Caballé

Barcelona is the second solo album recorded by Freddie Mercury, frontman of popular British rock band Queen, and operatic soprano Montserrat Caballé. Released in 1988. It is the second and final solo album recorded by Mercury…

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.

The performance given on 21 March 1967 at Carnegie Hall in New York stems from the now outmoded tradition of casting baritones and basses in the castrato roles, and uses a special concert arrangement. Not only are several cuts made to the score, but the order of the arias is changed and the recitatives are heavily truncated and provided with new English texts, and given not to one of the characters but to a 'narrator'.

The Naples years, 1815 to 1822, are at the very centre of Rossini's creative life. It is here that genius—''I had facility and lots of instinct''—was put to school. And firmly so: the serious masterpieces of the Naples years take as their subjects the Bible and Shakespeare, Scott and Racine, Tasso and English historical romance.

If today no one questions the greatness of Mozart, the most famous composer in Europe at the end of the 18th century was probably Antonio Salieri. For many years court composer of the Austrian Emperor, Salieri wrote an enormous amount of music, some of the best of which remains that composed for the theatre. Les Danaïdes was premièred at Paris’s Opéra on 26th April 1784 and met with a triumphant success. The present recording, qualitatively very high also from a technical point of view, dates from 1983 and features an extraordinary Montserrat Caballé in great vocal form. Gianluigi Gelmetti conducts the renowned RAI Orchestra.

Cançó d'amor i de guerra (en español «Canción de amor y de guerra») es una zarzuela en catalán escrita en dos actos, que se estrenó el 16 de abril de 1926 en el Teatre Nou de Barcelona. Se convirtió en el primer gran éxito del compositor valenciano Rafael Martínez Valls, con texto de Lluís Capdevila y Víctor Mora.