Fabio Ghioni

Studio Armide represents magnificent documentary film Olivier Simonnet «Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un automne musical à Versailles». Marc-Antoine Charpentier never had an official function at the court of Louis XIV. In 2004 Versailles finally opened its doors to him for the tercentennial commemorations of his death. The finest performers of baroque music, from Jordi Savall to Christophe Rousset, played the most important works of the time in the Royal Chapel opera house, as well as in the chateau salons and galleries: from instrumental music (Lully’s Alceste) to vocal music (Actéon), from lyric tragedy (Médée) to sacred music (Missa assumpta est Maria). The life of this collaborator of Molière’s and cultural life under Louis XIV are enriched by the participation of conductors and musicians.

Gaetano Donizetti's La Favorite was rather laborious in the making: it started out as a re-working of L'Ange de Nisida, to which the composer added parts taken from some other operas of his. The work, which was premiered at the Opéra of Paris, is set in 14th-century Castile and tells the story of the hapless love between Fernand, who has second thoughts about taking holy orders and leaves the monastery of Santiago de Compostela, and Leonor, the mistress of king Alphonse XI. It is an intimate drama, where history and politics are but the backdrop to the protagonists' passions and torments. Fabio Luisi's conducting is both measured in balancing the orchestral sounds, and personal, varied and vigorous. The orchestra is crystal-clear, neat in its accompaniment, neither subject to the voices nor prevaricating. Veronica Simeoni (Leonor), Celso Albelo (Fernand) and Mattia Olivieri (Alphonse) give excellent vocal and acting performances.

Preceded by a solemn prologue in which Iride admonishes mortals that they should not offend the gods, the story of Cavalli’s Didone comes to life thanks to numerous solo passages of highly varied character and structure, designed both for simple basso continuo support and for a more complex instrumental accompaniment, for five real parts which enjoy some independent moments and which create a diversion from the action or blend in with it in a wholly logical way, intensifying it in a studied, evocative manner.

Like alchemists of old, attempting to recombine the four elements, here Fábio Brum presents four distinct musical languages in a programme forged during lockdown. Gabriele Roberto’s Tokyo Suite charts the astonishment of a traveller dazzled by the vast megapolis, whereas Dimitri Cervo’s The Brazilian Four Seasons offers a colourful, energetic panorama of the natural and human worlds. Fábio Brum’s very personal musical journey is highlighted by the contrast between the Talmudic contemplation of Menachem Zur’s De Profundis and the abstract ruminations of Nicola Tescari’s Trumpet Concerto ‘Nine Moods’.

The soprano Daniela Dessì died suddenly on 20th August 2016, aged 59. She was hailed by critics and colleagues as one of the finest voices the world of opera has ever known. Dynamic pays tribute to the great soprano with this recording, filmed just one year before her untimely death. Her performance of Giordano’s Fedora was one of the pinnacles of her stunning artistic career. In the famous aria O grandi occhi lucenti from Act One, she delivers a technically perfect and emotionally passionate performance worthy of a great star. The story takes place at the end of the 19th century, in St. Petersburg (Act One), Paris (Act Two) and Switzerland (Act Three).

Sandrine Piau does it again or should I say she did it already! This collection of superb Handel arias from '96 could be considered an earlier version or forerunner of the recently released Handel Opera Seria, and certainly very complementary to it. The ensemble she plays with is different (Fabio Bondi and his charismatic Europa Galante players), possibly somewhat less refined from the "early music" style perspective but this consideration is blown away by the dramatic presence and the stellar precision of this non-pareil Baroque vocalist.

[Violinist Fabio Biondi has a singular capacity for finding something new and exciting in the music of Antonio Vivaldi whenever he considers it, a prodigious feat which he demonstrates with Concerti per La Pietà, a new collection of works calling for a variety of demanding solo challenges, superbly met by Biondi and his colleagues from Europa Galante. In his Venetian years the well-spring of Vivaldi an inventiveness was fed by the composer working with one of the leading orchestras of early eighteenth-century Europe: the one at the Ospedale della Pietà, the charitable institution which took in, cared for –and educated – girls who had been orphaned or abandoned.[/quote]

The Clemenza di Tito, which goes back to an original libretto by Pietro Metastasio, known even the educated music lover in general only in the version of Mozart (1791), which represents a late culmination of the genus Opera seria. The material was particularly popular in the Age of Enlightenment, no less than 46 different versions are known, some come from greats of the musical life of the time such as Hasse, Gluck, Jommelli, Traetta, Anfossi and Myslivecek. Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) was already a mature man and highly respected composer when he created his version for the Venice carnival season in 1760. It was his 65th opera, but there is no sign of fatigue in the score.

There is no complete surviving score for Vivaldi's Ercole su'l Termodonte, but there is enough existing material that modern scholars have been able to reconstruct it primarily by making new settings of the lost recitatives. The first production of the opera since Vivaldi's time was at Spoleto in 2006 in a version by Alessandro Ciccolini, which was released as a DVD. Conductor Fabio Biondi made a version introduced in Venice in 2007, which is recorded on this 2010 Virgin CD. Biondi's recording has the advantage of two international superstars in the leading roles, tenor Rolando Villazón and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and soprano Diana Damrau is nearly in their league. Villazón's earthy voice is usually associated with 19th century and verismo Italian repertoire, but he has an acute sensitivity to Baroque vocal style, and his robust, almost baritonal tenor is entirely appropriate for a larger-than-life character like Hercules.