Cenerentola Blu Ray

“This is a truly marvellous performance on all counts - staging, conducting and singing. Sir Peter Hall… manages to breathe new life into the routines without ever slipping over into farce, while exploring each character in some depth. The sense of an ensemble on top form is underlined by Vladimir Jurowski's exacting, pellucid and vivid interpretation, so that the music, like the libretto, is presented afresh. The superb cast has no weaknesses and many strengths, Ruxandra Donose may not have the idiomatic Italian timbre of Cecilia Bartoli… but she is the more consistent singer, using her wide range and rich tone to startling effect. Her youthful (24-year-old) partner, Russian tenor Maxim Mironov, proves an ideal Ramiro, fluent in every aspect of his role and delivering its appreciable demands in a light, pliant voice of delicate beauty.”(Gramophone)

Rossini’s classic take on the “Cinderella” story is a comic opera full of thrilling arias, beautiful melodies and lots of laughs. The Metropolitan’s charming production was revived in 2009 for star mezzo, Elīna Garanča. The mezzo triumphs in the role and dispatches vocal fireworks throughout. She is joined by American tenor Lawrence Brownlee and a cast of bel canto singers.

Callas’s only operatic appearances in Germany were Lucia di Lammermoor, with Karajan conducting, in Berlin in 1955, and La sonnambula in Cologne in 1957, but in both 1959 and 1962 she made concert tours of the country, visiting Hamburg twice. The video recordings of her concerts in the city showcase her in a dazzling variety of Italian and French repertoire for both soprano and mezzo-soprano: three consisting Verdi roles (Lady Macbeth, Elvira from Ernani and Elisabetta from Don Carlo); Imogene from Bellini’s Il pirate; Giulia from La vestale; Chimѐne from Massenet’s Le Cid; Verdi’s most explosively dramatic aria for mezzo-soprano—Eboli’s ‘O don fatale’ from Don Carlo; Carmen’s seductive Habanera and Séguedille and, from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Angelina’s final rondo, which magically combines modest charm and sparkling virtuosity.

Early Rossini has something buoyant, vibrant, youthful about it – even when it is a “dramma per musica” such as “Sigismondo”, a dark swirl of an opera revolving around a mad king and his delusions, his wife who is allegedly dead but very much alive, the fate of Poland and much more. Premiered in 1814 but rarely played thereafter, the work deserves to be resurrected, if only for its many beautiful and original arias and ensembles, some of which were such brilliant little masterpieces that he reused them in his later successes such as “Il turco in Italia”, “La Cenerentola” and “Il barbiere di Siviglia”. The work was given its first performance from the critical new edition at the 2010 Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. The press hailed the production as a “perfect symbiosis of music and stage work” that yields “truly brilliant theater”.

Here's the complete concert that brought together four of the world's most exciting singers, performing beloved arias, duets, and quartets. Anna Netrebko and Ellna Garanca appear together for the first time on stage in this dazzling gala for a quartet of "superstars" (Badische Zeitung). "Bel canto at its most beautiful and most ravishing" (Badische Neueste Nachrichten).