parterre box

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s only opera for Rome was written to an existing libretto by the great Pietro Metastasio, L’Olimpiade, which had already  been set by Vivaldi the year previously. It eventually became the most widely used libretto in history, inspiring more than 60 composers including Piccinni, Cimarosa, Paisiello, and Donizetti. When Pergolesi’s version premiered at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome in January 1735 the words on the page were still relatively warm which, apparently, could not be said of our young composer who would be dead the following March of tuberculosis at the age of 26.

This 2011 presentation of the Pergolesi Spontini Foundation is now on DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of our friends at Arthaus Musik and documents a thoughtful staging that aspires to the highest musical standard.   Read more »

C-Major continues their full frontal attack on the Verdi catalogue with this release of I Masnadieri which, I’m thrilled to report, does not hail from the Teatro di Regio in Parma like the previous aspirants. We’ve travelled south to Naples and the Teatro di San Carlo and we’re all the better for it as the orchestral and choral forces are larger and far superior. Production facilities are most assuredly more extensive as I’m certain Parma wouldn’t even have the budget to stage a mess this large.

I Masnadieri was first performed, under the composer’s baton, at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in July 1847 in, (no less than) Her Majesty’s presence. Queen Victoria found the music “very inferior and commonplace” — but what would you expect from a Bellini fan? Read more »

There’s that old joke; What’s the difference between opera and sex? Punchline; you can have good sex. That hoary chuckler becomes a near-Aristotelian axiom when presented with this recent release from C Major of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un giorno di regno, the latest episode in the Teatro Regio di Parma’s systematic attempt to defile the reputation of its most revered musical son in the year of his bicentennial one mediocre production at a time.

But I come to praise Verdi, not to bury him.   Read more »