Piccolo Coro Mariele Ventre Dell'antoniano Che Paura!

Joyce DiDonato becomes more interesting and more of a complete artist with each performance and recording. Even though we are living in a time of great coloratura mezzos (Bartoli, Genaux), DiDonato still stands out. A video of her Dejanira in Handel's Hercules a few years ago alerted us to the fact that she wasn't just another pretty Rosina and Cenerentola; indeed, she had fine dramatic chops as well. Well, while she remains the Rosina and Cenerentola of choice, with this CD she seems poised to enter the dramatic-Rossini-role sweepstakes as well, heretofore the property of Gencer, Caballé, Sutherland, and in one case, Callas.

Cimarosa was one of a number of very good composers who was attracted to do a stint at the court of Catherine the Great. Apparently, this opera was composed during this visit. Though now known mainly for his opera buffa, especially Il Matrimonia Segreto, Cimarosa composed other types of operas, of which this is one. The libretto tells a snippit of the Anthony and Cleopatra tale, and is no competitor of, say, Shakespeare's magnificent and nuanced account. On the surface the libretto seems to be much in the tradition of eighteenth century opera seria, with dialogue interrupted by musical episodes, mainly arias, illustrating the feelings more or less appropriate to the development of the plot.

A puzzling piece with a tormented history, Rossini's Edipo a Colono for bass, male choir and orchestra is rarely performed today and represents a unicum in the entire repertoire of Italian music. The fruit of an unusual collaboration between librettist Giambattista Giusti and Italy's most sought-after composer at the time, Rossini's astonishing incidental music for Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is brought to life again by Nahuel Di Pierro, the Coro del Teatro della Fortuna and the Filarmonica Gioachino Rossini conducted by Fabrizio Ruggero. Recorded live at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

The present release in our Festspieldokumente Edition is intended to illustrate the close bond between Berio and the Salzburg Festival and features performances of two of his most important works, both of which caused something of a sensation not just in Salzburg but in the wider musical world. Both works - Epifanie, which was written between 1959 and 1961, and Coro, which received its first performance at Donaueschingen in 1976 - were later revised and their original versions were withdrawn. For this reason if for no other, the unrevised versions released here are of particular importance for the performing history and reception of these works.

from the attached booklet

In the famous Preface to Alceste (1767), Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi posited a new direction for opera. They spoke of moving beyond Baroque forms, of striving for a new naturalism in opera. They wanted, in Calzabigi's lovely phrase, to liberate the language of the heart. Taken from the height of this Reform period, the arias on this disc reveal composers exploring and experimenting, at struggle and at play, as they create the new forms that bring to opera the noble simplicity of the Classical era.