Emilio Jannings

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi owes much of his fame to La Serva Padrona, a comic intermezzo designed to be performed between the acts of an opera seria. In it, a maid and a servant conspire to convince their master to marry the maid. When Aldo Tarabella was asked to direct a performance of Pergolesi’s intermezzo, he wanted to do more than simply pair it with one of the operas it traditionally sits alongside – so he composed Il Servo Padrone, a companion piece, and a kind of sequel, to Pergolesi’s original.

With The Melancholic Bach, Emilio Moreno delves pensively and wistfully into the realms of the music that Bach might have written for the viola. This new Glossa album is in fact, by turns, a reflective but also an uplifting treat from beginning to end. Moreno, of course, is a violinist as well as a violist: with the former he has been directing his ensembles La Real Cámara and El Concierto Español, whilst with the latter instrument for many years he has been leading the violas of Orchestra of the 18th Century.

Emílio Santiago, an excellent interpreter of sambas and other swinging musics, finally found his way to a massive popularity as a romantic singer: the Aquarelas Brasileiras project, coordinated by Roberto Menescal at Som Livre, brought Santiago seven LPs, national and international projection, and the sum of four million copies sold, along with six platinum records, seven gold ones, and the Sharp prize.