Internazionale 1263

The Festival della Valle d'Itria mounted this lavish production of Gioachino Rossini's 1813 opera Aureliano in Palmira, in July 2011. Aureliano in Palmira movie It was staged and performed at the Palazzo Ducale, in Martina Franca, Italy. Aureliano in Palmira video The cast includes Bogdan Mihai as Aureliano, Franco Fagioli as Arsace, Maria Aleida as Zenobia and Asude Karayavuz as Publia, with the special participation of Louise Frank as Vecchia Zenobia. Aureliano in Palmira film The Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia and the Coro Slovacco di Bratislava provide additional musical accompaniment, with Pavol Prochazka serving as chorus master and Giacomo Sagripanti conducting.

This is a collaboration between Rypdal (on electric guitar & synth), and David Darling (cello). If you think electric guitar & cello is an odd combination for a band, you're right! If you think it couldn't possibly work, you're wrong!! Moody and compelling, and definitely not for everyone.Worth it just for the track "Mirage", which lives up to its title sonically. The track "Laser" does the same also… a blistering solo electric guitar kills any semblance of peace and silence, and after it's over, sets up the hot-summer-day-let-me-lay-and-listen mood for the rest of the CD. All are well worth the listening effort.

After the success with critics and audiences of Ivanhoé (CDS 397/1-2), here is a new collaboration between Dynamic and the Valle d’Itria Festival to the publication of another Rossinian pastiche: Robert Bruce, first staged at the Paris Opera in 1846. The most interesting aspect of Robert Bruce was that Rossini, having left his retreat, decided to borrow material especially from La Donna del Lago, a contradictory work to which, thanks to the additions from other scores, he seemed to give a new equilibrium and a second chance. But it would be incorrect to say that Robert Bruce is an adaptation of that opera: in it we find passages from Zelmira, Mosé, Torvaldo e Dorlinska, Maometto II and Armida, skilfully put together by the composer Louis Niedermeyer.

Proserpine was staged at the Théàtre de l’Opéra on the evening of Tuesday 28th March 1803. During the première the enthusiasm of Paisiello’s supporters was drowned out by the demonstrations of disapproval of his opponents. Napoleon, who was in the audience, did not intervene but made a public declaration expressing his appreciation of this tragédie lyrique. Yet the opinion of the First Consul did not achieve the desired effect and the opera ran to only twelve more performances. Examining the opera more closely in a historical context, Paisiello’s Proserpine reveals eighteenth-century characteristics but at the same time looks forward to the nineteenth century, pre-announcing orientations that would be immediately developed by musicians of the following generations.