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The contemporary face of The Royal Ballet is shown in works from three of today's leading choreographers. Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour is based around seven couples separating and intermingling, to music by Vivaldi and Ezio Bosso and lit with the rich colours suggested by sunset. In Flight Pattern, Crystal Pite combines Górecki's haunting “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” with a large dance ensemble to create a poignant and passionate reflection on migration. Between them, Medusa is new work inspired by the Greek myth, created for The Royal Ballet by the acclaimed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which juxtaposes Purcell arias with an electronic score by Olga Wojciechowska.

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Ottorino Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco (‘The Sleeping Beauty’) was originally commissioned by the renowned puppeteer Vittoria Podrecca. The revised version we hear today preserves much of the kaleidoscopic approach and magnified characters and emotions of that original; now enhanced by the composer’s matchless orchestration. This famous story in which the Princess pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for centuries until kissed by her Prince is given a magical atmosphere through director Leo Muscato’s colorful staging, and the superb cast of this Teatro Lirico di Cagliari production truly inhabits an enchanted realm.

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REVIEW:

Ottorino Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco (‘The Sleeping Beauty’) was originally commissioned by the renowned puppeteer Vittoria Podrecca. The revised version we hear today preserves much of the kaleidoscopic approach and magnified characters and emotions of that original; now enhanced by the composer’s matchless orchestration. This famous story in which the Princess pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for centuries until kissed by her Prince is given a magical atmosphere through director Leo Muscato’s colorful staging, and the superb cast of this Teatro Lirico di Cagliari production truly inhabits an enchanted realm.

– Gramophone

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Before starting to work at Nabucodonosor, which will later become his iconic Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi was on the verge of abandoning music, discouraged as he was by the flop of his second opera. He then received a libretto by Temistocle Solera almost by chance, as it was destined to another composer. Verdi was very reluctant to put himself to work, but later he referred that one night he “threw the manuscript on the table […]. the booklet opened: unwillingly, my eyes were drawn to the page that was before them and on these verses: ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’”. So he started focusing on the task and “one day one verse, the next day another verse, a note and a phrase at a time, […] little by little the opera was composed”. The rest is history. Nabucodonosor was a triumph, the public of La Scala, on the night of 9th March 1842, repaid him with an unprecedented success hailing all the numbers of the opera with warm ovations and paying a special tribute to the chorus Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate, which in Italy has since become a sort of second national anthem. The reasons of such a success were that the opera possessed such force in itself, such simplicity and smoothness of style that made it the perfect example of tragic opera. This production has been filmed at the 2019 Festival Verdi in Parma. It’s a very powerful and engaging creative project by 2018 Abbiati prize winner duo Ricci/Forte. The most striking feature of this staging is that the action takes place in 2046 on a military ship, which reminds us of an Ark. This performance portrays a dystopic society where we can find many references to real contemporary events. Nabucco is turned into an oppressive dictator who is obsessed with his own image. The Hebrew slaves are portrayed as refugees wearing life vests, while on the ship deck various screens are used to display the regime’s propaganda.

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Before starting to work at Nabucodonosor, which will later become his iconic Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi was on the verge of abandoning music, discouraged as he was by the flop of his second opera. He then received a libretto by Temistocle Solera almost by chance, as it was destined to another composer. Verdi was very reluctant to put himself to work, but later he referred that one night he “threw the manuscript on the table […]. the booklet opened: unwillingly, my eyes were drawn to the page that was before them and on these verses: ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’”. So he started focusing on the task and “one day one verse, the next day another verse, a note and a phrase at a time, […] little by little the opera was composed”. The rest is history. Nabucodonosor was a triumph, the public of La Scala, on the night of 9th March 1842, repaid him with an unprecedented success hailing all the numbers of the opera with warm ovations and paying a special tribute to the chorus Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate, which in Italy has since become a sort of second national anthem. The reasons of such a success were that the opera possessed such force in itself, such simplicity and smoothness of style that made it the perfect example of tragic opera. This production has been filmed at the 2019 Festival Verdi in Parma. It’s a very powerful and engaging creative project by 2018 Abbiati prize winner duo Ricci/Forte. The most striking feature of this staging is that the action takes place in 2046 on a military ship, which reminds us of an Ark. This performance portrays a dystopic society where we can find many references to real contemporary events. Nabucco is turned into an oppressive dictator who is obsessed with his own image. The Hebrew slaves are portrayed as refugees wearing life vests, while on the ship deck various screens are used to display the regime’s propaganda.

