Rossini

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.

Countertenor performances of 19th century opera are a historical and, ultimately, true novelty. This said, for those who love the sound of the countertenor voice and want to give it a try, there are several factors that recommend this release by countertenor Franco Fagioli, with the small orchestra Armonia Atenea under George Petrou. First is that castrati were still around in Rossini's time, although on the decline, and the composer was reportedly intrigued by their voices. Second, Fagioli, unlike the vast majority of other countertenors, studied bel canto singing rather than Baroque repertory exclusively, and a certain distance present in the work of other countertenors is absent here. And third, and most important, is Fagioli's voice itself. Of the countertenors active today, he's the one with the range, the power, the attitude to make you suspend disbelief and think for a moment that you're actually listening to a castrato. He enters into the various Rossini roles represented on this recording, several of which were mezzo-soprano "pants" roles; this adds to the layers of identity-switching happening, and the parts hit Fagioli's vocal sweet spot. A bonus is that several of these are from Rossini opere serie that are little played or recorded.

The composition of Semiramide took approximately four months, which is an unusually long span for Rossini. The premiere took place on the 3rd of February of 1823. The opera’s libretto is based on Voltaire’s drama Sémiramis, written by the French philosopher and scholar in 1748. For some respects a conclusive work, Semiramide contains, like all masterpieces, traditional elements alongside innovative ones. Rossini accentuated the role of the orchestra, compared to his previous serious operas: the Sinfonia, the longest and most elaborate Rossini ever wrote, immediately suggests Rossini endeavoured to give the instrumental part a more important role yet than usual. At the same time, the bel canto dimension is probably more developed than in any other previous Rossinian serious opera.

Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra, marked Rossini's first venture into the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, the most glamorous theatre of that time. The famous impresario Domenico Barbaja, had carefully prepared the launching of the rwenty-three year old composer -with sumptuous scenery, designed by a celebrated archirect, Antonio Niccolini, and engaging a firsr-rate cast. Foremost was Isabella Colbran, who later became Rossini's wife; and tenors — Andrea Nozzari and Manuel Garcia.

Rossini's wonderful comic opera, written when he was only 21, to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, was first performed in Venice on May 22, 1813. Since then audiences have thrilled to such mezzos as Teresa Berganza and Marilyn Horne, in the title role of Isabella, the Italian girl who torments the Pasha into loving his own wife. Here rising star Christianne Stotijn, a BBC Young Generation Artist, moves into new repertoire in this production from Aix-en Provence, 2006, conducted by Rossini specialist Riccarda Frizza and directed by Toni Servillo.

Filmed at New York's Metropolitan Opera, John Copley's production of Rossini's last, longest and most elaborate work for the Italian stage brings together what many consider the definitive contemporary cast, led by Marilyn Horne and June Anderson. Semiramide, a strong and melodious work, is one of Rossini's greatest dramatic operas, offering a fine challenge to the superb contralto and soprano bel canto singing of Ms. Horne and Ms. Anderson.

Le Comte Ory tells the story of a libidinous and cunning nobleman who disguises himself first as a hermit and then as a nun ("Sister Colette") in order to gain access to the virtuous Countess Adele, whose brother is away at the Crusades. The 2011 Met production was directed by the Tony Award-winning Broadway director Bartlett Sher, who in recent years has also staged Il barbiere di Siviglia and Les Contes d'Hoffman for the Met. Sher presented the action as an opera within an opera, updated the action by a few centuries and giving the costume designer, Catherine Zuber, the opportunity to create some particularly extravagant headgear.

For the last two decades or so the works of the composer from Pesaro have no longer revealed very many mysteries to the historian and the opera lover, for even Rossini’s rarer works are now regularly performed. A few operas, however, still remained in the archives, among them Ivanhoé, a famous pastiche conceived by Rossini in collaboration with Pacini, his Parisian publisher. Its revival allows us to fill in a chapter of the history of music which had remained incomplete and above all to get to know the work with which Rossini introduced himself to Parisian audiences, before offering them Le Siège de Corinthe. The composer from Pesaro, indeed, had too great a sense of publicity to feed the critics’ curiosity, lightheartedly, a new opera.