Mélanie Bonis was one of the most interesting and prolific composers in France in the 20 years before the First World War. Married in 1883 to the industrialist Édouard Domange, her duties as a housewife and mother distanced her from Parisian musical life yet did not consign her to silence: following her studies at the Paris Conservatoire she had mélodies and piano pieces issued by various publishers.
Chenier was the role with which Del Monaco changed singing by introducing a technique taught by Arturo Melocchi, based on singing with the larynx kept low, at the bottom of the neck. It gave Del Monaco a powerful, brassy, thick, muscular, penetrating sound.
In March 1949 Del Monaco sang Chenier at La Scala. His performances excited the public and marked a changing of the guard. Gigli sang his final Scala performances in 1947, as Chenier. His object and that of the tenors he influenced was, above all, to caress you. Del Monaco's was to excite you.
Portraits is a new series from Unexplained Sounds Group focusing on electronic and electro-acoustic music composers. Each release creates a 'portrait' of three musicians by showcasing representative pieces of their recent musical journeys, serving as a guide for further listening and a means of exploring their work. This first volume is dedicated to three Italian musicians: Gabriele Gasparotti, Daniele Ciullini, and Mario Lino Stancati. Gasparotti and Stancati are among the most talented emerging musicians on the Italian experimental scene, while Ciullini is a veteran of the post-industrial underground who, after a very long silence, returned to music in 2012.
Mario Panseri was an Italian composer and musician born in Rome in 1945. His first self-titled album was released on RCA in 1970. In 1973 came the album "Adolescenza", a suite of music crossing into the progressive realm inspired by a novel called Agostino by writer Alberto Moravia. The critically acclaimed album Adolescenza is a moving piece of music in the soft-prog field, music that will appeal to fans of the beautiful side of RPI rather than the difficult side. Gentle vocals, flute, beautifully played piano and acoustic guitars sparkle throughout. Occasionally a band sound comes in with some electric lead guitar and the bass/drumming will be very tight and well mixed.
The art of Shakespeare was a recurring fascination for Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In addition to two operas and numerous settings of songs and sonnets, he wrote 11 Shakespeare Overtures which here receive their first ever complete recording. Deploying all the resources of the symphony orchestra, these are some of the twentieth century's most dramatic and tuneful orchestral works, spectacular evocations of Shakespeare's greatest plays.
Le astuzie femminili (Feminine wiles) is an dramma giocoso in four acts by Domenico Cimarosa with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Palomba (it). The opera buffa premiered at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples, Italy, on 26 August 1794. The opera was subsequently performed in Barcelona in 1795, Lisbon in 1797, Vienna in 1799, Paris in 1802, and London in 1804, remaining popular during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Although not performed often today, the opera is still occasionally revived and a number of recordings have been made.