TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances from the Teatro Regio in Parma.
“This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances from the Teatro Regio in Parma.
“This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
With their “comedy for music” in the spirit of Mozart, Richard Strauss and his inspired librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal created the most popular of all their works and one of the most frequently performed operas of all time. In the guise of a gossamer-light and supremely entertaining high-class comedy, Der Rosenkavalier touches on universal themes such as love, sex, marital fidelity and the changes that human relations undergo over time – and all of it set to music of the most glorious kind imaginable. With its stellar cast under the inspired direction of Harry Kupfer, the 2014 Salzburg Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier was one of the most internationally acclaimed interpretations of the work since the start of the new millennium. “A musical feast from beginning to end“ (Wiener Zeitung).
AIDA
Iano Tamar, Iain Paterson,
Tatiana Serjan, Rubens
Pellizzari
Vienna Symphonic Orchestra
Carlo Rizzi
Staged by Graham Vick
MADAMA BUTTERFLY
Raffaela Angeletti
Nino Batatunashvili
Annunziato Vestri
Fondatione Orchestra
Regionale Delle Marche
Daniele Callegari
Staged by Pier Luigi Pizzi
TURANDOT
Maria Guleghina, Marco Berti,
Javier Agulló
Orquestra de la Comunitat
Valenciana
Zubin Metha
Staged by Chen Kaige
LA TRAVIATA
Svetla Vassileva, Massimo
Giordano, Valdimir Stoyanov
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro
Regio di Parma
Yuri Temirkanov
Staged by Karl-Ernst & Ursel
Herrmann
RIGOLETTO
Francesco Demuro, Leo Nucci
Nino Machaidze, Marco Spotti
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro
Regio di Parma
Massimo Zanetti
Staged by Stefano Vizioli
La traviata
1. È strano! È strano! … Ah, fors’è lui … Sempre libera
2. Lunge da lei … De’ miei bollenti spiriti
3. Di Provenza il mar, il suol
Rigoletto
4. Questa o quella
5. Gualtier Maldè … Caro nome che il mio cor
6. Cortigiani, vil razza dannata
7. La donna è mobile
Don Carlo
8. Fontainebleau! … Io la vidi e al suo sorriso
9. Ah, più mai non vedrò la regina! … O don fatale
Aida
10. Se quel guerrier io fossi! … Celeste Aida
11. Ritorna vincitor! … Numi, pietà del mio soffrir!
Luisa Miller
12. Quando le sere al placido
Il trovatore
13. Stride la vampa!
14. Ah! Sì, ben mio … L’onda de’ suoni mistici … Di quella pira
I vespri siciliani
15. Mercé, dilette amiche
Un ballo in maschera
16. Forse la soglia attinse … Ma se m’è forza perderti
La forza del destino
17. Pace! Pace, mio Dio!
18. La vita è inferno all’infelice … O tu che in seno agli angeli
Otello
19. Piangea cantando nell’erma landa … Ave Maria, piena di grazia
20. Niun mi tema
OPERA CHORUSES
Nabucco
“Gli arredi festivi giù cadano infranti”
“Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate”
I lombardi alla prima crociata
“Gerusalem! Gerusalem!”
“O Signore, dal tetto natio”
Ernani
“Esultiamo! Letizia ne innondi!”
“Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia”
I due Foscari: “Silenzio, mistero”
Attila: “Urli, rapine”
Macbeth
“Tre volte miagola la gatta in fregola”
“Patria oppressa!”
I masnadieri: “Le rube, gli stupri, gl’incendi, le morti”
La battaglia di Legnano: “Viva Italia! Sacro un patto”
Rigoletto: “Zitti, zitti, moviamo a vendetta”
Il trovatore
“Vedi! Le fosche notturne spoglie”
“Squilli, echeggi la tromba guerriera”
La traviata: “Noi siamo zingarelle … Di Madride noi siam mattadori”
La forza del destino
“La Vergine degli angeli”
“Compagni, sostiamo”
Don Carlo: “Spuntato ecco il dì d’esultanza”
Aida: “Gloria all’Egitto, ad Iside”
Otello: „Fuoco di gioia!
Falstaff: “Tutto nel mondo è burla”
A “lyric comedy” is how Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal described their final collaboration, on which they worked between 1927 and 1929. Arabella revolves around the true
love between two very different couples – the love that unites two people forever “in joy and sorrow, hurt and forgiveness”, as Arabella herself puts it at the end of the opera. With Renée
Fleming in the title role and a supporting cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Gabriela Benacková and the young tenor Daniel Behle – surely a star of the future – this production from the Salzburg Easter Festival was the first of the piece at the Festival since 1958. Under the Strauss specialist Christian Thielemann, it featured a Strauss ensemble that could hardly be bettered today. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson are a “dream couple for Richard Strauss” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
Rarely has a production of Verdi’s Otello been staged in such a prestigious location: the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice! This special outdoor “event production” of the Teatro La Fenice takes place amidst genuine late-Gothic and Renaissance architecture highlighted by spectacular projections: “A set of singular fascination” (Il Corriere Musicale).
Critics were full of praise for the musical performance, designating conductor Myung-Whun Chung as the “absolutely dominating force” of the performance (GB Opera). The lead role is sung by Gregory Kunde, who successfully interpreted both Verdi’s and Rossini’s Otello in one year, perhaps the first tenor ever to do so. He “reproduces every accent, every colour demanded by Verdi with sensibility and intelligence” (OperaClick).
Richard Strauss’s last stage work is an opera about opera as an art form, depicting the creation of a music drama in a wise and witty way. Which came first – words or music? That is the question that Strauss and his librettist Clemens Krauss address through the story of a Countess torn between a composer and a poet. “Renée Fleming is a world-class Countess, moving and intense … All around her there is luxury casting: Bo Skovhus as the Count, Michael Schade as Flamand, Markus Eiche as Olivier, Kurt Rydl as the theatre director La Roche, the wonderful Angelika Kirchschlager as Clairon – all strike exactly the right note, as do the singers in the smaller roles, turning this Capriccio into an event of the first importance.” (Der Kurier, Vienna)
