Daniele

Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French-language libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller. This new production at the Teatro alla Scala was recorded live on opening night, December 7, 2008. The cast is lead by Ferruccio Furlanetto, Stuart Neill, Dalibor Jenis and Dolora Zajick. Danielle Gatti conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala. The opera is presented in a four-act Italian-language version that Verdi prepared for the 1884 La Scala premiere. Includes 'behind the scenes' bonus material.

On Friday 3 March, Opera Rara releases Bellini’s first opera Adelson e Salvini, written in 1825 while the composer was still a student at the Naples Conservatory. Marking the company’s third complete opera recording by Bellini, following La straniera and Il Pirata, up and coming bel canto specialist Daniele Rustioni leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their fourth collaboration with Opera Rara. Daniela Barcellona sings the role of Nelly and is joined by Enea Scala as Salvini and Simone Alberghini as Lord Adelson.

Stefan Herheim's idea of staging a midsummer night's dream as a fairytale narrative is enchanting and with this admirably matched ensemble of excellent singer-players, all of whom bring sharp contours to their roles, and the brilliant details of characterization make each scene an experience to cherish. This unbelievably lavish and absolutely splendid stage set radiates youthful charm and conjures up a flood of incomparable images.

Born in 1804, Louise Farrenc became a professional-standard pianist while still a teenager, and later music teacher to the household of the Duke d’Orléans and from 1842 professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire. Her substantial legacy of composition was largely forgotten after her death in 1875 and is only now being revived. She wrote mainly in the field of orchestral and chamber music: ‘I would defy anyone,’ says the pianist Linda Di Carlo in a personal introduction to this new recording of Farrenc’s music for violin and piano, ‘to cast aspersions on the chamber music in particular on the grounds of her gender.’

Portraits is a new series from Unexplained Sounds Group focusing on electronic and electro-acoustic music composers. Each release creates a 'portrait' of three musicians by showcasing representative pieces of their recent musical journeys, serving as a guide for further listening and a means of exploring their work. This first volume is dedicated to three Italian musicians: Gabriele Gasparotti, Daniele Ciullini, and Mario Lino Stancati. Gasparotti and Stancati are among the most talented emerging musicians on the Italian experimental scene, while Ciullini is a veteran of the post-industrial underground who, after a very long silence, returned to music in 2012.

This recording, from friends and collaborators Federico Bracalente and Daniele di Bonaventura, stems from an idea they had almost 10 years ago: to merge the sounds of their respective instruments, the cello and the bandoneon, into a single sound.