Senza Rimorso

Zucchero's Spirito DiVino was designed as the album that would break the Italian star into the lucrative American audience, who had been ignoring the vocalist for nearly a decade. In essence, Spirito DiVino is no different than the singer's previous albums – after all, this was originally released as an Italian album and in that version, it sold over a half million copies in Europe…

Since 2001, beginning with Juditha Triumphans, eight operas by Vivaldi have been released in the Vivaldi Edition, each one an event, either the first complete recording (or the first recording!) by first-rate conductors, soloists and orchestras specializing in Baroque. Acclaimed by the press (numerous awards), and by the public (more than 150,000 copies sold since 2001), these recordings have succeeded at last in rehabilitating Antonio Vivaldi, known always for his brilliant concertos, as one of the greatest operatic composers of all time.

This is the first time that a complete edition of Bellini's operas is released. The box includes an essay by Friedrich Lippmann, one of the world's most eminent scholars of the Sicilian composer, who in 2007 was awarded the international Galileo Galilei prize by the Italian Rotary Club for his contribution to the dissemination of Italian music in the world.

Philippe Jaroussky brings his musical and dramatic powers to a programme of music from Italian oratorios of the baroque era, including five arias in world premiere recordings. La vanità del mondo, takes it's name from an oratorio by Pietro Torri and among the other composers are Händel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Hasse, Fago and Caldara. "I think composers of this period often give of their best when setting the great stories of the Old Testament," says Jaroussky. "And if oratorio stories are more static than opera, they allow for deeper reflection on the place of mankind in the universe. I think that resonates with particular intensity in 2020, a year of pandemic."