north of Florence, and this particular harpsichord from his workshop sparkles with diamond-like glints without any hint of glare or harshness across and between its two evenly matched keyboards. It’s absolutely ideal for these suites, enabling Artifoni to clearly resolve Bach’s linear writing.


Many famous players, of course, have put their individual stamps on these works, performing them on piano as well as on harpsichord. But among just harpsichord versions, the catalog beckons, in no particular order, with entries by Helmut Walcha, Huguette Dreyfus, Ton Koopman, Christophe Rousset, Kenneth Gilbert, Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood, Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Davitt Moroney, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, and Masaaki Suzuki. I don’t have all of them and haven’t even heard some of them, but of those I do have and/or have heard, I’m comfortable in saying that Alessandra Artifoni can stand with the best of them.


Admittedly, she is not as varied or imaginative in her approach as are some—for example, she doesn’t make much use of different stops to provide contrast in repeated sections, as does Dreyfus, or insert creative embellishments of her own making along the way, as does Rousset—but she is due credit for playing the notes as Bach wrote them, or at least how we think he wrote them, which brings me to one last, if essentially unimportant point about Artifoni’s or Dynamic’s sequencing of the suites on these two discs.


Except for a few movements of these pieces which found their way into Anna Magdalena’s Clavierbüchlein in Bach’s own hand, no autograph scores of the French Suites exist. Not even the title is Bach’s; it first appears in a 1762 treatise by German musicologist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795). Because of this, later copies and editions took it upon themselves to publish the suites in no particular agreed upon order.


As a result, many players present the suites in numerical order, one through six, which is actually an artifact of their BWV numbers. Since the BWV catalog assigned 812 to the Suite in


D Minor, it became No. 1; 813, assigned to the Suite in C Minor, became No. 2, and so on. But not all players adopt this schema, some preferring to present the suites in some alternate order that makes sense to them or to the record producer laying them out. Just for grins, here’s Artifoni’s sequence compared to Rousset’s.

	D Minor	C Minor	B Minor	E?-Major	G Major	E Major
	812	813	814	815	816	817
Artifoni (order)	5	2	4	1	3	6
Rousset (order)	5	2	6	1	4	3

Whether there’s any significance to the fact that Artifoni and Rousset both begin their sets with the E?-Major Suite (BWV 815) followed by the C-Minor Suite (BWV 813), or whether it’s purely coincidental I don’t know, but if there’s a desire to devise some plan based on keys, Bach didn’t make it easy. There’s no obvious formula I can see that would result in a complementary or symmetrical structure. Rousset begins in E?-Major and ends in E Major, two keys that may be adjacent to each other on the keyboard but are a universe apart in terms of tonal relationships. Artifoni also begins in E?-Major but ends in B Minor, a tonal relationship of an augmented fifth (or diminished sixth) that would have taken the curls right out of Bach’s wig. So, one must conclude that since no order makes sense, any order will do.


The more I listen to Aritifoni’s French Suites the more I like them. They won’t displace other favorites, chief among which are Rousset and, with apologies to any elitists who may happen upon this review—I’m sure there are none among Fanfare ’s readers—Keith Jarrett, whose ventures into Bach, I think, are generally underappreciated. Anyway, Artifoni’s new release is highly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

English Suites is the title traditionally given to Bach's splendid collection of dances, assembled by tonality and preceded by a Prelude, probably dating form the second decade of the 1700's, perhaps before 1717. Forkel states that the suites were composed for an English nobleman, but adds nothing more. Recently, scholars have made various suggestions: some think that the word English, for thes epieces which Bach defined Preludes avec les Suites, BWV 806-811 have always been considered the worthy counterpart of the French Suites BWV, 821-827. Alessandra Artifoni, who already recorded for Dynamic the latter, two years later proposes their twin collection, using an instrument built by Tony Chinnery after Mietke, and Neidhardt temperament.

BACH Toccatas, BWV 910–916 • Andrea Bacchetti (pn) • DYNAMIC CDS 658 (79:43 )



I enjoyed Andrea Bacchetti’s previous Bach release (see my review in Fanfare 33:3) and the same strengths are in evidence here: a sensitivity to dynamics (without going to stylistically inappropriate extremes), a clear and precise technique, integrated ornamentation that does not fracture the melodic line, and also the distinctive sound of Bacchetti’s Fazioli piano, which serves this music well by combining something of the attack of the harpsichord with the touch sensitivity of the pianoforte.