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Out of Giuseppe Verdi’s adoration for William Shakespeare three masterpieces were born: Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. But in accordance with its librettist Arrigo Boito’s wish to remove the original bourgeois farce The Merry Wives of Windsor out of the English mists and to warm it up to the clear Tuscan sun, Falstaff transforms Shakespeare’s morality play into an ode to life, to pleasure and to reconciliation that forgives human vices, rewards intelligence and virtue, and praises that spark of madness that gives life its flavor. Shakespeare’s most famous and subversive comic character has indeed proved to be a fertile ground for Verdi who, then eighty-years old, signed with Falstaff his most modern, most ambitious, but also wisest and ambiguous opera. It was high time that French stage director Laurent Pelly, an eminent specialist of the buffa repertoire, tried out his talents on this whimsical music drama : a task he performs with absolute maestria, highlighting with remarkable subtlety the numerous comic devices invented by Verdi and Boito but also pondering on the equivocal morality of the argument. He is, of course, helped in this endeavor by a wonderful team of singers: from the excellent baritone Roberto de Candia to the earthy mezzo soprano Daniela Barcellona as Mrs. Quickly, without forgetting the exceptional Simone Piazzolla as Ford, the wonderfully lyrical Rebecca Evans as Alice, or the candid Ruth Iniesta and Joel Prieto as Nannetta and Fenton, the young couple whose tender romance counterpoint Falstaff’s heroicomic gest. At the head of the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, conductor Daniele Rustioni underlines with unusual clarity and finesse the extraordinary complexity of this ‘‘opus ultimum’’.

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Out of Giuseppe Verdi’s adoration for William Shakespeare three masterpieces were born: Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. But in accordance with its librettist Arrigo Boito’s wish to remove the original bourgeois farce The Merry Wives of Windsor out of the English mists and to warm it up to the clear Tuscan sun, Falstaff transforms Shakespeare’s morality play into an ode to life, to pleasure and to reconciliation that forgives human vices, rewards intelligence and virtue, and praises that spark of madness that gives life its flavor. Shakespeare’s most famous and subversive comic character has indeed proved to be a fertile ground for Verdi who, then eighty-years old, signed with Falstaff his most modern, most ambitious, but also wisest and ambiguous opera. It was high time that French stage director Laurent Pelly, an eminent specialist of the buffa repertoire, tried out his talents on this whimsical music drama : a task he performs with absolute maestria, highlighting with remarkable subtlety the numerous comic devices invented by Verdi and Boito but also pondering on the equivocal morality of the argument. He is, of course, helped in this endeavor by a wonderful team of singers: from the excellent baritone Roberto de Candia to the earthy mezzo soprano Daniela Barcellona as Mrs. Quickly, without forgetting the exceptional Simone Piazzolla as Ford, the wonderfully lyrical Rebecca Evans as Alice, or the candid Ruth Iniesta and Joel Prieto as Nannetta and Fenton, the young couple whose tender romance counterpoint Falstaff’s heroicomic gest. At the head of the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, conductor Daniele Rustioni underlines with unusual clarity and finesse the extraordinary complexity of this ‘‘opus ultimum’’.

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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.

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Giacomo Puccini wrote what was supposed to be his last opera at a time where, riddled with disease and old age as he was, he felt like his own turmoil was reflected in the outside world: itself staggering, unsteady, overwhelmed and smashed by the chaos of European diplomacy. In spite of these obstacles, he persevered and worked until the very end of his life on this opera that he left unfinished but that proved to be a “way out” for him in many ways. Drawn from an ancient Persian epic from the 13th century, Turandot was indeed an excuse to escape into a new dramatic universe, one made of unexpected sounds and symbols. Here, in a world removed both geographically and chronologically from his own reality, he gave into the seductive powers of exoticism and eroticism, just as his own heroin Princess Turandot abandons herself to the mysteries of love and forgiveness. After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wilson. One of the most important theatre and visual artist of our times, the director who gave life to Philip Glass’s Einstein of the Beach and who reinvented Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande hadn’t worked on a Puccini opera in twenty-five years, since his ground-breaking Madama Butterfly commissioned by the Paris Opera in 1993. This new encounter between his powerful visual universe and Puccini’s evocative music was bound to be an outstanding event. Carried out by a brilliant cast of singers, dominated by Irene Theorin as Turandot, Gregory Kunde as Calaf and Yolanda Auyanet as Liù, this magnificent production is conducted by the Teatro Real’s associate musical director Nicola Luisotti - and has been met with universal acclaim.

