Rossini

A puzzling piece with a tormented history, Rossini's Edipo a Colono for bass, male choir and orchestra is rarely performed today and represents a unicum in the entire repertoire of Italian music. The fruit of an unusual collaboration between librettist Giambattista Giusti and Italy's most sought-after composer at the time, Rossini's astonishing incidental music for Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is brought to life again by Nahuel Di Pierro, the Coro del Teatro della Fortuna and the Filarmonica Gioachino Rossini conducted by Fabrizio Ruggero. Recorded live at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

The plot of La cambiale di matrimonie, which Rossini composed when he was just eighteen years old, revolves around the farcical attempts of Tobia Mill, a rich English merchant, to combine business with pleasure by forcing this daughter, the lovely Fanny (“the merchandise”) to marry Slook, his rich colonial correspondent from America, by means of a bill of exchange. Eventually, it is the gallant Slook himself who persuades Mill to allow Fanny to marry her true love, Edoardo Milfort. This Rossini Opera Festival—Pesaro production features two well-established singers, Désirée Rancatore and Saimir Pirgu, who are joined by three promising young singers: Fabio Maria Capitanucci, Enrico Maria Marabellie and Maria Gortsevskaya.

Filmed live in 2007 at the prestigious Rossini Opera Festival in the composer’s birthplace, Pesaro, Il Turco in Italia is a madcap ensemble opera with an inspired score that boasts music of both comic genius and extraordinary beauty. Set in Naples, it spins a crazy tale around a poet who uses the romantic entanglements of the inhabitants with a Turkish prince as inspiration for the plot of his next play. Ultimately, life imitates art as all ends happily, but not before a planned abduction leads to a chaotic situation of mistaken identity.

L’Equivoco stravagante (the curious misunderstanding) was Rossini’s first attempt at writing a two act opera. The plot is based around three characters; Ermanno, Ernestina and Buralicchio. Ermanno, who’s young and poor, loves Ernestina the daughter of Gamberotto, a wealthy farmer. However, Ernestina and her father have their eyes on Buralicchio, a young upstart who has more money than sense. To get his competition out of the way, Ermanno and a few servants hatch a plot to convince Buralicchio that Ernestina is actually a castrato, and worse, an army deserter. Ernestina is arrested, but eventually freed by Ermanno whom she then marries.

“Ponnelle's film of his La Scala staging is so imaginative and musically refined that it triumphs over the dubbing. Von Stade is an achingly beautiful Cinderella, Araiza a romantic Prince.” BBC Music Magazine

Claudio Abbado’s youthful Beatle­cut marks the age of this film‚ still one of the better screen Barbieres if not absolutely the best. Jean­Pierre Ponnelle based it on his Scala stagings‚ but filmed it‚ as he always preferred‚ in studio and in lip­sync – more successfully than most. As a result‚ it looks and sounds very much fresher on DVD than contemp­orary videotapes.

A live performance from the Teatro Lirico “Giuseppe Verdi” of Trieste under the direction of conductor Paolo Arrivabeni. Cast features Daniella Barcellona, Charles Workman, and Daniela Pini.

Renée Fleming stars in the title role of this rarely heard diva showcase, in a production by Tony Award® winner Mary Zimmerman. Rossini's opera, set in the time of the Crusades, tells the story of a vengeful sorceress who enthralls men in her island prison. This DVD captures the production's Live in HD presentation, as seen in cinemas around the world.

It was customary for Rossini to modify his scores and develop second and third versions for theatres that wanted to stage his operas. The Maometto II here recorded corresponds only in part to the original score (Naples, 1820), which is the version generally performed nowadays; it is, instead, the revision made for Venice’s Teatro La Fenice staged on 26th December 1822 as opening title of the 1823 Carnival season, the same season which, on February 3rd, would also see the debut of Semiramide. For Venice Rossini tried to soften the monolithic character of his Neapolitan score, introducing an opening symphony, making changes - some of them quite substantial - to the score and, especially, giving the plot a happy ending. The title role is sung by the young Italian bass Lorenzo Regazzo, internationally renowned; Claudio Scimone, on the podium, is responsible for the revision of the score.