Torino Plants

The concert works of film composer Nino Rota, best known for his scores for the Godfather trilogy and for a long series of films by Federico Fellini, have increasingly often been finding space in classical recording catalogs. Here's a nicely recorded rendering of Rota's two numbered symphonies, virtually unknown until perhaps the turn of the century, issued on a major British label, Chandos. Both are attractive pieces that could be profitably programmed by any symphony orchestra. They were composed in the 1930s, when Rota was as much American as Italian; he won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and studied there for several years. Both reflect the French neo-classic trends that flourished in the U.S. between the wars, and, although Rota sounds nothing like Copland, you do experience in these works an evocation of what annotator Michele Rene Mannucci aptly calls "landscape in sound." Each work is in the conventional four movements, with a slow movement placed second in the Symphony No. 1 in G major and third in the Symphony No. 2 in F major.

Gran Torino is a band of four Italian gentlemen who in the past enjoyed playing the classic masters of rock and hard rock, such as Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, and then started to approach the sophisticated and enchanting world of progressive. So the band decided to start a new ambitious project, which was born with the will to create a product that could resume the refinement and the technicality of the great progressive bands of the 70’s, with the power and the originality of their own rock’n’roll.

World-renowned tenor Roberto Alagna stars in the most passionate of French operas, conveying the young poet’s journey from naïve hope to the agony of the much-loved aria ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?’ and the shattering final tragedy.
Massenet’s glorious opera, based on a novel by Goethe, is regularly performed all over the world and its central role is one in which Roberto Alagna has been celebrated for more than a decade. The role of Werther’s beloved Charlotte is sung by American mezzo Kate Aldrich (an acclaimed Carmen at ‘The Met’), who has sung the role to critical acclaim in Europe and Japan. Filmed live at the Teatro Regio in Turin, the powerful stage production is the work of another member of the Alagna family – the tenor’s younger brother, David.

Here in Orange, France, on a windswept, night in 1974, they had greatness itself. Pierre Jourdan's film of the event is a priceless document, first of all, in the history of the opera. Stage-settings of Norma are usually hopeless: an offence to the eye, a chafing confutation of the spirit by gross matter. The ancient Roman amphitheatre is at any rate worthy and appropriate, and the Mistral, which threatened to close down the whole show and turn away an audience estimated at 10,000, adds a fine reminder of the power of Nature as it sets the druidical robes billowing and attacks the microphones.