The madrigal, written for courts and patrons, was the ultimate secular song. The genre reached its zenith with the works of Claudio Monteverdi in successive books that trace his technical and expressive innovations. In them, Monteverdi explored themes such as the vicissitudes and pleasures of love, as well as the art of war, and the pain of loss. The editions used in these recordings are the most authentic and uncut, and, in keeping with 17th-century practice, employ male voices only. Praised as ‘compelling, simultaneously controlled and imaginative’ (American Record Guide) the collection also includes pieces never before recorded. The instrumental and vocal ensemble Delitiæ Musicæ is considered one of the most enterprising Italian early music ensembles, with important recordings in the last 20 years that include the Missa Philomena Praevia of Verdelot, four widely acclaimed albums dedicated to Masses of Palestrina based on the compositions of the Flemish composer Cipriano de Rore, Lupus and Jacquet de Mantua. The unconventional yet impassioned interpretations by Delitiæ Musicæ and Marco Longhiniare seen as an important regeneration of Italian Renaissance and Baroque music.

Review excerpts of previously released volumes included in this set:

Monteverdi: Madrigals Book 2 / Longhini, Delitiae Musicae:

These unusual all-male Monteverdi madrigal performances are turning out to be the versions of choice--definitely worth serious attention.

– ClassicsToday

Monteverdi: Madrigals Book 3 / Longhini, Delitiae Musicae:

The less overtly theatrical pieces (O dolce anima mia; Ch'io non t'ami, cor mio?) are rendered with the same care for detail and artful phrasing that characterize the entire program, and conductor Marco Longhini's reasonably defensible decision to perform these madrigals with only male singers proves to be a very satisfying one, especially with such attractive, ideally matched, and expressive voices. This is great stuff, recorded in first-rate sound.

– ClassicsToday

Monteverdi: Madrigals, Book 8 / Longhini, Delitiae Musicae:

The quality of the performances is extremely high. Technical prowess is always in the service of the music, and Marco Longhini is not averse to pushing his all-male ensemble to extremes of slow or fast tempos or to special vocal effects. Another strength of this excellent interpretation is the size and scope of the instrumental forces.

– American Record Guide

When Il trittico premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera in December 1918, Gianni Schicchi became an immediate hit. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. The action in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi takes place in Buoso Donati’s bedroom in 13th-century Florence, immediately after his death, as his greedy relatives feign grief and search for his will. The mood shifts to anger when the relatives discover that they have been disinherited. They seek out the clever and resourceful Schicchi to make a counterfeit will. Schicchi, however, turns their scheme against them, bequeathing most of the dead man’s fortune to himself while the relatives, all parties to the crime of forgery, are forced to sit by silently. The aria O mio babbino caro is one of Puccini's most popular arias for soprano. Bruno de Simone plays the character of Gianni Schicchi. As Italy's finest basso buffo, he is perfect for this role. Puccini completed the score on 20 April, 1918, eight months before the scheduled premiere. At that performance it was presented as the third part of a trilogy of newly written one-act operas by Puccini billed as Il trittico (The Triptych); the first two were Il tabarro (The Cloak) and Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica). Il tabarro was a dark tragedy and Suor Angelica a sweet one, so by closing with Gianni Schicchi Puccini rounded off the night with a high-spirited comic farce. Critical reaction at the time judged that Gianni Schicchi was “an uproarious delight”, and it was the most favorably received of the three.

TENET Vocal Artists, NYC’s pre-eminent early music ensemble, releases an album of the final performance of its Green Mountain Project. For the past ten years, the Green Mountain Project has been made up of some of the best Baroque specialists in the United States for concerts of Claudio Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers of 1610 (Vespro della Beata Vergine). This live recording is a culmination of years of musical collaborations, and a celebration of the artists and supporters who made the past decade of performances possible. The Green Mountain Project began its tenure with the first performance to honor the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 publication on Sunday, January 3, 2010. Spearheaded by artistic director Jolle Greenleaf and music director Scott Metcalfe, the concert was offered free to the public, and received a rave review from The New York Times. Ten years later, The New York Times published another article, this time celebrating the decade of performances that followed this initial concert. During the project’s decade history, the Green Mountain Project performed Monteverdi’s works in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to glowing reviews, sold-out audiences, and in radio broadcasts. The cast of the Green Mountain Project features America’s best early music vocal and instrumental specialists, including Dark Horse Consort brass ensemble.

