Alexandrina

Au premier abord, le destin qui se dessine semble inhabituel, mais une exploration plus profonde révèle des interrogations métaphysiques enracinées dans le paranormal et l’ésotérisme. Les trois parties du roman dévoilent l’évolution d’un individu dont le changement de personnalité a un lien avec ses trois prénoms. Une énigme plane : quelle est sa véritable identité ? La réponse à cette question promet d’être assurément surprenante. …

In spite of doom-laden predictions a few years ago that the age of recorded opera was dead, fascinating new discs are being produced, often of obscure rarities – and it would be hard to be more obscure than the operas of Domènec Terradellas, who worked for a while at the King's theatre in London in the mid-1740s but whose music has completely disappeared from view. On the evidence of this lavish and dramatic opera seria for Rome and Barcelona, he was alive to the most modern trends in virtuosic vocal writing without ever quite achieving depth of feeling. Juan Bautista Otero's committed revival with his sparkling Barcelona orchestra includes some dazzling singing, with the honours shared between Alexandrina Pendatchanska's correctvicious Nitocri and Sunhae Im in the title role.

A lyric tragedy in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Roberto Devereux was composed in the summer of 1837, the year, according to biographers, in which Donizetti seems to have suffered most, having lost his third son and his adored wife Virginia Vasselli. The opera made its debut at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples on October 28th in the same year and was a great success. The rehearsals of the original performance were postponed for a month due to censorship of the decapitation scene of the leading actor.

From its foreboding prelude to its melodramatic conclusion, 'Parisina' is one tuneful delight after ano- ther….Pendatchanska is a youthful protagonist. She has a warm voice of almost mezzo-soprano coloring….Hers is a major vocal talent…

Too much ink has been spilt on this Clemenza di Tito supposedly composed in 18 days and which, so it is said, was conspicuously out of step with the times in 1791 . . . The interpretation offered here by René Jacobs is nothing short of revolutionary. Not only does it rehabilitate the original score in its entirety, notably the recitatives: it also restores the powerfully classical inspiration so essential to opera seria. In the final years of the Enlightenment, this was still the favoured genre of the educated man, and it is sheer delight to hear the language of Metastasio beginning to sing once more. As if magic, La clemenza suddenly springs to new and exciting life.

After the success of Così fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro, René Jacobs' CD recording of this centrepiece of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy offered us his reflections on Classical opera and garnered serious acclaim worldwide. Performed at the Innsbruck festival in August 2006 and filmed in Baden-Baden, this production is nourished by his thoughts on Don Giovanni as taboo-breaker but still respects Mozart's intentions as closely as possible.
In the documentary Looking for Don Giovanni, the director Nayo Titzin follows the creation of this production in the search for musical truth.