80° Banda Musicale Giuseppe Verdi

This set, issued to mark the 75th anniversary of Fricsay's birth, dates from late 1960 when the conductor was already suffering from the disease that killed him. It was to prove to be his final performance of the piece. I don't think it's fanciful to feel in this intensely dramatic and immediate reading that the conductor fully realized his own mortality. At any rate it's an interpretation of tragic force and lyrical beauty that eclipses most of its rivals. Fricsay was here working with a choir and orchestra entirely devoted to him and, as in the Shaw performance on Telarc/Conifer such familiarity pays huge dividends in terms of unified thought. Then, the circumstances of a live occasion seem to infect everyone concerned with a feeling of urgency.

This selection of scenes and arias, all very familiar items, is distinguished by the imaginative accompaniments under Evelino Pidò. …here we have one of the great opera personalities of our time - it's a lovely voice, used with a formidable technique.

This religious masterpiece, composed in memory of the great Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), has themes even more cosmic than any in Verdi's other operas: life and death, heaven and hell, the Christian vision of humanity's redemption, the end of the world, and the last judgment. Verdi's music rises to the tremendous demands of this subject matter; it is music of grandeur, guilt, terror, and consolation, with a breadth of vision and an intensity of feeling unique in the composer's work and in religious music. John Eliot Gardiner's is the first recording made with period instruments, a kind of performance that some musiclovers still dismiss as dilettantism, more concerned with musicological correctness than feeling and communication. Gardiner's powerful performance blows such objections away, and this recording takes a rightful place alongside the best modern instrument versions.

–Joe McLellan (Amazon)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata (2001) [DVD9] {Decca}
DVD9 -> 6.86 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 4:3 | Italiano (Dolby AC3, 6 ch / LinearPCM, 2 ch) | ISO Image | ~ 135 min
Subtitles: French, English, Spanish, German, Chinese
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 77 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2001 Decca / BBC | 071 431-9
Classical / Opera

Angela Gheorghiu is the definitive Violetta of her generation, the standard-setter against whom all other exponents of this role must be judged for the foreseeable future. Her affinity for Verdi's fragile, gentle-hearted courtesan is rooted in a fine balance of acting and singing skills. She looks right, her body language is eloquent without overstatement, and her voice is limpid, expressive, open to a variety of subtle shadings and used gracefully and intelligently. For this, her first Traviata, Covent Garden put together a production in 1994 that is solid and straightforward but otherwise unspectacular–a fairly subdued background against which her performance stands out all the more clearly.

Reissue of the Berlin-based Artemis Quartett performing string quartets composed by Brahms and verdi. The Artemis Quartett was founded in 1989 at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, and is recognised today as one of the foremost quartets in the world. Their mentors include Walter Levin, Alfred Brendel, the Alban Berg Quartet, the Juilliard Quartet and the Emerson Quartet.

Roberto Valentini (1671–1747) was born in Leicester and most likely remained in England until his 21st birthday, when he emigrated to Italy, settling in Rome. A multi-instrumentalist, Valentini began his career in the papal city as a violinist, cellist and oboist, but is best known as a composer for the recorder, an instrument at which he excelled as a performer.