This recording of La Sonnambula is notable on a number of fronts. It's the first recording of the opera based on a 2004 critical edition of the score that confirms the leading role was indeed written for a mezzo-soprano, although it has been performed by sopranos for much of its history. (Among the first Aminas were the celebrated mezzos Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran.) It's also the first recording using period instruments, in this case Orchestra La Scintilla, based at the Basel Opera and conducted by Alessandro de Marchi in an idiomatic and lively reading. And, as the promotional materials trumpet, it's the first recorded collaboration between superstars Cecilia Bartoli and Juan Diego Flórez. Although less hoopla is made of him, the recording also features a superbly lyrical performance by baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo. Flórez has the ideal voice for this repertoire: warmly Latinate, supple, and passionately inflected. It's a revelation to hear a mezzo with Bartoli's range in the role. She handles its upper reaches with solidity, agility, and complete assurance (although several arias in fact transposed down, but with no loss of impact), and the depths to which she descends are astonishing. Her tender and vulnerable Amina is completely convincing. She and Flórez have a nice chemistry, and their interactions are among the highlights of the recording. The performers in the secondary roles, Gemma Bertagnolli, Liliana Nichiteanu, and Peter Kálmán, are all first-rate. The chorus of townspeople, which has an unusually large part in the goings-on, is sung with spirit by the Chorus of the Opernhaus Zürich. The sound is clean and full, but on the loud side, so the volume may require some adjustment. The novelty of this version and the quality of performances make this a recording that should be of strong interest to fans of the bel canto repertoire and would make a fine introduction for listeners new to the opera.© TiVo

Handel's Serse (1738), about romantic intrigues at the court of the Persian king Xerxes, bombed at its first performances and wasn't revived until the 20th century. Serse, sung here by mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo (it was originally a castrato role), gets an imposing entrance aria, the famous "Ombra mai fu," but much of the opera is comic, and the mixture of elements flummoxed 18th century hearers, including the critic Charles Burney. Audiences wanted big tripartite da capo arias and serious Greek themes, but instead, what they got, were brief one-section arias that flashed by and various bits of coquetry and satire that originated in Italian comic traditions and looked forward to Mozartian opera buffa. Nowadays, the opera is one of Handel's more popular, and its structure fits the talents on this recording perfectly. It is hard to decide which is more of a draw, the crisp conducting of Harry Bicket, leading the venerable English Concert and keeping the proceedings moving along as Handel intended, or the singing from a veritable all-star cast, at least among the women (there are no countertenors). D'Angelo is glorious, and Mary Bevan is equally good as the flirt Atalanta. The smaller roles are strong, too, and really, there is not a weakness to be found. A very strong Handel opera recording. © James Manheim /TiVo

Famous for its aria “Ombra mai fu”, known as “Handel’s Largo”, Serse (or Xerxes) is one of this German composer’s most original and varied operas. It’s one of his rare “comic” works, containing a great deal of facetiousness and humour whilst still being grounded in reality.This version was recorded live in 2019 across two evenings at the Teatro Romollo Valli de Reggio Emilia. Ottavio Dantone favoured mainly Baroque Italian voices without resorting to falsettists who, in his opinion, are too often used to replace the castrati of the past. The tendency to use countertenors for every purpose seems to be declining in favour of offering a better historical perspective. As such, Ottavio Dantone gave the main role of Serse to Arianna Vendittelli and her beautiful soprano voice, whose tone really captures the character’s fragility.Under the direction of its conductor, the Accademia Bizantina perfectly reflects the varied colours of this well-known work thanks to their clear attacks which beautifully emphasize the score’s many bravura arias. As for the young cast assembled for the occasion, they’re simply perfect. Monica Piccini excels in the role of Monica whilst the bright, clear voice of Francesca Aspromonte is perfect for the role of Atlanta. Alto Delphine Galou shines as Amaster, and the hilarious Elviro is flawlessly interpreted by Biagio Pizzuti. © François Hudry/Qobuz

