FALSTAFF

Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé stars as a ravishingly rich-voiced Violetta, alongside consummately stylish Italian tenor Carlo Bergonzi and ever-thrilling US baritone Sherrill Milnes as Germont fils et père, plus an absolutely complete musical text, in a 1967 set that the Penguin Guide still calls “consistently satisfying”.

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REVIEW:

All three singers are excellent. Caballé is dramatically involved and vocally brilliant. Bergonzi is an ideal Alfredo, and Milnes is excellent. Some critics have not liked Prêtre’s conducting, but he supports the singers well. The minor roles are not particularly well sung, some just barely competent.

– Fanfare

Soprano Aprile Millo's golden voice is in best form. This is another of those vintage Met ensembles vividly guided by Levine, with Vladimir Chernov especially affecting in the father-daughter duet.

– BBC Music Magazine

One of RCA’s great stars was the glamorous American soprano Anna Moffo, and one of her most celebrated Verdi roles is featured in this new release. From 1965, we have Moffo in the title role of Luisa Miller, “one of her best recordings” (MusicWeb International). The rest of the cast is no less distinguished: “Carlo Bergonzi is his usual, aristocratic self and also is in excellent voice. Cornell MacNeil is exactly right for Miller, the quintessential Verdi baritone role” (ClassicsToday).

Falstaff
Sir John Falstaff - Bryn Terfel
Ford - Roberto Frontali
Fenton - Kenneth Tarver
Dr Caius - Robin Leggate
Bardolph - Peter Hoare
Pistol - Gwynne Howell
Alice Ford - Barbara Frittoli
Nannetta - Desirée Rancatore
The Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Bernard Haitink, Conductor
Graham Vick, Stage Director

Il trovatore
Manrico - José Cura
Count di Luna - Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Leonora - Verónica Villarroel
Azucena - Yvonne Naef
Ferrando - Tómas Tómasson
Ines - Gweneth-Ann Jeffers
Old gypsy - Thomas Barnard
The Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Carlo Rizzi, Conductor
Elijah Moshinsky, Stage Director

Rigoletto
Duke of Mantua - Marcelo Alvarez
Matteo Borsa - Peter Auty
Count Ceprano - Graeme Broadbent
Countess Ceprano - Dervla Ramsay
Rigoletto - Paolo Gavanelli
Marullo - Quentin Hayes
Sparafucile - Eric Halfvarson
Gilda - Christine Schäfer
The Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Edward Downes, Conductor
David McVicar, Stage Director

Extras:
Each opera has an illustrated synopsis, various documentaries and interviews with members of the creative team

Picture format: NTSC 16:9 Anamorphic
Sound format: Dolby Surround / Dolby Stereo
Region code: 0 (All Regions)
Menu Language: English
Subtitles: English
Running time: 8 hours 15 minutes
No. of DVDs: 3

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore, a staple of the operatic repertoire and long a popular success with operagoers and lovers of Italian opera, received the casting it rightfully deserves in this 1961 live performance from Berlin, 1961. The all-Italian, all-star lineup of singers includes Ettore Bastianini as Count di Luna, Fedora Barbieri as Azucena, Franco Corelli as Manrico and Mirella Parutto as Leonora. This recording has been called the best live version of the opera on record. The fiery conductor Oliviero de Fabritiis leads the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro dell' Opera di Roma.

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore, based on the eponymous play by Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez, takes us to 15th c. northern Spain to witness the tragic destiny of those under the control of Azucena, who is seeking to avenge the death of his mother. + The first percussion notes are solemn, setting the tone for Verdi’s masterpiece, whose main themes include abandonment, passion, power, love for one’s parents and vengeance. + This production marked the debut of Russian stage director Dmitri Tcherniakov at La Monnaie and the first Verdi interpretation by Marc Minkowski.

