80° Banda Musicale Giuseppe Verdi

Of the 10 selections on this disc of Verdi “discoveries”, four are bona fide world premieres, though in one of those, the Variations for Oboe and Orchestra, only the orchestral part is by Verdi. In the late 1830s clarinetist Giacomo Mori hired the young Verdi to provide an orchestra accompaniment to his variations on the theme “Canto di Virginia”. Here, Verdi displays his early skill at handling large orchestral forces, and the same can be said of his Variations for Piano and Orchestra. However, there are few musical hints in these works–or in the Capriccio for Oboe and Orchestra, the Sinfonia in C, or the Adagio for Trumpet and Orchestra–that suggest the great master Verdi was to become.

This is the third in a series of "Discovery" discs dedicated to unknown or rare works by three famous Italian composers, Rossini, Verdi and now Puccini. Chailly had already recorded some Puccini rarities in the early 80's but this new issue contains quite a few works that never seem to have seen the light of day.

“La forza del destino” (The Force of Fate), premiered in St. Petersburg 1862, is one of Verdi’s most important opera compositions. Its plot is complicated and combines a sequence of interlaced unfortunate strokes of fate. Donna Leonora is the centre of events, together with her brother Don Carlo di Vargas and her lover Don Alvaro. The story was originally set in 18th century Spain, however the French director Nicolas Joël established the action in a slightly later period, in the time of the Empire, the early 19th century.

The Maggio Musicale in Florence is the oldest and one of the most famous music festivals in Italy. When it’s director, Zubin Mehta, celebrated his 70th birthday, the staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff was part of the festivities. The opera was conducted by Zubin Mehta himself and directed by Luca Ronconi.

Giuseppe Verdi's first big Paris hit, Jérusalem is an 1847 rewrite of I Lombardi. Along with a new French text, the action is clarified, characters and scenes are dropped, the tenor role is beefed up, and the obligatory ballet is added, among other changes. It's a more coherent opera in this version, although Italian audiences have clung to I Lombardi, which is still mounted on the world's stages. The Philips team, however, makes a powerful case for this French grand opera story of betrayal, love, war and rescue, penitence, and vindication painted in primary colors on a canvas of Crusaders and villains, rousingly set to effective, if blunt, music.

These CDs have been issued by Decca in their "Legendary Performances" series; the recording was originally issued on the Ace of Diamonds label in 1960. Fritz Reiner belonged to that era of revered authoritarian conductors (including Toscanini, Klemperer and Beecham) who dominated the pre-Second World War orchestral scene. His reputation was achieved very largely through his interpretations of Wagner opera in America and Europe and his orchestral directorships in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Chicago. This recording of the Verdi Requiem came towards the very end of his conducting career and only 3 years before his death.

Verdi’s Requiem is a work of white-hot dramatic intensity, infused with his lifetime of composing opera. His approach to religion is explosive, emotional, and full of temperament and fear, the latter being wonderfully conveyed by López-Cobos in this concert performance.

This marks the final offering from Opera Rara's laudable restoration of BBC broadcasts from the 1970s and '80s of Verdi's first thoughts on specific operas, and it is quite up to the standard of the series. It differs only in being given without an audience, and was broadcast two years after the recording.

The Dresdner Philharmonie, Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden and conductor Daniel Oren present Verdi’s masterpiece La Traviata, together with a stellar cast including René Barbera as Alfredo, Lester Lynch as Germont, and world star soprano Lisette Oropesa as Violetta. Verdi’s opera from 1853 was revolutionary in the sense that it presented a subject of its own time, rather than the usual historically remote stories. Interestingly enough, this tragic story of a woman sacrificing her love to save the honour of her beloved’s family still feels as fresh and topical as ever before, explaining its unrelenting popularity. "La Traviata is an endless outpour of memorable melodies with a gripping dramatic pace, as well as a tale that is both heartrending and provocative.