L’incoronazione di Poppea is a milestone in the history of music and the high point of the early baroque. This recording avails itself of an international cast and period instrument ensemble including established performers and young talents from Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Albania, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, China, Mongolia and Korea. Conductor Federico Bardazzi has analyzed the expressive aspects of the score so that the music would bring out the nature of the characters and has worked on the variety of tone colour available in the basso continuo associated with the “affetti” throughout the opera and hence the association of particular instruments with the main characters. The instrumental arrangements are highly diversified, ranging from sopranino and guitar, through passages for strings only to exuberant tutti sections with percussion. A hallmark of Bardazzi's approach to performance of 17th century repertoire is the interaction of treble instruments with voices in choral numbers, duets, versified pieces and airs and also foregrounding those instruments in certain sections of the opera identified with a given character. The many tone colours of this broad palette valorize the instrumental writing in the vocal numbers, which is in keeping with the dictates of Monteverdi's seconda prattica.

With its new album 'Concertos 4 Violins', the specialist ensemble for early music, Concerto Koln, takes a look at the unique repertoire niche of concertos written for four solo violins. 'It must have been a challenge to bring together four solo violins, four virtuosos with four different personalities, four egos.' In this programme, devised by bassoonist Lorenzo Alpert, Concerto Koln gathers together the creme de la creme of baroque violin specialists. The orchestra already maintains a longstanding artistic partnership with each of them: Mayumi Hirasaki, who was concertmaster e.g. for Concerto Koln's most recent recording of Geminiani's works, Shunske Sato, who grew up in the USA and is extensively involved in the Netherlands Bach Society, Evgeny Sviridov from St. Petersburg and the Spaniard Jesús Merino Ruiz. They were all shaped differently by their various cultural backgrounds and pursued different educational paths. This makes the combination of the four all the more compelling. At the same time it demonstrates that any barriers in thought and in musical language can be overcome.

The comic-heroic romp Matilde di Shabran was Rossini’s last commission for the theatres of Rome, the city where he’d had great successes such as Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini took advantage of the agile, sparkling style of librettist Jacopo Ferretti to create a narrative in which the ferocious Corradino, a declared misogynist, is introduced to the resourceful Matilde, who succeeds in melting his iron heart and winning his love. This premiere recording revives the original 1821 Rome version, which was conducted at the last minute by Paganini, and caused brawling in the streets between Rossini’s admirers and detractors.

 

REVIEW:

 

This splendid recording of the original Rome version of Matilde, recorded at the 2019 Rossini Wildbad Festival in Germany, relishes the almost comic tale of the melodramatic medieval tyrant Corradino conquered by love, or rather Matilde, with a score packed with some of Rossini’s most accomplished music.

 

Michele Angelini is magnificent as the villain, everything that you hope for in a Rossini tenor—fleet of voice in his runs and trills and with gravity-defying head notes. Sara Blanch’s Matilde matches him note for note. Their Act I duet ‘Ch’io fugga ha già timore…’ is a thrilling lesson in Rossini singing. There’s good work from the rest of the cast, notably the contralto Victoria Yarovaya as Edoardo, who Corradino has unjustly imprisoned and turns tragedy into comedy. Equally pleasing is the Passionart Orchestra conducted by José Miguel Pérez-Sierra. All scrupulously Rossinian including the celebrated horn solo at the beginning of Act II.

 

– BBC Music Magazine

Dorothee Oberlinger writes: “All the recorder concertos on this release – chamber concertos or solo concertos – were written expressly for flauto or flautino and show the imagination, delicacy, freshness, virtuosity and sometimes even melancholy, which Vivaldi put into his writing for this instrument. We have intentionally chosen tuning at 440 Hz since, in Venice, in Vivaldi’s time, tuning was higher than in neighboring musical centers such as Rome, for example, where, at times, one even played at 392 Hz. With this high tuning, the sound of the gentle gut strings becomes clearer and more brilliant.”