The seven keyboard toccatas are early works, written in Bach’s 20s following his well-documented trek to Lübeck in 1705 to hear Buxtehude play. These are virtuoso pieces with an exuberant improvisatory quality, often dazzling us with scales and arpeggios. Even when solemnity is required (as in the D-Minor Toccata), there is still something presentational about the music, an aspect that Bach eschewed by the time of his late keyboard works. Bacchetti understands this, as contemporary pianists must, in a historically informed way. He does not let the virtuosity or free-flowing passages become an excuse for idiosyncratic personal touches, but retains a level of poise and control throughout. There are many examples of this: the fugal allegro movement of the C-Minor Toccata, where Bacchetti keeps the tempo absolutely steady as the counterpoint becomes increasingly dense; or the delightfully brisk fugue concluding the G-Major Toccata, a piece that could easily have come from one of the Well-Tempered Clavier sets.


The best known of these toccatas, that in D Major, exists in two versions, the second of which is the more elaborate. Bacchetti plays this version, but chooses the earlier of the two extant versions of the D-Minor Toccata, BWV 913. He is especially sensitive in the plangent first and second movements of the D Minor, making the thematic lines positively sing, and again in the allegro of the G Minor. What lovely music this is.


There is less recorded competition from pianists in the toccatas than in Bach’s other keyboard works. Glenn Gould and Angela Hewitt have each recorded the whole set, but unfortunately I don’t have their recordings at hand for comparison. In Gould’s case it probably is not necessary: The further removed we are from Gould in time, the more he seems like a one-off, functioning outside of the mainstream (no matter how much he may have influenced re-creative thinking). Hewitt’s 2002 recording was described by Michael Carter in Fanfare 26:3 as “revelatory”; clearly, it is very good.


I can only reiterate my opinion that Bacchetti achieves the best of all possible worlds in his approach. His distinctive piano is set back in a fairly resonant acoustic, but clarity does not suffer. This disc is strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

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There was once a time that piano recordings of the Bach Toccatas, like those of the Goldberg Variations, fell into two categories: Glenn Gould and not Glenn Gould. A younger generation of pianists now seems intent on changing all that, integrating elements of Gould’s Bach without necessarily falling under the shadow of his larger-than-life musical persona.

Andrea Bacchetti’s decision to record the Toccatas is itself instructive, these being works long dominated in the catalogue by the Gould recordings. Bacchetti already has highly regarded recordings of the English Suites, Two-Part Inventions and Sinfonias under his belt, which clearly demonstrate he is his own man.

The relative neglect of the Toccatas is difficult to explain. They are early works, from the composer’s Weimar period, but then most of Bach’s keyboard music predates his move to Leipzig. They are somewhat lacking in contrapuntal ingenuity, although BWV 913, 914 and 915 each ends in an impressive fugue. They also lack the stylistic variety of the suites, although they more than make up for this in textural diversity.

Bacchetti avoids extremes in his interpretations. The performance style favours smooth legato, reserved ornamentation and an even balance between the hands. He is rarely tempted to emphasise fugal subjects or thematically significant bass lines. His touch is delicate rather than muscular; everything is confident and decisive but nothing is emphatic or overstated.

Little surprise, then that the greatest interpretive distance between Bacchetti and Gould is in the louder and faster movements. Compare, for example, their readings of the final fugue of BWV 914. Where Gould is fast and angular, Bacchetti is even and lyrical. He is not as heavy on the left hand as his predecessor either, so you have to listen all the more closely to pick out the counterpoint. But Bacchetti shapes the movement in a way that would probably be of little interest to Gould. He gradually builds up to the recapitulation, but even when he reaches it, there is little sense of exaltation, as he maintains a sense of control and balance to the very end. In a way, this approach is just as impressive as Gould’s fireworks, even if it doesn’t grab the attention in quite the same way.

Gould’s legacy is much clearer in the adagios. Both pianists share a desire for the piano to sing, although Bacchetti refrains from any Gould-like vocalisations of his own. The closest the two men come is in the Adagio of BWV 911, where Bacchetti creates a luminous inner beauty in the sound of each of the piano chords. It is all a little faster and more foursquare than you would expect from Gould, but it is clearly in his spirit.

The recorded sound is good, although not particularly crisp. This may be deliberate, an attempt to complement the rounded, legato style of the pianist with a warm sound profile. It all adds up to an attractive offering, nothing extreme but a performance with clear artistic focus, and based on a desire to find beauty in every element of the music. After the rapturous reception that greeted Bacchetti’s previous Bach recording, he is clearly not resting on his laurels.

