In 2010, the music world celebrated the 300th birthday of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, one of the most important and fascinating composers of the early 18th century. C Major Entertainment and UNITEL honour the composer, violinist and organist by presenting his complete stage entertainments recorded at the famous Pergolesi Festival in the composer’s home town, Jesi. Performed by singers and musicians specialising in the music of the 18th century. The cycle includes: ‘Adriano in Siria’ + ‘Livetta e Tracollo’ (193’), ‘L’Olimpiade’ (approx. 210’), ‘Salustia’ (approx. 170’), ‘Il Prigionier superbo’ (124’), ‘Lo Frate ‘nnamorato’ (approx. 200’), ‘Il Flaminio’ (183’) and ‘La Serva Padrona’ (approx. 50’).
Intermezzo: La serva padrona
For the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), the ‘Italian Mozart’, whose music is practically unknown today, the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which has been devoting itself to the research and performance of Pergolesi’s music for years now, joined forces with UNITEL CLASSICA to record all eight of the master’s stage works on video in HD and 5.1 Surround Sound. A landmark project that will provide many impulses for the rediscovery of this composer’s epoch-making works.
Spontini, La fuga in maschera
This early work of Gaspare Spontini, a composer once known for his grand operas written for the courts of Napoleon, Berlin, Vienna etc., is found at an antiquarian book dealer in England in 2006 and performed for the first time since 1800 at Festival Pergolesi e Spontini in Jesi. Corrado Rovaris and I Virtuosi Italiani, known for their historically informed performances on non-historical instruments, play “with great verve and joy” (Milano Finanza). Director Leo Muscato “transforms the typical Neapolitanstyle musical comedy into a shrill, irreverent, over-the-top spectacle” (Corriere della sera).
Tutto Pergolesi – Il prigionier superbo
For the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), the ‘Italian Mozart’, whose music is practically unknown today, the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which has been devoting itself to the research and performance of Pergolesi’s music for years now, joined forces with UNITEL CLASSICA to record all eight of the master’s stage works on video in HD and 5.1 Surround Sound. A landmark project that will provide many impulses for the rediscovery of this composer’s epoch-making works.
Demetrio e Polibio
Rossini’s very first opera, written when he was a teenager, was premiered i Rome in 1812 and revived at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 2010. Young stage director Davide Livermore, heading a production of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino, turns the libretto into a ghost story, setting the action at night, behind the stage of an opera house. Thanks to various “phantasmagorical” tricks, Livermore creates an enchanting atmosphere that is musically rendered by the Orchestra Sinfonica Rossini under Corrado Rovaris. Each giving outstanding performances are the four young soloists Maria José Moreno, Victoria Zaytseva, Yijie Shi and Mirco Palazzi, “stars of the highest international order” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).