This week offers Rossini’s frothy Il Viaggio à Reims with a big cast that includes Marina Rebeka, Michael Spyres, and Sergey Romanovsky. Also, in response to Niel Rishoi’s recent Norma recording review that attracted so much discussion, I’m including a broadcast of last year’s Parisien Donizetti-Bellini-Rossini concert by Rebeka and her CD Adalgisa Karine Deshayes, as well as a brief taste of Rebeka as Cherubini’s Médée.

Today’s Rossini pirate documents the second (!) cast of La Scala’s 2009 Viaggio revival in Luca Ronconi’s classic production. The premiere cast was televised and featured, among others, Patrizia Ciofi as Corinna.

It’s too bad that Viaggio has never really caught on in the US, though it’s a challenging undertaking to bring together the bravura cast it requires. The Rossini Festival in Pesaro occasionally uses a line-up of young singers instead of big stars.

In 1999, New York City Opera mounted the local stage premiere of Viaggio. (It had been done in concert a dozen years earlier.) I enjoyed one of the performances as the last-minute date of opera director John Copley. (Long story.) I learned that he had originally been asked to produce the Rossini but his plans proved too ambitious/expensive and he instead mounted Handel’s Ariodante for the company around that time.

For those who found the Prima Norma studio-bound and poorly recorded, the live French concert includes important bits of Norma, as well as selections from Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, the pair of Donizetti “Tudor queens” that Rebeka has performed. Deshayes offers some of her Rossini Elisabetta, an opera she performed in Pesaro in 2021.

I was very lucky to catch Rebeka last year in a staging of the Cherubini opera in Berlin. The work was performed there in French accompanied by a period-instrument ensemble and reunited her with the tenor and conductor of her excellent La Vestale recording.

Today’s clip comes from an in-house recording from the Berlin run made available by a parterre reader (whose name I’ve misplaced). I didn’t want to post the entire opera without explicit permission.

Rebeka’s subsequent performances of Médée at La Scala, with a modern-instrument orchestra, in which she had replaced Sonya Yoncheva, were plagued by illness. She canceled several shows, and was only able to perform the first act the evening the Cherubini was livestreamed.

Rossini: Il Viaggio à Riems

Madama Cortese: Teresa Romano
Corinna: Christina Obregon
Marchesa Melibea: Maite Beaumont
Contessa di Folleville: Marina Rebeka
Cavalier Belfiore: Michael Spyres
Conte di Libenskof: Sergey Romanovsky
Lord Sidney: Roberto Tagliavini
Don Profondo: Simón Orfila
Barone di Trombonok: José Carbó
Don Alvaro: Simone del Savio

Conductor: Ottavio Dantone
Teatro alla Scala
19 April 2009
In-house recording

Bel Canto Concert

Arias and Duets from Donizetti: Maria Stuarda & Anna Bolena; Rossini: Semiramide & Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra; Bellini: Norma and Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (encore)

Marina Rebeka
Karine Deshayes

Paris Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Speranza Scappucci
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris
21 March 2023
Broadcast

Cherubini: Médée (excerpt)

Marina Rebeka
Stanislas de Barbeyrac

Les Talens Lyriques
Conductor: Christophe Rousset
Berlin Staatsoper
24 November 2023
In-house recording

Each of the Rebeka recordings can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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