Francesco Meli, Roberto Frontali, Vitalij Kowaljow, María José Siri – Verdi: Ernani (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:06:39 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Victor Hugo’s 1830 stage drama Hernani won overwhelming admiration, and over a decade later Verdi’s attention was drawn to it as an operatic vehicle that would give him opportunities for full dramatic unity. Its subject is the nobleman-turned-brigand Ernani who loves Elvira, herself the object of two other men’s desires. Ernani’s success was immediate and it became Verdi’s most popular opera until he composed Il trovatore. This production won critical acclaim, as did conductor James Conlon for his ‘superb support of the singers and the flexible elasticity he brought to his tempi’
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Franco Vassallo, Angelo Villari, María José Siri, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino & Valerio Galli – Puccini: Il tabarro, SC 85 (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:29 minutes | 855 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dynamic
This production is new staging of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Il Tabarro is one of the three one-act operas that compose Giacomo Puccinis Il Trittico. Michele is married to young Giorgetta and shares with her a life full of hardships on a barge over the river Seine. She is in love with Luigi, a young longshoreman hired by her husband during the loading of the barge. When Michele overhears his wife giving a rendezvous to Luigi by night, he waits for the man and attacks him, forces him to admit he is his wife’s lover and finally strangles him. Then he hides the body under his cloak, (il tabarro) and when Giorgetta, in mortal fear, comes on deck and asks Michele if he does not wish her to come and rest near him under his cloak, her wronged husband throws it open and Giorgetta discovers in horror her dead lovers body rolling at her feet. The element of Didier Golds Houppelande that most attracted Puccini was the opportunity to represent, in music, a river, which is what acts as a backdrop in this plot and determines its pace. The importance of this atmosphere is enormous, because it is linked to the mise en scene more tightly than usual. The action entirely takes place on a barge over the Seine in Paris, which is placed in the centre of the scene. The music describing the river uses a cyclic repetition of ostinato patterns, representing the monotonous flowing of the water, as inexorable as destiny and as regular as the flow of time. The pulse of the river cyclically marks, in the first part of Tabarro, the life of this world of vanquished: longshoremen and boatmen. But even when it disappears, the musical identity between drama and location does not cease to exist.
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