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.

Margherita d’Anjou was Giacomo Meyerbeer’s fourth opera in Italian and his first real success. After an absence from the stage of about 150 years, it returned at the 43rd Festival della Valle d'Itria in an outstanding production. Director Alessandro Talevi’s ironical setting - where the War of the Roses takes place at the London Fashion Week - is perfectly matched by the elegant direction of Fabio Luisi with the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia. The opera, which belongs to the semi-serious genre, moves from the warlike tones of Act One to the idyllic ones of Act Two, where both female protagonists appear: the queen, a soprano, and the wife, a contralto; both seek the love of an heroic tenor equally daring in battle and in music.

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.