Lawrence Foster conducts Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (1910), together with the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Cluj-Napoca and a cast of seasoned Puccini singers, including Melody Moore (Minnie), Marius Vlad (Dick Johnson) and Lester Lynch (Jack Rance). Puccini’s “Spaghetti Western” is not only an exploration of the New World, with the delightfully charismatic saloon owner Minnie running the show, but equally of new music; a pioneering work full of harmonic innovation and state-of-the-art orchestration effects. The depth of the orchestration, as well as of the various ensemble scenes that are characteristic of the opera, fully comes to life in this studio recording. Lawrence Foster has a vast PENTATONE discography, including operettas and operas such as Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (2018) and Der Zigeunerbaron (2016), as well as Verdi’s Otello (2017). The latter album features Melody Moore and Lester Lynch, who have also starred in recordings of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Puccini’s Il Tabarro (both 2020). Marius Vlad and the Transylvania State Philharmonic and Choir, Cluj Navoca make their PENTATONE debut.

Recorder player Bolette Roed and Arte dei Suonatori present Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos, “The Four Seasons”, combined with other concertos that share a kinship with them, resulting in Vivaldi’s Seasons; a programme consisting of sixteen concertos, four for each season, including favorites such as Il rosignuolo and l’Amoroso. Roed’s use of the recorder in place of the violin brings a unique sound to these works, whilst simultaneously expanding the recorder repertoire. Bolette Roed is one of the most in-demand recorder players of Europe. After having released Telemann’s Garden with the Elephant House Quartet in 2019, she now extends her PENTATONE discography with this solo album. The players of Arte dei Suonatori make their PENTATONE debut, while their leader Aureliusz Golinski already featured on Telemann’s Garden.

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Giuseppi Verdi’s Messa da Requiem arose out of the composer’s admiration for the influential poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, and as a response to the lack of appreciation shown to the writer in the press after the his death in 1873. The extraordinary character of Verdi’s Requiem confronts us with unanswerable questions, from the stormy and terrifying Dies irae, to consolatory and touching lyrical oases in which Verdi communicates liturgical texts in the most profound and expressive ways possible. This Teatro Regio di Parma production, which was performed open-air at the Parco Ducale of Parma, was dedicated to the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the health workers engaged in the emergency. The mayor of Parma introduces the performance with a brief and touching speech and a minute’s silence. Conductor Roberto Abbado declared in an interview : “I think that Verdi felt the need to compose a sacred work to deal with some themes that ,as he got older, he felt very strongly about. They are themes that every human being sooner or later asks themselves. Verdi is not afraid to show that he fears death, and therefore his approach is extremely humble and human, showing…some of the frailties we all have. How does the Messa da Requiem end? It ends, in my opinion, with a huge question mark. Basically, I believe, Verdi, like many of us, cannot answer these questions. I, myself, cannot answer them.”

Sonya Yoncheva and Charles Castronovo lead an award-winning cast in Richard Jones's acclaimed production of Puccini's most heartrending opera. Emmanuel Villaume conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus in some of the composer's most luscious and memorable music. Spectacular designs by Stewart Laing for this Royal Opera production set the passion, friendship, comedy and tragedy in late 19th-century Paris. The production evokes the vulnerability of youth amid the harshness and glamour of the big city, and contrasts the poverty of the bohemians's attic home with the splendour of Paris's shopping arcades on Christmas Eve.

L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) is often described as the first opera. The composer himself used another term for his work, however: ‘favola in musica’, a musical tale. Taking this as their point of departure, the performers on the present recording place the emphasis on the libretto’s direct narrative, and how the music alone is used to express emotions, a music which underpins the plot and the text word for word. To quote the liner notes: ‘To modern ears the musical heritage of L’Orfeo is more to be found in the Lieder tradition than in the grand opera of the nineteenth century.’ The tale told by Monteverdi and the members of the three ensembles which bring his score to life, is that of Orpheus, the poet and musician who travels to the Underworld in order to persuade Hades to let his beloved Eurydice return to the living. Under the direction of Fredrik Malmberg, and with Johan Linderoth as their Orfeo, the 38 singers and musicians that make up Ensemble Lundabarock, Höör Barock and Ensemble Altapunta perform a score which in 1607 was state-of-the-art contemporary. Four full centuries after the first performance in Mantua it remains almost shockingly modern, as in the sound of cornetts and trombones that summon up the spirits of the Underworld or the portrayal of undiluted, raw grief in Orfeo’s celebrated aria Possente Spirto.

