Mosè in Egitto-A Fresh Look

Gioachino ROSSINI (1792-1868) Mosè in Egitto – azione tragico-sacra in three acts (1819 version) Mose – Lorenzo Regazzo (bass) Elcia – Akie Amou (soprano) Faraone – Wojtek Gierlach (bass) Osiride – Filippo Adami (tenor) Amaltea – Rossella Bevacqua (soprano) Aronne – Giorgio Trucco (tenor) Amenofi Karen Bandelow (mezzo-soprano) Mambre – Giuseppe Fedeli (tenor)

Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Antonio Fogliani San Pietro a Majella Chorus, Naples ( Elsa Evangelista, Chorus-master) Wildbad Wind Band (Martin Koch, Band-leader)

Recorded live on 1st,7th and 12th July, 2006, in the Kursaal, Bad Wildbad, Germany during the ROSSINI IN WILDBAD festival (Artistic director: Jochen Schönleber) A co-production with SWR Producer: Siegbert Ernst Editor: Dr Anette Sidhu – Ingenhoff Engineers:Wolfgang Rein and Siggi Mehne Booklet Notes Reto Müller and Keith Anderson

Cover: Stage design by Auguste Caron for the second act of the French version of Moïse et Pharaon (4 acts) by Rossini, Paris ,1827

CD 1 75:44 Act 1 57:21 Act 2 18:23 CD 2 60:54 Act ll (contd.) 47:01 Act lll 13:53

When Gioachino Rossini sat down to compose Mosè in Egitto in 1818, he was in the midst of his most prolific musical period as an opera composer. On the one side of his musical journey, Rossini had already mounted the dramme giocosi, L’Italiana in Algeri and La Cenerentola, the dramma, Elizabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, his first Neapolitan work and his most popular comedy, Il Barbiere di Siviglia. And as for the years after 1818, the opera world would soon get to hear such rich musical works as the azione tragica, Ermione, the melodramma, La Donna del lago and what Phillip Gossett calls in his book, Divas and Scholars, Rossini’s most innovative Italian serious opera, Maometto ll, the last three composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples under the watchful eye of the impresario, Domenico Barbaja.

(more…)

ROF’s Adelaide Di Borgogna Once In a Lifetime Experience

Rossini Opera Festival 2006

One of the most rewarding experiences in the opera world is to attend an opera where the high expectations for a great performance and the actual event join in making the entire event an evening to remember. Such was the case on August 17th, 2006, when the Rossini Opera Festival presented Adelaide Di Borgogna for the first time in its history. And to project an even more intense spotlight on the performance, it turned out to be the only time the opera was presented in its entirety. Unfortunately, due to soprano Patricia Ciofi’s sudden illness, the performance scheduled for the 20th was given in an abridged version which, by necessity, excluded her music.

Many opera lovers don’t feel concert opera is a viable substitute for a complete operatic production. But considering the audience’s enthusiastic reception at this Adelaide, it became obvious that the vocal performances suceeded in overcoming any yearning for sets and costumes. In fact, the slide show projected on a back screen with help from video projectionist Pierluigi Alessandrini, received only polite applause during the curtain calls. The reason, of course, was the audience’s total occupation with the singers’ vocal brilliance.

Italian music critic Rudolfo Celletti, in ROF’s 2006 program, tells us the opera’s vocal demands could be one reason why it has not been performed more. In the article, “Adelaide, ‘sister’ to Tancredi,” he states, “Performances call for a florid lyric soprano for the part of Adelaide, a mezzo-soprano or contralto, also capable of virtuoso singing, for the part of Ottone, a tenor of wide range (“contraltino” as the old-fashioned terminology has it) for Adelberto and a true basso-cantante for Berengario.” Not only were these vocal needs met by the cast, but Riccardo Frizza’s nuanced conducting and total focus on Rossini’s musical intentions made for a thrilling evening.

1817 was one of the busiest and most productive years in Rossini’s composing career: starting with the dramma giocoso, La Cenerentola, a beautiful and big-hearted opera, followed by La Gazza Ladra, a melodrama (semiserio,) and then the dramma, Armida. In fact, it was during Armida‘s final rehearsals that the composer accepted an opera commission from Roman impresario and close friend Pietro Cartoni. Giovanni Schmidt, Armida‘s librettist stayed on to work with Rossini. Although Adelaide premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, on December 27th, 1817, Rossini did not arrive there until the middle of December. Gabriele Gravagna, states in his program notes, “It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Adelaide di Borgogna was largely composed in Naples and in a short period of time and that the biographer Antonio Zanolini’s assertion that Rossini got his friend Michele Carafa to help him out is trustworthy.”
(more…)

Renata Scotto’s La Sonnambula in Philadelphia

1967 was a very good year for Renata Scotto both in the quality of her singing and in her approach to opera as drama. The soprano had three standout performances that year. The May 18th Lucia di Lammermoor in Naples noted on this site. She sang a vocally impressive Gilda in Rigoletto on August 11th in Buenos Aires with Cornell MacNeil and Richard Tucker. But her performance of Amina in V. Bellini’s La Sonnambula will be remembered as one of the best Bel Canto displays in her career.

Again, Max de Schauensee, the Bulletin music critic was there to give his accounting of the soprano’s stellar evening. De Schauensee’s musical observations about the opera are direct and telling.” ‘La Sonnambula,’ unless brilliantly and stylistically sung and staged can be a faded, dated experience…naive in its popularesco (rustic-popular) manner but is saved by his (Bellini) exquisite sense of elegiac melody… in the ravishing solos and mellifluous duets.”

De Schauensee then moves on to Scotto’s performance. “Miss Scotto, a stage personality of great vitality and charm, sings most beautifully despite occasional tonal hardness…She has profound belief in her work and this becomes immediately communicated to the audience. Her singing of the famous last-act aria, “Ah non creda mirarti,” was like the sighing of a zephyr in its floating limpidity, and her voice rose in an extraordinary burst of power and ascending trills in the final joyous,”Ah non ginuge.”

Scotto was joined by French-Canadian tenor Pierre Duval, “who was able to cope with the two or three high Cs and even a D-flat. His best work occurred in the second act.” Ezio Flagello was the Count Rodolphe, “singing with rich tone throughout the evening.” De Shauensee also had kind words for the stage director and the conductor. “Because of Henry Butler’s stage direction which, with Fausto Cleva’s conducting insured us one of the best integrated performances in the history of this company,” (Lyric Opera Company).

De Shauensee closes his review with his typically persuasive summing-up: “What could easily have been a bore, turned out to be an engaging evening. Orchids to Miss Scotto, Mr. Butler and Mr. Cleva.”

Premiere Opera LTD CD 2626-2