Roby Accademia Del Caos

This recording of Turandot, Puccini’s spectacular final opera marks a number of important firsts. Before the recording sessions in Rome in March 2022, Sir Antonio Pappano had never conducted Turandot; neither Sondra Radvanovsky, who takes soaring title role, nor Jonas Kaufmann as Turandot’s suitor, Calaf – who sings ‘Nessun dorma’ – had previously performed the opera. It is also the first studio recording of Turandot to include the entire, crucial final scene as completed after Puccini’s death in 1925 by Franco Alfano.

In Rome between the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth, academies and ‘conversazioni’ (artistic gatherings) organised by aristocrats and cardinals attracted the leading writers and musicians. The names of Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti and the young G. F. Handel stand out among many others. Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier (Rome, c.1660-1700), a cellist and composer known as ‘Giovanni del Violone’, participated in this intensive musical activity. […] When he entered the entourage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, in 1690, Lulier already had a decade of compositional activity behind him in the genres of oratorio, opera and above all the chamber cantata.