REVIEW:

Recordings of early Baroque opera from Scandinavia are not common; this one, from a collection of Swedish and Finnish groups led by keyboardist Fredrik Malmberg, may be the first recording from the region of Monteverdi's pioneering opera L'Orfeo. It's quite fresh and is unusually compelling for general audiences, for whom this five-act opera may sometimes be a slog. The famous "Possente spirto" from Act III, is no formulaic prayer but a strikingly powerful moment that matches the text to Monteverdi's musico-dramatic innovations. The all-Scandinavian cast, led by Johan Linderoth as Orfeo, responds nimbly to Malmberg's intentions, and there is not really a moment when the dramatic momentum flags. This can be recommended not only to collectors of early Baroque recordings but to general listeners, for whom it would make a splendid introduction to the opera.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

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This box set contains three extraordinary ballet choreographies by the successful German choreographer Christian Spuck for the Ballett Zürich whose ballet director he has been since the 2012/13 season: Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Fabio Luisi, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, conducted by Paul Connelly, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet conducted by Michail Jurowski. Christian Spuck comes from Marburg and was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He began his dance career with Jan Lauwers’ Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ensemble Rosas. In 1995 he became a member of the Stuttgart Ballet and served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2012. In Stuttgart he created fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu. Eine Monstretragödie after Frank Wedekind, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S. after E.T.A. Hoffmann. Since the 2012/13 season, Christian Spuck has been director of Ballett Zürich.

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This box set contains three extraordinary ballet choreographies by the successful German choreographer Christian Spuck for the Ballett Zürich whose ballet director he has been since the 2012/13 season: Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Fabio Luisi, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, conducted by Paul Connelly, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet conducted by Michail Jurowski. Christian Spuck comes from Marburg and was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He began his dance career with Jan Lauwers’ Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ensemble Rosas. In 1995 he became a member of the Stuttgart Ballet and served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2012. In Stuttgart he created fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu. Eine Monstretragödie after Frank Wedekind, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S. after E.T.A. Hoffmann. Since the 2012/13 season, Christian Spuck has been director of Ballett Zürich.

Boris Begelman, the highly acclaimed leader of Concerto Italiano, frequently takes on the role of soloist in the many concerts that Rinaldo Alessandrini’s celebrated orchestra devotes to the music of Vivaldi and his contemporaries. High time then for Begelman to take centre stage in one of the Vivaldi Edition’s solo violin recordings. This ninth concerto volume sees the welcome return of Rinaldo Alessandrini’s ensemble, which already features in thirteen albums of the Vivaldi collection. In this purely instrumental repertoire they excel as much as they do in vocal music, deploying generously sweeping melodic lines, inspired dynamics, and a musical language already mastered to perfection yet always interpreted anew.

Critics, conductors and colleagues agree that Franco Bordoni’s voice, accent and interpretation constitute Verdi at his most noble. Which is hardly surprising given the singer’s awe of the composer and approach to his art. Bordoni had all the technique he needed to exploit to the full his voice’s volume, texture with its wealth of harmonics and two octave range with no uneven spots. The timbre and color of his voice made him the perfect dramatic baritone, a voice that saw its owner through years of unflagging, full-on performances.

Verdi’s Messa da Requiem – an “opera in ecclestiastical robes”, as conductor Hans von Bülow called it – recorded in October 1980 at Stiftskirche Herzogenburg with Julia Varady, Alexandrina Milcheva, Alberto Cupido, Nicola Ghiuselev, ORF Choir and ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leif Segerstam. The Messa da Requiem is a musical setting of the Catholic funeral mass (Requiem) for four soloists, double choir and orchestra by Giuseppe Verdi. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist whom Verdi admired. The first performance, at the San Marco church in Milan on 22 May 1874, marked the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. The work was at one time referred to as the Manzoni Requiem. Considered too operatic to be performed in a liturgical setting, it is usually given in concert form of around 90 minutes in length. Musicologist David Rosen calls it 'probably the most frequently performed major choral work composed since the compilation of Mozart's Requiem'.