Opera 2023

Star-studded studio recording of Puccini’s Turandot featuring an exceptional cast: Sondra Radvanovsky (Turandot), Jonas Kaufmann (Calaf), Ermonela Jaho (Liu), Mattia Olivieri (Ping), Gregory Bonfatti (Pang), Siyabonga Maqungo (Pong), Michele Pertusi (Timur), Michael Spyres (Altoum), and Michael Mofidian (Mandarino).

Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti. Long's version was dramatized by David Belasco as the one-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, which, after premiering in New York in 1900, moved to London, where Puccini saw it in the summer of that year.

The lasting fame of conductor Karl Böhm is based on qualities that were praised by listeners, musicians and critics throughout his long career: his discipline and meticulousness when rehearsing compositions as well as his modesty, his willingness to take second place to work and composer.

On September 1, 2023, Steinway & Sons releases The Silence Between the Notes - Louise Farrenc: Solo Piano Works, Vol. 2 (STNS 30223) from pianist Joanne Polk. The album is a compliment to Polk's acclaimed 2020 release, Louise Farrenc: Etudes & Variations for Solo Piano (STNS 30133).

There are masterpieces of music history that are simply forgotten for a while before they are rediscovered in a later era as a mirror of one's own sensitivities. The reasons for this forgetting are manifold - in the case of Paul Dessau's fairy-tale opera Lanzelot, they are probably clearly political.

Do you know Duni? Martin Wåhlberg and Orkester Nord take you on a journey of discovery of the father of opéra-comique through two of his emblematic works: Les deux chasseurs et la laitière, and Le peintre amoureux de son modèle, recorded here for the first time.

The duo formed by Valentina Vanini (half soprano) and Giuseppina Coni (piano) is the protagonist of this recording dedicated to the Florentine composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, including chamber lyrics and piano pieces. All the compositions collected in this double CD saw the light in the early twentieth century, and more precisely between 1913 and 1928.

After five triumphs at the Paris Opera, Chevalier Gluck, reformer of French opera and protege of Marie-Antoinette, created his last work in 1779: Echo et Narcisse, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Adopting the style of a pastoral, it was spurned by the public at its premiere, but is a tribute to the splendour of the French tradition. With the support of the Fondation Etrillard, Herve Niquet has resurrected Gluck's last opus, in which the fates of the nymph Echo, who repeats the last word she hears ad infinitum, and the proud Narcissus, condemned to love only his own reflection, intertwine: two perfectly Baroque myths!

Claudio Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria is a love story pur sang. With this opera he narrates the long-awaited homecoming of Odysseus after his mythical travels in the aftermath of the Trojan War. After L’Orfeo - on the programme later this season - it was the second opera composed by the Italian master. Performing this masterpiece is I Gemelli, a young French ensemble founded by Chilean-Swiss tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro. The ensemble consists of a splendid cast including Fleur Barron, Emöke Barath and Zachary Wilder. Together, they will transform this tale of the union between Odysseus and his beloved Penelope into a breathtaking evening.

Sir Georg Solti leads the Wiener Philharmoniker in an epic musical journey through Wagner's most monumental opera, Tristan und Isolde.