Gioachino Rossini
LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO

Tobia Mill – Paolo Bordogna
Fanny – Désirée Rancatore
Edoardo Milfort – Saimir Pirgu
Slook – Fabio Maria Capitanucci
Norton – Enrico Maria Marabelli
Clarina – Maria Gortsevskaya

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor

Luigi Squarzina, stage director
Giovanni Agostinucci, sets and costumes

Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy, August 2006

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 83 mins

Harbinger Records is pleased to announce their premiere film release. And for this prestigious debut, they have chosen to present a live recording of the estimable Sidney Myer at the Laura Beechman Theatre in New York. Known for his witty musical comedy, Sidney delivers numbers that are understated and even heartbreaking. Disarming, funny, preposterous, touching, and utterly unique, Myer is one of the country’s leading cabaret performers. He’s performed around the world, making New York his base. He has won numerous awards for his incomparable choice of material, delivery, and wit. For the past 25 years, despite urging from admirers, Sidney limited his brilliance to cameos at clubs, benefits and conventions. But for this, Sidney sold out six one-man shows emphasizing his wide range of material and thrilled his audiences. The result is an utterly marvelous record of a uniquely versatile performer that will thrill aficionados of musical comedy, cabaret, popular song and standup comedy. There’s something for everyone in this record of a master showman at the top of his game.

Also available on Blu-ray

Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville was based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s French play Le Barbier de Séville and is the ultimate opera buffa. The score is a compendium of the composer’s wittiest and most brilliant writing, and includes the famous entrance aria Largo al factotum and a raft of superbly dynamic ensembles. This vibrant and youthful production features Florian Sempey, one of the world’s best Figaros, the ‘Rossini tenor’ Michele Angelini, vivacious and critically admired Catherine Trottmann, and the award-winning team of acclaimed director Laurent Pelly and conductor Jérémie Rhorer who directs his spirited period ensemble Le Cercle de l’Harmonie.

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REVIEW:

The cast are in modern dress but the interaction of characters is so forceful as to sweep away any lurking objections. Add to this some very fine singing, particularly from Michele Angelini’s glorious high tenor as Almaviva, and there is a great deal here to admire and enjoy.

– Lark Reviews

Also available on Blu-ray

‘My Vienna’ is Jonas Kaufmann’s deeply personal tribute to the world-famous melodies from the birthplace of waltz and operetta and follows up the album release from Fall 2019. The 100-minute film consists of Jonas Kaufmann’s Wiener Konzerthaus concert interspersed with documentary-style segments where Jonas Kaufmann explores the city’s fascinating lighter musical heritage. His concert from the Wiener Konzerthaus includes well-known Viennese songs like “Wien, Wien nur du allein“, “Im Prater blühn wieder die Bäume”, “Sag beim Abschied leise “Servus““. He also sings scenes from famous operettas such as “The Merry Widow”, “Wiener Blut” and “Die Fledermaus” where soprano Rachel Willis-SØrensen joins him on the duets.

Also available in Blu-ray!

The award-winning Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has become one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras on period instruments. These concerts reveal some of the foundations of Beethoven’s genius, and capture vital performances from the 2020 SWR Schwetzingen Festival, the biggest radio festival for classical music in the world. Robert Schumann pointed out similarities between Méhul’s First Symphony and Beethoven’s Fifth, and these third and fourth concerts in the cycle also include a tempest by Holzbauer that precedes Beethoven’s by half a century, plus the little-known Le portrait musical de la nature by Justin Heinrich Knecht, a work that also anticipates Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. The first and second concerts are also available on Naxos.

Director and author Simon Stone rewrote, updated and questioned Chekhov’s famous drama for the present day: with brilliant dialogue, subtle characterization and the ambivalent figures which these so reliably generate. Avoiding pathos, spectacle and heroism, Chekhov maintains a masterful balance between melancholy and joie de vivre. Premiered 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre it is a play about the everyday, about desire and failure. “For long time there was no such intelligent, deliberate Chekhov staging.” Der Tagesspiegel Invited to Berlin Theatertreffen Festival 2017.