Nozze Maurizio

Since (at least) the Greeks, humorists, moralists and satirists have been fascinated by the artistic game of inversion, of “the world turned upside down”, which is how one might translate the title of this largely forgotten opera by Salieri. It here gets its first ever recording. Present an image of society turned on its head and you enable your audience/reader/viewer to see the actual way of things in a whole new light. Your aims may be to expose the follies and errors of the actual, to propose a better way of doing things, or simply to get some laughs from the resulting improbabilities and surprises - or, of course, a mixture of all these motives and more.

Containing six discs and 111 tracks, Deutsche Grammophon's 111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon is a sprawling collection of single items drawn largely from its enormous 55 CD 111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon The Collector's Edition…

For more than twenty-five years now the popular image of Antonio Salieri has taken on the resentful personality given to him in the film Amadeus (1984). Salieri indeed has been waiting for nearly two hundred years to have his name cleared, since the suspicion that he eliminated Mozart started to circulate in the 1820s. What is absolutely certain is that Salieri neither kiIIed Mozart nor did anything to speed his demise on. Listening to Salieri's music, and in this particular instance, to Il mondo aIIa rovescia, an opera which has been exhumed after over two hundred years', we immediately find analogies with the language of Mozart's operas on librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte. For over thirty years, Salieri was one of the foremost figures of theatrical life in Vienna, and clearly could not have been if he had not been endowed with an authentic, original musical talent. In reality, the problem of the reciprocal influence of Mozart and Salieri stiII needs to be clarified to a great extent.

Given the depth, range and quality of the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue, it’s hardly been difficult to put together another anthology of great recordings and great artists. The structure is as before – here are 53 original albums (including three double-sets), featuring the great names of Deutsche Grammophon’s recording history, presented, once more, in alphabetical order of artist. Claudio Abbado leads off with a complete Carmen and Krystian Zimerman rounds off with his memorable account of the Chopin Ballades.

Written by Giovanni Paisiello during his lengthy stay at the court of Catherine II, the opera was an enormous success and was still very famous at the time of the composer’s death the same year of Rossini’s Barbiere debut, strongly opposed by many who considered the work of the upstart to be a sacrilegious attack on the memory of Paisiello. The reductive transposition for libretto – probably the work of Giuseppe Petrosellini – of the play “Le barbier de Séville” by Pierre-Augustin de Beaurmarchais, successfully presented in St. Petersburg a few years earlier, determined the international success of the subject: the second text of the French trilogy gained the attention of Mozart, who proposed it to Da Ponte for Le nozze di Figaro (1786)…

Limited edition 100 CD box set on the premiere classical label Deutsch Grammophon. Subtitled from Gregorian Chant to Gorecki. For some it will be the ultimate reference tool. For others a big place to start on something they always wanted to know about. Either way, the idea is to present a comprehensive history of Classical Music from its origins to the present day, covering all periods, including all major composers.

This compilation of selections from a number of Cecilia Bartoli's recitals from between 1994 and 2009, plus several newly released tracks, is unified by the theme of sighs, "sospiri." The music expresses a variety of moods, including sighs of resignation, relaxation, grief, ecstasy, and romantic pleasure. The first of the two CDs is devoted to secular music, much of it operatic, and the second to sacred pieces. The album should offer few surprises to anyone who has a preconceived opinion of Bartoli's vocalism.