Die Neuauflage von Meisterwerken der klassischen Musik durch Esoteric hat weltweit viel Aufmerksamkeit erregt. Das kompromisslose Engagement für die Wiederherstellung und Bearbeitung der ursprünglichen Bänder sowie die Verwendung der Hybrid-Super-Audio-CD-Technologie zur Verbesserung der Klangqualität machen die Veröffentlichungen von Esoteric zum Pflichtprogramm und audiophilen Genuss für alle Liebhaber der klassischen Musik!

Doppel-Hybrid-SACD in limitierter Auflage! Japanische Pressung.

Aufnahme:
–    20. Februar 1967, live in der Royal Festival Hall, London (Disc 1 & Disc 2: 1 – 4)
–    16./17. November 1962, Evangelisches Gemeindehaus, Berlin-Zehlendorf (Disc 2: 5 – 28)

Piano: Gerald Moore
Sopran: Victoria de los Angeles
Sopran: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Bariton: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Artykuł MOZART, SCHUBERT, ROSSINI<br />Homage to Gerald Moore<br />Victoria de los Angeles, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich-Fischer Dieskau, Gerald Moore pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Rossini’s best-known instrumental works, the Six Sonate a Quattro, are rarely heard in their authentic form, as recorded here, performed by four soloists: two violins, cello and double bass. Many arr

Artykuł ROSSINI<br />6 sonate a quatro<br /> Salvatore Accardo pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Sixty years ago the score (unrevised) was a peg for a theatrical show. It’s not just a question of cuts, though these become increasingly ferocious as the opera goes on, so that in the latter half of Act 2 we get not so much a performance as a whistle-stop tour. Against these are to be weighed frequent added lines, particularly by Baccaloni as Bartolo who ends most of his lines with a leering “eeeeh!”, mimics Rosina’s lines before actually replying to them and generally keeps up a sort of muttered commentary while others are singing their parts. But if Baccaloni is an extreme example, the others are not far behind. Whether these are personal gags on the part of the individual singers, or traditional accretions, I don’t know, but I am sure the basic practice was normal at the time.

And then the notes themselves of the recitatives are scarcely respected. Entire sections are actually done as dialog, and in others the singing is a kind of Sprechstimme reminding us of Noel Coward or even of Rex Harrison’s performance in “My Fair Lady” which succeeded in raising “non-singing” almost to a noble art. But “My Fair Lady” wasn’t an opera. Furthermore, this style of comic non-singing even continues in the ensembles, much of the finale of Act One being resolved as semi-pitched “parlando”.

One other “liberty” was traditional at the time; when Rosina has her singing lesson the music she takes out of her portfolio is not the aria Rossini wrote for inclusion at this point but Proch’s “Deh torna mio bene”. This lends unusual point to Bartolo’s comment that “the aria, all things considered, was pretty boring; music was something else in my days”.

So where does this leave us?

The set is claimed as valuable above all for Baccaloni and Pinza. As a theatrical performance Baccaloni must have been terrific – the public rock with laughter whenever he’s on stage. The voice is a firm and authoritative one though the singing as such – not that there is much – does not seem particularly remarkable. Pinza certainly was a great singer with a great voice and his account of “La Calunnia” is both histrionic and musical. It is perhaps the finest I have heard and rightly brings the house down. But, apart from this, Basilio does not have all that much to do in this opera.

John Charles Thomas (1891-1960) was a Met stalwart, much appreciated as Germont and Amonasro. He is thoroughly at home in Italian and gives a comic pantomime performance along similar lines to Baccaloni’s. The voice itself seems a bit rough and cavernous.

Bruno Landi (?1905-1968) was a genuine “tenore di grazia” with a sweet, honeyed line in lyrical passages and untroubled high notes (as we also hear in the Flotow extracts). Had he been born a generation or so later when the Rossini-Donizetti revival was in full swing his early training would have included agility too; as it is he pecks around the edges of many passages where modern ears demand accuracy.

Today’s taste prefers a mezzo Rosina, though since Rossini provided variants and transpositions for a soprano Rosina we cannot actually say the latter is inauthentic. A soprano Rosina is better suited to the essentially frivolous conception of the opera current at the time and the Italo-American Josephine Tuminia has a bright and shallow soubrettish voice with easy coloratura and an ability to hold top Cs and Ds almost indefinitely. In its way it’s an attractive assumption of the role but others have given so much more and Tuminia, having sung Gilda and Rosina over two seasons, was not called back to the Met. Irra Petina is a caricatural Berta.

The conductor Gennaro Papi was an old hand at the Met and his rough and tumble approach suits the pantomime conception well enough. Besides, it would have taken a Toscanini to impose order on his principals and insist on observance of the score, though the Leinsdorf recording of a decade or so later shows that the Met Barber Show, if still not quite embracing authenticity, was to get a beneficial spring-cleaning.