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphitheater with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armored knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas. Next to Anna Netrebko as Leonora perform Verdi accomplished baritone Luca Salsi as Count di Luna and Yusif Eyvazov returns to the Arena as his powerful-voiced opponent Manrico. MET star Dolora Zajick as Azucena and young rising Italian bass Riccardo Fassi as Ferrando join the prestigious ensemble. “Zeffirelli gives to the arena what it merits: a colourful, multifaceted staging in which impressive mass scenes alternate with intimate moments [...]“ (Der Neue Merker) “Unforgettable” (Verona Settegiorni)

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Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday, CSO Resound releases its second recording with Maestro Riccardo Muti featuring Verdi’s second-to-last opera, Otello. Recorded live in concert at Symphony Center in 2011, this album will stand for years to come as a unique benchmark in Verdi performance and interpretation by one of today’s finest conductors. Maestro Muti and the CSO’s first recording together was a lauded album of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, which won two Grammy Awards.

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Also available on standard DVD

This opera was recorded at the 2019 Festival Verdi in a new coproduction from Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Comunale di Bologna. I due Foscari, a tragedia lirica in three acts based on a work by Lord Byron, was premiered in 1844. It proved quite popular for the next fifty years, thanks in part to its brevity and ease of staging; in fact it’s Verdi's shortest opera. The composer also revised the libretto by the rather inexperienced Francesco Maria Piave. From the musical point of view, this work is characterized by extreme simplicity of form and by the use of distinctive themes for each character, reminiscent of the Leitmotiv technique. The simple plot describes the mortal hatred between a Venetian gentleman, Jacopo Loredano, and two members of the Foscari family - the Doge Francesco and his son Jacopo - whom Loredano holds responsible for the deaths of his father and uncle. The effectiveness of this recording stems from both the cast of singers (notably Vladimir Stoyanov in the role of Francesco Foscari) and the orchestra under Paolo Arrivabeni's direction Paolo Arrivabeni is a highly experienced, international conductor who specializes in this repertoire.

This opera was recorded at the 2019 Festival Verdi in a new coproduction from Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Comunale di Bologna. I due Foscari, a tragedia lirica in three acts based on a work by Lord Byron, was premiered in 1844. It proved quite popular for the next fifty years, thanks in part to its brevity and ease of staging; in fact it’s Verdi's shortest opera. The composer also revised the libretto by the rather inexperienced Francesco Maria Piave. From the musical point of view, this work is characterized by extreme simplicity of form and by the use of distinctive themes for each character, reminiscent of the Leitmotiv technique. The simple plot describes the mortal hatred between a Venetian gentleman, Jacopo Loredano, and two members of the Foscari family - the Doge Francesco and his son Jacopo - whom Loredano holds responsible for the deaths of his father and uncle. The effectiveness of this recording stems from both the cast of singers (notably Vladimir Stoyanov in the role of Francesco Foscari) and the orchestra under Paolo Arrivabeni's direction Paolo Arrivabeni is a highly experienced, international conductor who specializes in this repertoire.

REVIEW:

My feelings about this release are many and complicated. It is the last in the long-running Opera in English series made and compiled by Chandos, as funding from the philanthropic Peter Moore’s Foundation ends this year. If nothing else this is a fine studio recording of Verdi’s Macbeth , well sung and conducted, and special praise goes to Chandos for shoehorning the whole work on to two discs with the ballet and both the 1847 and 1865 endings. If you want Verdi’s youthful masterpiece sung in English, there is no competition (and I doubt there will ever be). But are there many of us who still want Verdi in English? Did we ever?


I am surprised the series lasted as long as it did, to be honest. Studio sets of Italian opera in German ended in the late 1980s (with EMI-Electrola’s La bohème , I believe) and if people sneered that Verdi in German sounded like a grotesque Bavarian drinking song, then singing it in English only makes Joe Green sound like Gilbert and Sullivan. Whereas a theater can argue a case for producing opera in the vernacular (a sense of immediacy, or “relevance” and “inclusivity” if you want to sound like every marketing department), listening to opera in translation on CD only emphasizes two fallacies: The original sound the composer had in mind has gone and diction remains too murky to forgo the printed libretto. Diction is a contentious issue especially with regard to the English National Opera, whose remit was rendered pointless ever since it put in surtitles. In the singers’ defense, the crisp enunciation of the Golden Age was due to the drier acoustic of their former home at Sadler’s Wells. The airy Coliseum is a tough venue to project text, yet in the case of John Tomlinson, Lisa Milne, or even Lesley Garrett, not impossible. Some blame also has to go to the post-Julie Andrews fashion for favoring a smooth, creamy vocal line ahead of clear text. It is a problem that neither the Coliseum nor Chandos ever resolved.


