Opera 2023

A leading figure of the second 'Italian instrumental 19th century', Giuseppe Martucci (Capua, 1856 -Naples, 1909) is known for his Germanophile attitude at a time when the homeland of opera was dominated by verist melodrama. The Pensieri sull'opera 'Un ballo in maschera' op.8, written around. 1874, constitute the only piece in his catalogue for piano four-hands. The art of transcription constitutes one of Martucci's own stylistic traits: think of the famous Pastorale by Sammartini.

Windows is a unique album from award-winning British composer and conductor Benjamin Ellin. Uniting three of the world’s leading trombonists: Joseph Alessi; Christian Jones, and Blair Sinclair with the Orchestra of Opera North under the direction of Benjamin Ellin, Windows offers an intimate exploration of Ellin’s music for trombone.

WALTON & BARBER from famed British violinist Thomas Bowes celebrates the works of two early 20th century composers, William Walton and Samuel Barber. The album includes Walton’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and Two Pieces for Strings from Henry V, as well as Barber’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra op. 14 and the touchstone Adagio for Strings op. 11. Throughout the album, Bowes’ breathtaking virtuosity is on full display.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose present the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role.

With Jean-Baptiste Stuck's Polydore, Gyorgy Vashegyi's directing talents alight once again on a French opera from the era between Lully and Rameau. Whist Louis XIV's reign was gradually drawing to a close, his nephew, duke Philippe d'Orleans - due to become regent for Louis XV on the death of the child's great-grandfather, the Sun King - was greatly expanding his own court cultural activities (within which he had a pronounced predilection for Italian music).

John Aylward’s chamber opera Oblivion grapples with issues of remembering, destiny, and self-knowledge. His score for four voices, viola, cello, double bass, electric guitar and electronics is beguiling and mysterious, accompanying the opera’s protagonists through a labyrinthine journey loosely based on Dante’s Purgatory but taking cues from Joseph Campbell and a range of other historic and modern philosophers and theologians. Ultimately, Aylward has created a piece that teems with existential wonder and pathos.

Mozart was all the rage in Prague at the end of 1786. His latest opera, The Marriage of Figaro, had thrilled music lovers there and won rave reviews: "No piece (so everyone here asserts) has ever caused such a sensation as the Italian opera The Marriage of Figaro, which has already been given several times here to boundless applause," reported the city's Oberpostamtszeitung. Rumors began to circulate that Mozart himself would come to the city to give concerts and maybe even lead a performance of his hit opera. He did both in a visit that was among the most satisfying and successful of his career.

Swiss conductor Michel Corboz heads the English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra in this programme of works from George Frideric Handel, focusing on the Suite from Rodrigo, HWV 5 and Il pastor fido, HWV 8a.

Maestro Marek Janowski, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir present Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (1859), together with a stellar cast, headed by Freddie De Tommaso (Riccardo), Lester Lynch (Renato) and Saioa Hernández (Amelia). Un ballo in maschera is Verdi’s tragicomic masterpiece, in which the composer skilfully switches gears between the light and tragic, as well as between his earlier and more mature style. As such, it is both an entertaining and highly sophisticated work.

Thomas Adès' Dante-a ballet score in three parts based on Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia-was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel at a concert performance last spring at Walt Disney Concert Hall.