I’ve reached one of my goals for 2017: with this week’s upload of Edgar, you can now find at least one complete performance of every opera by Giacomo Puccini on my Mixcloud site. Bryan Hymel and Angela Meade star in the composer’s second opera in a concert performance from Frankfurt in 2014.
Edgar remains perhaps Puccini’s least-performed opera. It is the only one which I’ve never seen staged, nor have I even heard of a staging in my part of the world. (At least Wiener Staatsoper gave us Le villi.)
In a second upload, I supplement the opera catalogue with the Messa a quatri voci con orchestra, more commonly known as the Messa di Gloria, plus two early, brief orchestral works, and some lovely canzoni.
If you recognize some of this music, it just proves that Puccini was not above recycling: just listen to the first chords of Crisantemi or the first canzone.
Now that Wagner and Puccini are complete, look for the rest of Janá?ek and Britten in the coming months, as well as more Verdi and some rare Richard Strauss.
