Bruno Nardo Metodologia

This production of Rossinis Il Barbiere di Siviglia, staged by Coline Serreau, was presented at the Opera Bastille for the first time in 2002. It was the successful film directors second opera project. The international cast features one of the leading lyric mezzos working in the Rossini repertoire American Joyce DiDonato sings Rosina. German-Italian star tenor Roberto Saccà takes the role of her seducer, Count Almaviva and Czech baritone Dalibor Jenis, currently one of the best Figaros available, completes the leading trio. Delicate Spanish bass baritone Carlos Chausson playing Bartolo, Rosinas guardian, and Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson as the curious music teacher Basilio provide suitable buffo material for the operas various comic scenes.

Cecilia Bartoli both thrills the senses and touches the heart in Rossini's sparkling comedy, her feisty Cinderella combining rebelliousness with pathos, vocal beauty with stunning virtuosity. She and a star cast of Italian principals captivate the Houston audience in this exuberant Bologna production, recorded live in November 1995.

In his autobiography Opera Years Rolf Liebermann wrote: “Of all the film versions of operas in which I was involved, my favourite has always been Wozzeck, mainly because the interpreters and location were so convincingly authentic.” And truly, this film adoption of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, recorded in 1970, fascinated with its constantly developing tension from the first tone to the last accord. Indeed the cast could not has been any better than in this production: Toni Blankenheim as Wozzeck and Sena Jurinac as Marie. Clearly and precisely in picture and speech, this film can truly be considered a classic and is now available on DVD for the first time.

This gripping and visually stunning film has been universally hailed as one of the most satisfying of all versions of opera on celluloid. Director Gianfranco de Bosio has given an extraordinary dimension of realism to this story of love, deception and murder by shooting it all in the original Roman location. Using diverse cinematic tricks and imaginative camerawork, this opera film is much more a visual interpretation of Puccini’s music than a theatre piece filmed in original settings.

Founded and directed by the Franco-Hungarian conductor Bruno Kele-Baujard, the Ensemble Zene has made a specialty of daring and off-the-beaten path programs. Its evocative name - "zene" is the Hungarian word for "music" - inclines it towards the Magyar-speaking repertoire, and it is therefore quite natural that it devotes its second recording to the a cappella works of Bartók, Kodály and Ligeti, whose centenary is being celebrated in 2023.

With this disc, German label Neos takes on an enterprising project, Bruno Maderna: Complete Works for Orchestra, Vol. 1. Outside of Italy, Maderna is recognized as a significant figure within Italian avant-garde associated with Nono and Berio, but his music is not is well known as theirs, apart from his fanciful and hip Serenata per un satellite (1969). Within Italy, Maderna is remembered as one of her greatest conductors, although he is worshipped to such extent in that role that his compositions have been overlooked. Such a series, hopefully, would serve to redress the balance; Maderna's experience as conductor helped inform his compositions, and by having access to his orchestral pieces one might be able to determine to what extent his composing impacted his work as a conductor.

Italian opera in Japan got started in the mid-1950s. The series title was Lirica Italiana, and back in the early days the international stars who appeared would have had to make at least six stops when flying out from Europe. Despite this exhausting journey the productions, mounted with the help of Japanese orchestras and choruses, were often legendary, and they are now being issued on DVD by the admirable American company Video Artists International.