Berlioz Carnevale Romano

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir, Choeur du Théâtre du Châtelet and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in a landmark recording of Berlioz's towering opera. A tragic tale of love and fate, war and peace and the intertwined destinies of two cities, the opera is based on Virgil's imperial vision of the founding myth of Rome. The American tenor Gregory Kunde as Aeneas and the Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci lead an international cast in this stunning production.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime - he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwangler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part ofthe music scene.

Les Troyens is a tour de force that ranges from fiery military marches to intense choruses, passionate soliloquies and the lyrical love duets of Dido and Aeneas. For Hector Berlioz, librettist and composer, the opera became the work of decades and the passion of a lifetime, the culmination of his literary love affair with Virgil's Aeneid and with two tragic heroines, Cassandra and Dido. David McVicar's staging is on an enormous scale, assembling one of the largest casts ever seen at Covent Garden. The sweeping theme of the rise and fall of empires runs throughout Les Troyens, along with moving meditations on love and honour.

There are some works which seem to be suspended in their time. La Damnation de Faust is a visionary project which took decades to become known as a chef-d’oeuvre, firstly in the rest of Europe and then in France, but posthumously. Today it is an emblematic work, built up of anthological pieces fro orchestra and choir and soloists’ aits which remain in our memories. Its interpretation by François-Xavier Roth in concert version enables us to hear this work with force and the audacity of early Berlioz: sombre but brilliant.

This disc demonstrates that Cecilia Bartoli is as much at home in the world of the salon recital as she is in the swoops and vocal acrobatics of the Rossini coloratura repertoire. Her voice is in fine form here- -rich, resonant and full of surprising colours–but her talent for characterisation is even finer. In Pauline Viardot's "Havanaise" for example, she perfectly captures the flirtatious, almost desperate pleadings of a Spanish sailor for a French girl to accompany him on his boat –and then switches easily to the more capricious and teasing reply of the girl in French. In a number by Ravel (sung in Yiddish and Hebrew) she brings a rather elliptical exchange between a father and his young son to life with exquisite tenderness, and finds yet another voice out of her repertoire to characterise the little boy.

Masters of Classical Music is an informative and captivating guide to twenty of the most important works in music history. Outtakes from the original scores within the documentaries, assist the viewer by making it easier to follow the music and to overall comprehend the structure of the works. The viewer will travel back in time to experience the birth places of these compositions and will thereby gain insight into the lives of the composers whilst receiving a thorough introduction to the works.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir, Choeur du Théâtre du Châtelet and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in a landmark recording of Berlioz's towering opera. A tragic tale of love and fate, war and peace and the intertwined destinies of two cities, the opera is based on Virgil's imperial vision of the founding myth of Rome. The American tenor Gregory Kunde as Aeneas and the Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci lead an international cast in this stunning production.

‘A mix of futurism à la Metropolis, fantasy à la Batman and quotes from Piranesi’s Carceri, juxtaposed in the form of photo montages, enhanced with…robots, a helicopter, a shark and the winged vehicle of a pop star Pope’, was how the Neue Zürcher Zeitung described this astonishing Salzburg Festival production of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini. The high-calibre cast, headed by Burkhard Fritz as the temperamental Renaissance artist and the 26-year-old Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska as Teresa, the woman with whom he tries to elope, is conducted by Valery Gergiev who ‘pulled out all the stops. He whips the Vienna Philharmonic into a delirium similar to that which possibly took hold of the composer’. (Der Standard) This is French grand opera at its fast-paced and spectacularly-staged best.