Barbier de Séville

Judicaël Perroy has become widely known as an extraordinary virtuoso classical guitarist and musician with several prizes to his credit. In 1997 he captured the prestigious first prize of the 15th Guitar Foundation of America International Competition and Convention awarding him tour of the United States and Canada with more than sixty concerts and master classes. In between his North American tour that year, he gave several concerts in France where his performances were broadcast live on France-Musique followed by extensive recital tours throughout the world.

Victoria de los Angeles was one of the finest lyric sopranos in the decades after World War II. She was born Victoria Gómez Cima, and learned to sing and play piano and guitar while still in school. She entered the Conservatorio de Liceo in Barcelona to study piano and singing, completing the six-year program in three and graduating with full honors. Her membership in the Conservatory's Ars Musicae gave her wide exposure to the art song repertory and Baroque and Renaissance music.

Très jeune, Giovanni Paisiello connut un grand succès, aussi bien en Italie qu'à l'étranger. Il est surtout réputé pour son Barbier de Séville (1782) d'après Beaumarchais, déjà, qui influença bien évidemment Rossini et aussi Mozart pour ses Noces de Figaro. Ludwig van Beethoven lui-même utilisera une aria La Molinara "Nel cor piu non mi sento" pour composer une de ses oeuvres. Un autre opéra, créé en 1789, connut un renouveau récent grâce à la superbe interprétation du rôle-titre par Cecilia Bartoli : Nina, ossia la Pazza per Amore.

After her studies at the « Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique », passing with a unanimous First Prize in Vlado Perlemuter’sclass, Danielle Laval fell under Arthur Rubinstein’s notice. He was dazzled by her virtuosity and her deep sensitivity.

Sigismond Thalberg was a Wunderkind and one of the most accomplished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century, who impressed many including Mendelssohn, Chopin and Clara Schumann. He was also a composer focused on fantasies on operatic themes which was a genre in its own right, aiming to delight audiences with the familiarity of known melodies, the ingenuity of the transcriptions and their spectacular virtuosity. The collection also features the early Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 5 that similarly uses embellished operatic melodies.