My personal view is that the ties between Chandos and the ENO were not tight enough. The gems of this catalog (The Goodall Ring , Janet Baker’s Massenet and Handel) tend to be live from the theater or, like Richard Hickox’s fabulous Britten recordings, in the original language. What amazes me is how little of the English National Opera there is on DVD, especially when its reputation hangs more on provocative visuals rather than ultimate casts. A phenomenal show like Richard Jones’s technicolor Lulu would be highly desirable on DVD, yet again and again the Peter Moores Foundation thought it better to spend money and record the opera in the studio.


Although the studio sets wisely paired familiar stars with the younger ensemble names, there is a palpable feeling of redundancy when there is no production to link it to. The English National Opera still struggles (although it is currently having a terrific run of hits, be it accessible new opera from Julian Anderson or celebrity-led stagings such as Terry Gilliam’s Benvenuto Cellini ) and with the demise of this series, London’s second opera company has lost yet another media outlet. With its reputation as the youthful, funky alternative to Covent Garden, the English National Opera “Power House” years were at a time when a terrestrial TV station was prepared to broadcast these “sexy,” Postmodern stagings at prime time, so the idea of a corresponding opera set still made sense. I can’t help feeling sad, but times have changed, and Chandos would be better off producing DVDs from the Coliseum.


Anyway, enough of my polemic. How good is this new Macbeth ? With no corresponding audience who want a memory of what they saw, this new studio recording hangs on the star casting of Simon Keenlyside, a welcome but again slightly redundant choice given that you can hear and see his troubled psychopath (in the original Italian) on a fine DVD from Covent Garden conducted by Antonio Pappano. Good as he is here, I do think Keenlyside is best when seen and heard (I don’t say that about many singers) as he is one of opera’s few truly visceral actors. In the cold glare of the studio he gives us a carefully modulated reading, text aware and utterly precise, but just a little bland and unvaried. I do like his creepy chuckle when plotting Banquo’s demise, and such diligence and caution fits the weak and corruptible Thane. Although a bit small for Verdi, his sense of line is good, and he knows his vocal limits, although the tone is getting gritty when pushed.


Nevertheless, he is a good foil to Latonia Moore’s gleaming Lady Macbeth, a fine portrayal which is really worth getting excited about. There’s the she-devil steel to her voice, but she sings her runs cleanly and is equally fearless in the more soaring passages. Her sleepwalking scene, here taken much faster than usual, is especially chilling and fanatical. Only her diction under pressure is wanting, otherwise she holds her own against such luminaries as Fiorenza Cossotto and Shirley Verrett. The rest of the cast are generally fine. In the comfort of the studio Brindley Sharratt’s lightish bass makes enough impression as Banquo, with a very fine account of his aria and Gwyn Hughes Jones is an adequate Macduff. Comprimario roles are well taken, creating a tight, well dramatized ensemble. Having both endings really is a selling point, but I’m personally torn between which I prefer. Verdi’s reworked version has a much better battle but ends with that ludicrous, jaunty, “everything’s fine” chorus, and we lose Macbeth’s chilling final aria, here sung as “I have sinned.” Listeners will find themselves flitting between the two.


Edward Gardner gets superb work from his ENO forces. In the barn-like Coliseum, this young charismatic figurehead has failed to live up to his initial promise, as his readings have often been sluggish, if polished, so this urgent, propulsive account of Macbeth is a real surprise. His tempos go to both extremes, galloping through the jaunty choruses, or giving a deliciously creepy, lugubrious account of the overture, but he understands the overreaching arc of the opera. Ensembles are built up to thrillingly and there is no sense of a static studio run-through. There is good work too from the pickup chorus (The English National Opera chorus must have been busy elsewhere), full of young London-based names, great and good.


