Shakespeare e L'amore Arturo

On 7th February 1857, after a delay of one year due to problems of copyright on a possible production of King Lear, Verdi accepted and signed a new agreement with the Teatro di San Carlo of Naples for an opera to be staged in January or February 1858. Not long after he had put behind the experiences of Simon Boccanegra (June 1857) and Aroldo (August), Verdi, then, had to face the issue of a new subject for Naples, which would no longer be King Lear, discarded for various reasons, and not even El tesorero del Rey by António García Gutiérrez or Ruy Blas by Hugo, to which he had given more serious thought, but Gustave III by Eugène Scribe, a play written in 1833 for Daniel Auber in which the king of Sweden is assassinated, in 1792, by a group of noblemen led by Jacob Ankarström. The composition of the score, between October 1857 and January 1858, went hand in hand with Verdi’s complex relationship with the Neapolitan censors, who would end up distorting the libretto and unnerving the composer to the point that he ended up refusing to stage the opera and breaking his agreement with the theatre.

It seems remarkable that Arturo Sandoval never seems to win any jazz polls, for few trumpeters can come close to equaling his technique, jazz chops, and warm sound. On this advanced hard bop date, the music is strictly straight-ahead without any Latin rhythms. Sandoval matches wits quite successfully with clarinetist Eddie Daniels on two songs, tenor great Michael Brecker on three (including a memorable rendition of "Moment's Notice"), and veteran flugelhornist Clark Terry on a joyous "Mack the Knife." In addition, Sandoval pays tribute to Woody Shaw, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie. All in all, this is one of Arturo Sandoval's finest recordings to date.