-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International

Jean-Baptiste Arban was a French cornetist, conductor, composer, pedagogue and the first famed virtuoso of the cornet a piston or valved cornet. He was influenced by Niccolo Paganini's virtuosic technique, and his famous method book for trumpet continues to be the first choice for all students of trumpet, cornet and other brass instruments in music schools. His most famous works for the cornet are 14 Fantasias on Verdi operas, recorded here for the first time by the cornetist Angelo Cavallo and the pianist Michele Fontana. They are brilliant, highly effective pieces, in which the most popular themes of Verdi's operas are masterfully interwoven with great instrumental virtuosity.

ANTONIO CAGNONI Serena Daolio; Costantino Finucci; Danilo Formaggia; Eufemia Tufano; Vladimer Mebonia; Rasha Talaat; Maria Leone; Omar Jakhadze; Domenico Colaianni; Cristian Camillo Navarro Diaz; Coro Slovacco di Bratislava; Orchestra Interanzionale d'Italia/Massimiliano Cald ANTONIO CAGNONI: Re Lear (King Lear), A tragediy in four acts and seven parts.

Tomaso Albinoni was one of the most respected composers of his time, despite being not a professional composer but rather a dilettante, as he called himself. The largest part of his oeuvre consists of music for the theatre. Unfortunately almost none of his compositions in this genre has been preserved complete. Most of his operas are lost; of others only a few arias have come down to us.

Therefore today he is mainly known for his instrumental music. His concertos with parts for one or two oboes are quite popular and are regularly played at concerts and recorded. He also wrote a considerable number of sonatas for one or two violins and bc. Several of his collections of sonatas have been recorded. One of these comprises twelve for violin and basso continuo which were printed as his op. 6 in Amsterdam around 1712. The title is Trattenimenti armonici per camera. The word trattenimento means 'entertainment' and indicates that these sonatas were intended for the growing market of amateur performers. The addition da camera suggests that these sonatas follow the model of the Corellian sonata da camera. It may then come as a surprise that the movements bear not the titles of dances, as was common in sonate da camera, but rather indications such as adagio or allegro as was usual in the sonata da chiesa. However, these are dances in disguise: many fast movements are in fact allemandes, courantes or gigues.

The title of this disc suggests that we have here six flute sonatas, but that is not quite correct. Albinoni didn't give any indication that his sonatas could be played on the transverse flute. That doesn't mean that he didn't approve of adapting these sonatas for other instruments. This was common practice and composers expected performers to adapt their sonatas for their own use, depending on the instruments that were at hand. In his liner-notes Mario Folena mentions that several sets of such adaptations are known from Albinoni's time. In this recording he didn't make use of any of these editions. Rather he constructed his own arrangements. Such arrangements sometimes require transpositions to another key. In this recording all but one sonata are played in the original keys. The exception is the Sonata No. 2 which is in G minor, but originally in D major. I am a bit surprised by that, since there was apparently no need to transpose the Sonata No. 7 which is also in D major.

Obviously some of the effects Albinoni included in his sonatas are lost in these arrangements. That particularly concerns Albinoni's use of double-stopping. That is, for instance, the case in the fast movements from the Sonata No. 9. In his liner-notes to The Locatelli Trio's recording of the complete set (Hyperion, 1992) Michael Talbot writes about the Sonata No. 8: "[The] rasping violin chords in its second movement convey a mood of desperate urgency." That can't be conveyed in a performance with transverse flute. The passages of a contrapuntal character remain fully intact, though.

However, in these new clothes, as it were, these sonatas make a very good impression as well. Some of the features of the original scoring may have gone lost, the natural sensitivity and differentiation in colour and dynamics of the transverse flute fit them very well. Mario Folena is an excellent performer who plays with intelligence and stylistic awareness. He is supported by a strong basso continuo group which shows a good sense of the rhythmic pulse of these sonatas. The first allegro from the Sonata No. 6 is a particularly good example.

Even if you have a performance with violin in your collection, for instance the recording by The Locatelli Trio, this disc has much to offer and will give you a new and different look at these beautiful sonatas.

