Sonia Ricoti

The Naxos label has done a wonderful job of providing opera-lovers with inexpensive recordings of both repertory and rare operas. This recording of Rossini's perennial "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" sets a standard which will be hard to sustain. The orchestra, a group of players from the Hungarian State Opera, are lively and alert to the musical presentation desired by conductor Humburg. The soloists are, with few exceptions, wonderful. Roberto Servile in the title role is as good as modern baritones get in the role–he sings well and is having a marvelous time of it. Franco de Grandis sings splendidly as Don Basilio. Sonia Ganassi, singing Rosina, brings good coloratura technique to Rossini's sometimes fiendish writing, but somehow lacks those indefinable qualities which make a great Rosina…

Set during the Second World War, this live recording of Ermione opened the Rossini Opera Festival in 2008. An exceptional vocal cast, in particular Sonia Ganassi in the title role, described by David Blewitt in The Stage as “deploy[ing] an astonishing vocal armoury to searing effect. Her fury during the Act I finale is hair-raising”. This production sees a collaboration between cousins Roberto and Daniele Abbado, nephew and son respectively of celebrated conductor Claudio Abbado.

Despite having to mentor a 17-year-old law student through the versifying of the libretto for Maria Stuarda in 1834, when it was finally finished Gaetano Donizetti believed that he and the young man, Giuseppe Bardari, had created a powerful and high-quality opera for the eagerly expectant Naples public. He was quite disappointed then, when the Bourbon King of Naples absolutely refused to allow its performance (the King’s wife was a distant descendant of the Catholic Stewart queen, whom many Italians considered a martyr to her religion). Troubling to the censors was not only the subject of a beheaded Catholic royal, but also the strongly emotional and bitter interchange between the two queens in their act II confrontation at Fotheringhay Castle (an interchange that historically never occurred; the two queens never met in real life)…

FANFARE: Bill White

Rossini might have dressed his opera in biblical garb, but it is still a story of the conflict of love and patriotic duty that had become the basis of Italian opera. That the plight of the Jews in Egypt is a mirror image of all that is happening today in the Middle East has sparked director, Graham Vick, to think afresh about the opera, the enclosed booklet delving into his thought process, as the present day political and religious leaders use ordinary people as pawns to satisfy their own personal agenda for power. In its original form the Egyptian Pharoh’s son, Osiride, falls in love with the Israelite girl, Elcia and that is about to come to an end when the Pharoh is minded to give the Israelites their freedom to leave Egypt. Now he has to reverse that decision to keep his loved one in Egypt by all means possible…

David’s Review Corner

During the years in which Bernard Foccroulle was successively director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, he never ceased to devote himself to his instrument, the organ, regularly making recordings, giving numerous concerts and several premieres. The compositions on this recording range over that thirty-year cycle, from the 1991 premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Fantasia in Strasbourg to that of Betsy Jolas’s Musique d’autres jours, a piece combining organ with cello that was premiered in Paris in February 2021 during the Présences Festival. His collaboration with the cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton also resulted in a new composition by Bernard Foccroulle for this organ-cello duo!

TDK presents Rossini’s popular comic opera, La Cenerentola, in a staging from the opera house in Naples. The operatic re-telling of this much loved fairy-tale centres on Cinderella’s honesty and integrity, and on her willingness to forgive others, and to encourage those around her to be equally tolerant.
Instead of the working of magic and fairy godmothers, the opera offers a moral message, encapsulated in its subtitle: ‘goodness triumphant’. Angelina (the Cinderella or Cenerentola) has a stepfather (Don Magnifico), and the traditional Fairy Godmother is replaced by Alidoro, who is a Philosopher and former Tutor to the Prince…