Recorded at the Blackheath Halls, the sound is full but cavernous. It lends the production a suitably empty feel for the bleak setting, but some orchestral detail is lost to the closely miked singers. Documentation is up to the usual, thorough standard of this series, with a typically fine essay from Mike Ashman. So, this is worth buying, if only to mark the end of an era. It is a very good performance with a standout Lady Macbeth, but ever so slightly redundant in an age of surtitles, live recording, and at a time when London’s opera in the vernacular struggles to show its face in this harsh multimedia world. It is hard not to feel sad when every new opera set on CD feels like a penultimate nail in the coffin, but this set announces two demises, and I’m not really talking about Verdi’s multiple endings.


FANFARE: Barnaby Rayfield

Nikolaus Harnoncourt was praised for his chamber music, evolving from the Piano access to "Aida" in 1997 in Zurich. Against both nothing is to say, in principle, only a guarantee for an exciting, rousing opera recording is not self-evident. I must say that I really enjoy the recording until the score in his hand and made music excellent and brilliant the many carefully worked out details that almost meticulous compliance with the dynamic demands of Verdi and transparency in the spotless ensembles especially in the of the Vienna Philharmonic could appreciate orchestral passages (with over four lasting several months, recording sessions, I expect that as well). - Thomas Tillmann, http://www. Omm. De

Verdi: Il trovatore

After the great success that Il Trovatore received in Paris, Verdi was proposed to compose a French version of the opera to suit the tastes of the local public. The original work, based on the Spanish play El trovador by Antonio Garc�a Guti�rrez, had a libretto by Cammarano, which was translated into French by �milien Pacini. Le Trouv�re was first staged in Brussels in 1856 and premiered at the Paris Opera in 1857. In this new version the composer added some music in act 3 for the gypsie ballet scene, extended the finale of act 4 and made several other revisions. The plot is highly dramatic and captivating: Verdi portrays strong characters who deal with war, obsession and revenge. To use director Robert Wilson's words "this is a family tragedy, and in many ways, it is a very contemporary story." Wilson's approach to the opera aims at preserving it's emotional strength by using a very essential d�cor, whose main element is light: "As a director, when I design the stage and lighting, I think about if what I see can help me hear better. Le Trouv�re requires a tremendous amount of concentration, so the set I designed is abstract in order to create a space for the music in the Farnese. I have designed an environment in concrete, creating a juxtaposition to the theatre's ornate interior. [...] Light in my work functions as part of the architectural whole. It is an element which helps us hear and see. Without light there is no space. To light a world that Verdi has described as so dark, one needs light to make the space darker." In the set's background the director also uses some photos by American photographer Robert Rosenkranz. This production was staged in the splendid Teatro Farnese of Parma, which was built in 1628 and belongs to the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta, one of the oldest museums in Italy. Extra content: Interview with the curator of the Museum subtitled in all languages.

Classical Music

VERDI: OVERTURES & OPERA CHOIR

This new DVD release celebrates one of the largest open-air theaters in the world, the Arena of Verona. This documentary contains interviews with the famous directors, conductors, and singers who appeared at the Arena in the early 1980s, including Sherrill Millnes, Rajna Kabaiwanska, Fiorenza Cossotto, and many more. Also included are excerpts from performances of Rigoletto, Aida, Traviata, and Nabucco. Subtitles are available in Italian, English, French, German, Japanese, and Korean.

