Paisiello (1740-1816) was the master of Italian opera buffo and a significant influence on Mozart. His orchestral writing and musical characterizations are deft and dramatic, and he was the first to introduce ensemble finales into comic operas. Don Chisciotte is an early work, premiered in Naples (where he spent most of his life) in 1769, and it already shows all the skills that made his work popular throughout Europe. The libretto by Lorenzi is based on a 1719 play that deals with the Don's visit to a noble court and the tricks that are played on him there, drawing in material from elsewhere in Cervantes' novel, including his tilt with the windmills. The characters are reduced from aristocrats to middle-class Neapolitans familiar to the opera's audiences, and they are treated with parodistic irony.
This publication aims to be the first of two volumes, the second of which will contain the other two sonatas. Believe me, this project has not been driven by the wish to add yet another complete recording of complete works to the catalogue. What it has been driven by is a real desire to redress the balance and to ensure Weber's compositions receive the attention they so richly deserve.
This project has not been driven by the wish to add yet another complete recording of complete works to the catalogue. What it has been driven by is a real desire to redress the balance and to ensure Weber's compositions receive the attention they so richly deserve.
Dans la lignée de l'album "Thérèse, vivre d'amour", Natasha St Pier retrace aujourd'hui la vie de Jeanne d'Arc. Reconnue comme l'une des premières icônes féministes à travers le monde, Jeanne d'Arc a connu une destinée exceptionnelle. Elle demeure depuis toujours une source d'inspiration et un modèle résolument moderne par le message qu'elle incarne. Thérèse de Lisieux, l'une des plus grandes figures spirituelles et mystiques à travers le monde, fut aussi lune des premières à se passionner pour cette héroïne française, allant jusqu'à écrire une poésie et deux pièces de théâtre en hommage à Jeanne d'Arc. Natasha Saint Pier est aujourd'hui le trait d'union reliant ces deux saintes, ces soeurs intimes, ces deux figures inspirantes. Avec la force des mots de Thérèse de Lisieux, sur des chansons écrites et composées sur mesure par Véronique Sanson, Lionel Florence, ou Jacques Vénéruso, Natasha St Pier raconte l'incroyable destin de Jeanne d'Arc dans un album exceptionnel qui sortira le 30 septembre.
Despite establishing the bel canto tradition through a series of romantic, serious operas (Otello, William Tell) and elegant buffas (the timeless Barber Of Seville) Gioacchino Rossini retired at 37 to live life as a Parisian bon vivant. Fortunately, Rossini (1792-1868) came out of retirement to complete the Stabat Mater, a choral masterpiece every bit as impressive as his more famous works. An expression of the Mediterranean belief in life and faith, this setting of the Stabat Mater is written for full orchestra with four soloists and chorus.
Luca N. Stradivari (1993) is a composer and pianist of his own music. After he graduated at the University of Nottingham, he started to hold composition seminars and concerts in China since 2018. He writes: “The first part of this release is marked by the performance of The King is Dead – shipwreck for violin and piano. A reworking case for duet – Luca N. Stradivari on the piano and Luca Fanfoni on the violin – of the concert for wind orchestra and violin solo based on the First World War, performed in 2012 in Salò on lake Garda for its annual music festival.
The splendour and cultural heritage of Humanism contain an intricate network of intuitions and revolutions – that are often local or have developed in geographically or politically well defined areas – of culture and of its representation in society: an unlimited theatricalisation of reality, in which each gesture, symbol and behaviour is transformed into an active component of the greatness and beauty of the Court and of its main actuators.In a picturesque fresco of this rich era - musical heir of the Middle Ages - the Anonima Frottolisti ensemble offers a cross-section of the main aspects that characterized it: power, love, celebration, dance, and faith, through an imaginary journey in the wonder of the Italian courts of the fifteenth century.
With rich texture and bold femininity, Jeanine De Bique releases her debut album 'Mirrors' on October 22, 2021 on Berlin Classics! Miss De Bique is accompanied by the renowned baroque orchestra Concerto Köln, with musical direction by Luca Quintavalle. The album focuses on baroque arias and includes three world premiere recordings. Arias of heroines such as Rodelinda, Alcina and Cleopatra, composed by George Friderich Handel and his contemporaries - Carl Heinrich Graun, Riccardo Broschi and Georg Philipp Telemann complete the program.