Diego Dusaro

“Refractio” is a project that generates a dialogue between the performance of a work and an improvisation in response. Just as light transforms its appearance when it changes medium, the musical work is also diluted within the improvisation, which in a certain way deconstructs what the listener has just heard and builds it up again using a contemporary language.

In his latest Decca DVD release, bel canto star Juan Diego Flórez undertakes the role of Elvino in Bellini’s romantic drama, playing opposite the mercurial French soprano, Natalie Dessay, in the Met’s striking, modern-dress production from March 2009. Bellini’s romantic opera La Sonnambula (1831), hinges on the love and misunderstanding between Elvino and Amina (the ‘sleepwalker’ of the title). Discovered in the bedroom of Rodolfo, Amina is assumed to have been unfaithful, and Elvino cancels their wedding. But in the dramatic final scene, he witnesses Amina sleepwalking, understands her innocence, and all ends happily. Mary Zimmerman’s production plays with the dual realities of a rehearsal of the opera and a performance of the opera itself.

On her second PENTATONE album Maria & Maddalena, star soprano Francesca Aspromonte explores the Two Marys in oratorios by Lulier, Bononcini, Leopoldo I d’Asburgo, Caldara, Perti, Handel and Scarlatti, partly in new editions, documenting the extremely bloom of the genre in the years around 1700. She performs these works together with violinist Boris Begelman as well as the seasoned players of I Barocchisti under the baton of the eminent Diego Fasolis. Traditionally seen as two feminine opposites, with far-reaching moral implications, Aspromonte brings the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene together as two beautiful and strong women who turned their lives upside down by making the choice to dedicate themselves completely to an ideal. Her interpretation of these exceptional pieces explores all the emotions of the Two Marys, constituting a fascinating and profoundly moving portrait of what it means to be a woman.

Diego's Umbrella is an American gypsy rock band consisting six male members from San Francisco, California, celebrated as San Francisco's Ambassadors of Gypsy Rock. The members of the group include Tyson Maulhardt a.k.a. the Facehorn, Vaughn Lindstrom a.k.a. the Juergistador, Jason Kleinberg a.k.a. the Gypsy, Benjamin Leon a.k.a. the Token Ecuadorian, Jake Wood a.k.a. the Samurai, and Red Cup a.k.a. the Animal. Diego's Umbrella describes their own music as "a blend of eastern European gypsy traditional stuff, Spanish flamenco, polka/ska rhythms, and good ol' pop and rock from the west. It sounds schizo to describe it, but it all comes together as dance music. It's a show for getting drunk, sweaty and making bad decisions." Their matching outfits are homemade, and they are known to perform shows without set lists.

Diego's Umbrella is an American gypsy rock band consisting six male members from San Francisco, California, celebrated as San Francisco's Ambassadors of Gypsy Rock. The members of the group include Tyson Maulhardt a.k.a. the Facehorn, Vaughn Lindstrom a.k.a. the Juergistador, Jason Kleinberg a.k.a. the Gypsy, Benjamin Leon a.k.a. the Token Ecuadorian, Jake Wood a.k.a. the Samurai, and Red Cup a.k.a. the Animal. Diego's Umbrella describes their own music as "a blend of eastern European gypsy traditional stuff, Spanish flamenco, polka/ska rhythms, and good ol' pop and rock from the west. It sounds schizo to describe it, but it all comes together as dance music. It's a show for getting drunk, sweaty and making bad decisions." Their matching outfits are homemade, and they are known to perform shows without set lists.

Ferlendis composed four oboe concertos which, up until now, existed only in nineteenth-century copies of the scores, with only one being recorded. This is the first time these have been recorded on CD. Although the concertos contain some clear elements of Mozartian coinage, their melodic wealth of ideas and natural elegance point to the composer’s Italian temperament. Six trios, here in the instrumentation for oboe, flute, and bassoon, round off the recording.

“This magnificent production is a complete and blissful success. Don’t miss it.” Those were the words of the French website Classique News when Leonardo Vinci’s rediscovered Artaserse was staged by Silviu Purcãrete at the Opéra National de Lorraine in Nancy. Complementing the CD version of the opera released in Autumn 2012, this DVD features no fewer than five of the world’s leading countertenors – assuming both male and female roles: Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Franco Fagioli, Valer Barna-Sabadus and Yuriy Mynenko.