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).