Also available on Blu-ray

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphitheater with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armored knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas. Next to Anna Netrebko as Leonora perform Verdi accomplished baritone Luca Salsi as Count di Luna and Yusif Eyvazov returns to the Arena as his powerful-voiced opponent Manrico. MET star Dolora Zajick as Azucena and young rising Italian bass Riccardo Fassi as Ferrando join the prestigious ensemble. “Zeffirelli gives to the arena what it merits: a colourful, multifaceted staging in which impressive mass scenes alternate with intimate moments [...]“ (Der Neue Merker) “Unforgettable” (Verona Settegiorni)

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphitheater with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armored knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas. Next to Anna Netrebko as Leonora perform Verdi accomplished baritone Luca Salsi as Count di Luna and Yusif Eyvazov returns to the Arena as his powerful-voiced opponent Manrico. MET star Dolora Zajick as Azucena and young rising Italian bass Riccardo Fassi as Ferrando join the prestigious ensemble. “Zeffirelli gives to the arena what it merits: a colourful, multifaceted staging in which impressive mass scenes alternate with intimate moments [...]“ (Der Neue Merker) “Unforgettable” (Verona Settegiorni)

Verdi: Rigoletto

Classical Music

Verdi: Aïda

Famed for his sonorous tone and imposing stage presence, ‘Rigoletto du jour’ Leo Nucci is considered among today’s foremost Verdi interpreters. + In this new solo recording the venerable baritone performs some of the greatest arias by the Italian maestro, reprising together with instrumental accompaniment many of the operatic roles on which he has built his illustrious career. + Presenting the major singers of today and the stars of tomorrow, the Rosenblatt Recitals are London's only world-class season of opera recitals. + In partnership with Opus Arte, this and other CD releases will be based predominantly on studio recordings with occasional bonus live tracks.

C Major continues it's Tutto Verdi edition with his Messa da Requiem. This film includes a 52-minute bonus documentary introducing US to Verdi's beautiful homeland, the region of Parma; from the little village where Verdi was born, to the estate close to Parma where Verdi always came back to and chose to spend most of his life.

Ramón Vargas is one of the leading tenors of our time and one of the most sought-after worldwide. His breakthrough came in 1983 with the Mexican conductor Eduardo Mata. (Capriccio)

Classical Music

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Shakespeare provided lifelong inspiration for the towering operatic genius that was Giuseppe Verdi, but just three of the Bard’s plays ever emerged fully-fledged from the composer’s pen. This trio of landmark productions, featuring a veritable constellation of singers, conductors and directors, are united here under the banner of Verdi’s Shakepeare Operas: Macbeth, which lifted the young composer out of his hard-working ‘galley years’, propelling him to international fame and universal acclaim, and Otello and Falstaff, his final two crowning operatic achievements. Simon Keenlyside and Liudmyla Monastyrska are imposing as the Thane and his Lady in Phyllida Lloyd’s sumptuous production of The Scottish Play for The Royal Opera, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, while José Cura interprets the Moor in a profound, intense staging by Willy Decker at Barcelona’s Liceu. By the end of his dramatic opera career, Verdi claimed he had ‘earned at last the right to laugh a little’, and Richard Jones’s Glyndebourne Festival production of Falstaff radiates humour, tinged with bitterness and wisdom and brought to life by an international ensemble cast with Christopher Purves in the title role under the inspiring baton of Vladimir Jurowski.

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan (Otello), Japanese (Macbeth)
Running time: 170 Minutes (Macbeth), 23 Minutes (Bonus), 151 Minutes (Otello), 136 Minutes (Falstaff)
Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

MacBeth undoubtedly marked a turning point in Verdi's operatic writing, i. e. , the foregrounding of the characters' introspective, psychological aspects. This DVD/Blu-ray captures the production staged at Novara's Teatro Coccia during the 2013-14 season, with thriller/horror filmmaker Dario Argento tackling opera direction for the first time. One could only expect a direction in line with his films, and from that point of view this MacBeth meets expectations, with the visualization of the opera's bloody, indeed gory scenes matching the dark, brutal character of Shakespeare work.

Often released in corrupted form, this 1952 performance, without interpolation, of Verdi’s Macbeth features Maria Callas at the near start of her quarter-century professional career as Lady Macbeth, and Enzo Mascherini, generally forgotten now except to the cognoscenti who know him as one of his era’s leading Italian baritones, in the title role. The Orchestra and Chorus of the La Scala, Milan is led by Victor de Sabata, an utterly brilliant conductor who left far to few recordings behind, but more than enough to judge to his true genius.