– MusicWeb International (Johan van Veen)

"...Three impressively skilled musicians, all capable of holding their own against other composers of their time, who had to contend with a prevailing public opinion that the very idea of a woman composer was either inconceivable or ludicrous (or both)...Today we can listen to all of the selections on this recording with less sexist prejudices and accept that each of these composers had her own distinctive voice." - Stephen Smoliar, examiner.com

This exciting CD includes works by three influential composers. Amy Beach belonged to the group known as the "Boston Six", who preceded the generation of Copland, Gershwin, etc. Lili Boulanger is one of the most important composers, and Rebecca Clarke is, in this country, certainly well known. She was [also] one of the first women who completed regular formal music studies as a career. - Naxos Direct, (translated from German)

Research in the manuscripts of the Vercelli archives has led to the attribution of known and unknown works to Luca Marenzio, one of the great masters of the late Renaissance in Italy. These works, recorded for the first time here, share a common thread: the composer’s activity in Rome and Poland. Missa Jubilate, a parody mass, is one of the most sumptuous creations of its time and a masterpiece of melodic invention whilst Magnificat sexti toni exemplifies Marenzio’s sophisticated use of echo effects. Both versions of Magnificat octavi toni and Jubilate Deo are also premiere recordings. On this recording, Don Denis Silano leads La Cappella Musicale della Cattedrale di Vercelli.

Johann Joachim Quantz wrote over 300 flute concertos for Frederick II, King of Prussia, works that have increasingly been recognized for their wealth of invention. Before his years in Berlin, however, Quantz had worked in Dresden where he wrote a series of trio sonatas. The genre had been codified by Arcangelo Corelli and was the most popular form of chamber music at the time. Quantz fashioned elegant dialogues between the instruments, fugal passages, the melodic element of the trios always highlighted next to the counterpoint. These concise, eloquent works blend styles and musical languages in a way that foreshadows his larger-scale concertos.

Falstaff was composed to a libretto fashioned by Arrigo Boito largely from Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Superficially the work is an opera buffa in its depiction of the travails of the penniless knight, Sir John Falstaff, but goes beyond the operatic tradition of the time. The vocal line is integrated into the orchestral texture, and with self-quotations and parodic elements, the opera is saturated with as much irony as comedy, forming the fitting culmination of Verdi’s entire operatic life. Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts this acclaimed staging of Verdi’s final masterpiece.

Reviews

I shall say straightaway that I am not a Verdi expert but I absolutely loved this performance, as I do this opera. The singing, the acting, the production, the conducting all seemed to me first rate. It is such a pleasure to find an opera DVD which does not fall down badly on at least one of these.

Falstaff is through-composed and largely lacks the big set-pieces characteristic of his earlier works. For this reason it took some time to make its way in the world, though Toscanini was an early champion and his support helped make it a repertory work. It is very fast moving and themes which might have been developed into whole arias in earlier works pass fleetingly by. The libretto does need to be followed in detail, which can now be achieved by surtitles in the opera house and subtitles on a DVD such as this.

The first thing about this production is that a faithful recreation of the time, space and action intended by the composer and librettist...I do need to add that the set and costumes are reminiscent of the sixteenth century rather than the fourteenth, but then Shakespeare took Falstaff from the Henry IV plays and in effect transplanted him into the sixteenth, thereby putting him into a contemporary context. The Garter Inn is nicely evoked by Julian Crouch, as is the oak tree in Windsor Forest in the last scene. The costumes, by Kevin Pollard, are all delightful and I particularly enjoyed Falstaff’s smart get-up for wooing Alice Ford.

Falstaff is an opera of ensembles and I was impressed by the way the cast not only sang their roles but also acted them. Nicola Alaimo in the title role was a new name to me, though he has a long career and a big repertoire. The part requires a wide emotional range from the singer, with at times light fast comic singing but also the synthetic indignation of the honour monologue. He also needs to be a minimally plausible lover but also cope with the farce of the laundry basket and the humour of the final Windsor Forest scene. I liked the way Alaimo not only carried all this off but also really interacted with the other characters. He also made us feel that, although Falstaff is an old rogue, there is something genuinely charming and attractive about him.

Of the other characters the most important is Alice, and Ailyn Pérez was charming and clever in this role, one she has also performed at Glyndebourne and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The other merry wife, Meg Page, is a smaller part but was nicely done by Caterina Piva. The young lovers, Fenton, sung by Matthew Swensen and Nanetta, sung by Francesca Boncompagni, were convincing and Nanetta gave us a lovely fairy song in the last scene. Sara Mingardo was an effective Mjistress Quickly with a powerful lower register when required. Simone Piazzola gave us a formidably jealous Ford and a smooth and well-controlled Master Brook, when in disguise. The smaller parts were all adequately taken.

The conductor was John Eliot Gardiner, who is an old hand at Falstaff, [who] brought out what seem to be occasional Wagnerian touches in the score, for example in Ford’s aria. The director was Sven-Eric Bechtolf whose obvious affection and respect for the work has given us a performance at once exuberant and touching. The sound and picture are fine and I know this will be going into my records of the year.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)