Recorded live at the Carinthian Summer Festival on 27 August 1979, this concert features soloists from the orchestra of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala under the direction of Claudio Abbado. One of the leading conductors of our time, Abbado was music director and artistic director of the Scala until 1986 before shifting his focus to Vienna (music director of the Vienna State Opera from 1986-1991) and, later, Berlin. Since 1969, the Carinthian Summer in Ossiach, Austria, has been presenting internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles in splendid Alpine settings. A particularly opulent venue is the Baroque monastery church of Ossiach, where this concert was filmed.
Adriana Lecouvreur
Cilea’s four-act opera of jealousy and tangled love, first performed in Milan in 1902, is based on the true-life story of Adriana Lecouvreur, an 18th-Century actress at the Comédie Française, whose rival for the love of Maurizio, Count of Saxony, is the married Principessa di Bouillon. Mirella Freni sings the title part in this production, Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducts the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala.
La Traviata
Explaining Riccardo Muti’s choice of a group of young, even very young, singers for the production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” staged by Liliana Cavani and premiered in 1990, a spokesman from the La Scala opera house reported: “We did not want to follow the path of comparisons with the past, but attempted to put together a little group of talented youths we had already been working with and whom we will be working with intensively in the future. We hope that the love of music will be greater than a the sometimes hysterical and divisive excitement that arises around certain operas.” Among the gifted young singers in this performance are Tiziana Fabbricini as Violetta Valéry and Roberto Alagna as Alfred Germont. The aristocrat of conductors, the autocrat of the baton, Riccardo Muti cuts a noble figure at the head of any orchestra, and ennobles every ensemble through his charismatic personality and red-blooded musicality. In many respects, including his unwillingness to compromise over artistic matters, he is reminiscent of Arturo Toscanini, who was also a demanding ruler at the podium. His rise to international fame set in with his guest conductorships at the Salzburg Festival in 1971 and at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1972. Muti became principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra a few years later, and was named its music director in 1980. Always a conductor of both the symphonic and operatic repertoire, Muti advanced to the post of music director of La Scala in Milan in 1986. The 1990s saw Muti consolidating his reputation at the head of this venerable institution, as well as in countless other high-caliber venues around the world. Today he is one of the undisputed giants among the leading conductors of the world.