Indie Insider Ryan Michele

The opera that few tenors dare sing and which Flórez has made his own throughout his career. Recorded at the 2012 Pesaro Festival, Flórez reprises the role that shot him to stardom in 1996 aged twenty-three. Conducting is the up-and-coming young Italian maestro Michele Mariotti who was praised for his pacing in this long opera. The performance also features the much-admired Olga Peretyatko - a fine stage artist and a consummate performer of Rossini’s fiorature - in the title role.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 - 1832) lived and worked during a transitional period of classical music. A contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, his works remain almost unknown to this day, except for some compositions for the flute.

The CD, as always unreleased, is dedicated to Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the fathers of the Neapolitan School. The Veronese pianist Michele Fontana interprets his splendid and rare “Toccatas”.

Any Italian progressive rock passionate listener knows Locanda delle Fate very well, especially for their 1977 masterpiece "Forse le lucciole non si amano più". Among the main songwriters of the band and of their unmatched first LP there was a then very young Michele Conta, a piano student at the conservatory of Alessandria.

The CD, unreleased as always, is dedicated to a romantic masterpiece, the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 2 in B minor by Antonín Dvořák, played by the Italian virtuoso Miriam Prandi with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under the orders of Michele Spotti. The CD is completed by a rarely heard work, the overture Le Roi d'Ys by Édouard Lalo. Unparalleled live recording of the concert in Katowice, December 8, 2023.