Two things have to be said, though. The first is that this performance does enshrine an approach to the business of performing a comic opera the roots of which, if not the substance, go back to Rossini’s own days. In other words, he might have been sarcastic about some of the ways in which his notes were being treated but he might not have disowned the general style. The other is that people maybe enjoyed their evening at the opera much more than we do today. The Met public plainly never have a dull moment. This is a point to be weighed against the serious refinement of an Abbado. All the same, it belongs to an epoch when Rossini was patronised as the composer of a few good tunes rather than a musical dramatist not so far behind Mozart and deserving of the same respect. Still, the very fact that you are unlikely to hear a performance anything like this today is justification for hearing this one. The recording catches the voices reasonably well and is really remarkably good for what it is. The less said about the soprano in the Flotow duet the better and in Guild’s place I’d have issued only the aria.

The booklet, like others in this series, has a detailed essay and mini-biographies of the singers and conductor. It’s a pity they manage to spell Rossini’s name wrongly (“Giaocchini”!) twice over, on the back cover and under his portrait, but there is a mystery to clear up since both the Concise Grove and the Italian Garzanti encyclopedia spell it “Gioachino” while the Ricordi score prefers “Gioacchino”. The double C is normal in modern Italian (the name is equivalent to the German “Joachim”) but was not so in Rossini’s own days.
Christopher Howell

Artykuł ROSSINI,\<br />Il Barber of Seville<br />John Charles Thomas, Ezio Pinza, <br />The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Gennaro Papi pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Artykuł CALLAS<br />Maria Callas sings Operatic Arias<br />The Philharmonia Orchestra, Tulio Serafin pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Artykuł WAGNER, PAGANINI, GLUCK, ROSSINI, MENDELSSOHN, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini<br/>The years of maturity in America, Vol. 2 pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Among the most successful rediscoveries of recent years we like to remember the original versions of Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra and the French versions of Lucia di Lammermoor and Trovatore.

Artykuł HANDEL, VIVALDI, ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, VERDI, Mariella Devia, Raul Gimenez, Patrizia Ciofi<br/>30th Anniversary of Martina Franca Festival pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Dynamic has been the official record publishing company of the Martina Franca Festival since 1996 and it was quite natural therefore to draw on this source for part of the material included here. The collaboration between Patrizia Ciofi, Dynamic and the Festival has one common denominator, that is to say the rediscovery of operatic masterpieces that are unknown or have fallen into neglect over the years.
Alongside the pieces recorded in Martina Franca, our CD also contains arias taken from three operas which again have remained outside the more traditional repertoire: Il Crociato in Egitto by Meyerbeer, Donizetti’s Pia de‘ Tolomei (both staged at the rebuilt Fenice theatre in Venice) and Massenet’s Chérubin (staged at the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari). The recording of Il Crociato is particularly significant as it is the first modern- day edition of the opera which first won Meyerbeer international repute as an opera writer.
Finally three pieces taken from unpublished recordings: La Fille du Régiment and, most importantly, Traviata with the famous, very difficult scene in the first act which contributed so much to Patrizia Ciofi’s celebrity in the operatic arena.

Strong Points

CD recordings, and to a greater extent her live performances, clearly bring out Patrizia Ciofi’s remarkable ability to project her voice. Though she is not blessed with a particularly „big“ voice, this has always enabled her to overcome the sound barrier of the orchestra with ease and to fill vast theatre spaces like the Roman Theatre in Orange.
The Tuscan singer commands a vast repertoire, ranging from baroque music to the 20th century and boasts great ease and speed in learning, an essential quality for tackling scores that lie beyond the confines of the traditional repertoire.

In a recent interview, Mrs Ciofi has declared that she favours rare operas because they leave her more freedom of interpretation, as there are no comparisons and no tradition to deal with.

In the same interview (interview published on Opéras Data Base Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, June 21st, 2006) Mrs Ciofi has also declared that she uses her voice as a means to find her inner path, and that the theatre is a sort of psychoanalytic treatment.

Artykuł TRAETTA, MEYERBEER, ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, PUCCINI, Patrizia Ciofi<br/>Patrizia Ciofi Live pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Artykuł ROSSINI, Paolo Bordogna, Maria Gortsievskaja, Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano & Trento, Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli<br/>La cambiale di matrimonio pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Furtwängler became one of the leading conductors in Europe, as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922, as principal conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1922–26, and as a major guest conductor of other leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic. He was the leading conductor who remained in Germany during the Second World War, and although not an adherent to the Nazi regime this decision caused controversy for the rest of his life. The extent to which his presence lent prestige to the Third Reich is still debated. Furtwängler’s interpretive art is well documented in commercial and off-air recordings and this has led to him being revered by a large number of musicians, critics and record collectors since his death.

Furtwängler’s conducting style is often contrasted to that of his older contemporary Arturo Toscanini, whose work during this period was also widely documented. Like Toscanini, Furtwängler was a major influence on many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretive style. Unlike Toscanini, Furtwängler sought a weighty, less rhythmically strict, more bass-oriented orchestral sound with more conspicuous use of tempo inflections not indicated in the printed score.“

Artykuł DVORAK, BACH, ROSSINI, BRAHMS, WEBER, Wilhelm Furtwangler<br/>Wilhelm Furtwängler. Chronological edition of the Recordings 1926-1945, Vol.2 (1930-1937) pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Artykuł ROSSINI, VERDI, SMETANA, BIZET, THOMAS, Arturo Toscanini<br/>Gli Anni Della Maturita in America 1929-1946 Volume 1 pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.