This re-release of an album recorded in 2003 and for a long, long time unavailable on the market - sometimes it can be found on sale for eye-watering sums - is the vision supplied by Philippe Jaroussky and the musicians of the Artaserse ensemble, of the 14 concert airs (and what airs!) written by Benedetto Ferrari (1603-1681). While he is not very well known today, Ferrari was a great star in his day, and one might well suspect that the final duet from L'incoronazione di Poppea, signed by Monteverdi - the extraordinarily moving Pur ti miro, pur ti godo  - might well have been written by Ferrari. Alas, none of his own operas have survived, but we still know three books of airs by Ferrari: the Musiche varie a voce sola (published in Venice in 1633, 1637 and 1641), from which Jaroussky has made this judicious selection. If the musical differences between the airs do not necessarily jump out at the listener at first, no-one can deny the virtuosity of the young Jaroussky on display here - he was 25 years old at the time, and he had not yet won the numerous awards which would propel his career onwards, starting with the 2004 "Victoire de la Musique".  But it was all already there... © SM/Qobuz

The Mozartists continue their project of staging operas by Mozart and his contemporaries with their recording of the UK premiére of Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, first performed over 250 years ago on 11 February 1766 for the Stuttgart court in Ludwigsburg. For this eagerly awaited performance The Mozartists assembled a superb young cast, headed by the Irish mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly, a graduate of the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artist Programme, tenor Stuart Jackson, a former Mozartists Associate Artist, and soprano Gemma Lois Summerfield, winner of the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier Award. Jommelli was born just north of Naples in 1714 (the same year as Gluck) and died there in 1774. Largely forgotten now, he was one of the most celebrated composers of his day, and during a career which spanned thirty-seven years he wrote some eighty operas as well as a great number of sacred works. He was seen as an important and progressive composer in combining the vocal melodiousness and lyricism of Italian opera with more elaborate and dramatically charged elements of French opera. Set in Ephesus, on the western extremes of the Parthian Empire, in c.164 AD, Il Vologeso centres on Berenice, a woman who becomes caught between two men – the victorious Roman general Lucio Vero, and Vologeso, King of the Parthians (thought dead, but recently returned after his defeat battle). © Signum Classics

Fabio Biondi, who shows up at extremely regular intervals in the nineteenth century repertoire, is back with a release exploring the unfairly neglected Vincenzo Bellini. A suitable team was assembled for the task, dominated by Valentina Farcas and Vivica Genaux, whose voices are supported by the strong leadership of the late Italian director.

Alpha Productions' Firenze 1616 features the French period-instrument group Le Poème Harmonique in a program that explores some of the finer points of Florentine music from around the time of the birth of opera. It was a time when monody was king, characterized by palpitating, highly florid concitato singing; bitter-sounding passing tones; loosely applied rhythms; and somber texts deeply invested in emotion. This would metamorphose, by about 1630, into a sound that was considerably more regular and recognizably Baroque; the stuttering concitato was scaled back, dissonances were a little less biting, and emotion was reined into a manner more in keeping with the mythic and exalted status of the Greco-Roman Gods about whom early operas were written. Many of these developments of standardization followed in the wake of the featured work here, the intermezzo L'Orfeo Dolente (1615) by Domenico Belli, a short work interspersed between acts of a play about Orpheus. The style of L'Orfeo Dolente is so manneristic and difficult that one scholar in the 1930s tried to date its origin to before 1600; contemporary accounts of the work indicate it was famous yet regarded as controversial, suggesting Belli was considered among the avant-garde of his day. As a collection, Firenze 1616 contains some of the most dissonant and challenging pieces of this period.Le Poème Harmonique's performance here is very restrained, low key, and repays patience. The music itself -- not just L'Orfeo Dolente, but also practically all of it -- is very subdued and serious for the most part; no joyous frottole or fanfares are joined into here. For some listeners this will prove monotonous, but if you are following the libretto, the variety of the instrumentation and generally fine qualities of singing make the program seem to move somewhat faster. It is divided into three parts, of which L'Orfeo Dolente is the last; the other two pull together solo madrigals by Caccini, Claudio Saracini, and Cristofano Malvezzi in such rapid succession it is sometimes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. There is one instrumental piece of moderate tempo used to divide the first two parts.Although this era in music is generally symbolized by Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, its sprightly fanfares and transparently lovely ritornelli are the exception rather than the rule, especially when contrasted with the products of the Caccini School and Florentine monody. Firenze 1616 is more like the real thing; music for highly skilled singers with continuo instruments that nevertheless had one foot in the rarefied realm of late Renaissance figures like Gesualdo and Luzzaschi, yet oddly enough, here that is not as interesting as it might sound. It is hard to put one's finger on what makes Alpha Productions' Firenze 1616 so dull at times; Le Poème Harmonique seems to be doing what it should, and while the singing is a little inconsistent, it is not enough to matter. Perhaps it has something to do with L'Orfeo Dolente, as in its own time this work was criticized for being unrelievedly depressing, and it may have signaled the first "reform" in opera history, which shook out the mannered harmonic style of the Renaissance. Something about Firenze 1616 inspires a kind of ennui that might be a good fit for a late night seated at a crossword puzzle; otherwise, expect a very active investment in what is essentially a passive experience.© TiVo

