Opera 2023

The work was premiered on May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, as a staged production of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with Pierre Monteux conducting. Monteux also led the first SFS performances of the original 1913 version in February 1939. Over the years the score has appeared in various revisions. This performance uses the edition marked “Revised 1947; New edition 1967,” brought out by Boosey & Hawkes, which had just acquired the work’s copyright.

Nicola Porpora was a composer who helped to turn Italian opera into the most successful and spectacular genre in Europe.

Two of the major works that made Claudio Monteverdi the innovator of the musical world of his time were concentrated between 1607 and 1608 in Mantua: Orfeo, Favola in musica in 5 acts (24th February 1607, libretto by Alessandro Striggio Jr.) and Arianna, Tragedia in a single act (28th May 1608, libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini). The disappearance of any of Arianna's scores remains an unsolved mystery. We do not know what the musical style of the opera was, but from Rinuccini's libretto, we can guess that it was a development of the Florentine model of the Musiche di Iacopo Peri […] sopra l'Euridice del signor Ottavio Rinuccini (Florence, 6th October 1600).

ATUM is a rock opera presented in three acts by inimitable American rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. The album tells an epic interplanetary story set in the not-too-distant future, though the songs themselves respectively stand on their own in the Pumpkins pantheon.

Massimo La Rosa joined The Cleveland Orchestra as principal trombone in September 2007. He made his solo debut with the Orchestra in a gala concert in October 2011 performing Ferdinand David’s Trombone Concertino under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst. He was named “New Artist of the Month” by Musical America following the release of his solo recording, Cantando.

Carl Loewe fashioned his 1841 oratorio about the Bohemian theologian Jan (or Johann) Hus (or Huss) as a kind of ‘opera without a scene’. A good 100 years before the rise to prominence of religious reformer Martin Luther, Hus had taken a hard stance on the official church and was burned at the stake on 6 July 1415 in Constance, following his condemnation by the council. Based on a libretto by August Zeune, Carl Loewe’s Jan Hus premiered on 16 December 1841 in a performance by the Berliner Singakademie. This rarely performed work, surely deserving of more attention, is now finally available with this world premiere recording by the Arcis Vocalisten and the Baroque Orchestra L’arpa festante conducted by Thomas Gropper.

Star tenor Piotr Beczala presents a selection of romances by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, together with the acclaimed lied accompanist Helmut Deutsch. The romance was the most popular musical genre in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russia, practised by professionals as well as amateurs. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff both enriched this genre with their lyricism and melodic invention. Elevated by Deutsch’s splendid accompaniment, Beczala delivers these songs with a great sense for the Slavic idiom and meaning of the words, combined with colourful lyricism and italianità, perfectly fitting the Russian and cosmopolitan musical language of these two masters.

„Überragend in seiner Kraft und Poesie“, lobte das Magazin Forum Opéra Emmanuelle Haïms Dirigat. Die Barockspezialistin hat mit ihrem Concert dʼAstrée geistliche Vokalwerke dreier französischer Komponisten des 18. Jahrhunderts aufgeführt: Jean-Philippe Rameau, André Crampa und Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville.

Arturo Toscanini, (born March 25, 1867, Parma, Italy—died Jan. 16, 1957, New York City, N.Y., U.S.), Italian conductor, considered one of the great virtuoso conductors of the first half of the 20th century.

For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald
is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest.Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest.John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth's English version of the libretto.