Talk to opera aficionados, or at least to Deutsche Grammophon's indefatigable army of publicists, and one will hear the name of rising tenor Jonathan Tetelman frequently. A bit of listening to The Great Puccini, his sophomore release, will confirm why: his voice has the effortless quality that was once associated with Luciano Pavarotti. It seems to issue forth from his vocal apparatus as a force of nature, lacking the tension in the high notes that one naturally expects. One might, it is true, accuse Tetelman of undertaking unambitious programming with a debut album of aria hits followed by a Puccini album, but this is not quite fair. Tetelman includes not only the evergreen "Che gelida manina" and "Nessun dorma" but selections from the lesser-known early Puccini operas. Sample "Toran ai felici di" from the very first Puccini opera, Le villi, which Tetelman boldly chooses as his finale. It sounds like a million bucks here, and this is reason enough to keep an eye on this young tenor. He doesn't always have the gift of stepping fully into a character and modulating the voice to match, but this will come with time and age and, perhaps, with a plum part in a full opera, which one hopes is on Deutsche Grammophon's agenda. Until then, listen and enjoy, along with all the others who put this release on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

Music in Golden-Age Florence 1250-1750 accompanies a book by musicologist Anthony Curtis of the same title. Yet it is of general interest as well, as shown by the album's appearance on classical best-seller lists in early 2023. Curtis' aim is to elevate the musical contributions of Florence to the same level enjoyed by its artistic and literary productions. The value of his musical selections is twofold. First, he introduces to listeners a great many composers they may not know. Second, he catches international styles as they wash over a specific city in a unique way. The album has four sections, devoted respectively to the late Middle Ages, the early and late Renaissance, and the Baroque. Each of these is mostly the province of one of the three groups present: the early music vocal-instrumental group La Morra, the late Renaissance ensemble Theatro dei Cervelli, and the pianist Francesco Corti. All are more than competent. Corti plays some little-known Baroque keyboard music from Florence, much of it anonymous, that may be the biggest find here; works such as the Pastorale mezza bigia of Francesco Feroci have a unique lyricism even if one might argue that by 1750, Florence was past its "golden age." Not all the music is Florentine; as Franco-Flemish polyphony came to rule Europe, Florence was no exception, and such composers as Heinrich Isaac and Alexander Agricola are included. No doubt, readers of the book will gain more insight into the issues involved, but Curtis' own booklet offers a useful taste. The album will be of great value to museum programmers looking to present music associated with their collections of Florentine art, and it will appeal to anyone who has been fascinated by the jewel of Tuscany.© James Manheim /TiVo