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Don Giovanni (Intégrale)

Hans Rosbaud

Full Operas - Released July 19, 2007 | INA Mémoire vive

Booklet Distinctions 4 étoiles du Monde de la Musique
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Mozart Desperate Heroines

Sandrine Piau

Opera Extracts - Released September 29, 2014 | naïve classique

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
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Luigi Cherubini: Les Abencérages

Orfeo Orchestra

Classical - Released November 11, 2022 | Bru Zane

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Cherubini's Les Abencérages, premiered in 1813, heralds the spectacle and extravagance of Romantic grand opera. From the Alhambra gardens to the battlefield, the action skillfully intertwines political conspiracies with a love story. Underpinned by the energy and timbres of period instruments, this recording demonstrates the work's modernity and it's musical qualities. Anaïs Constans valiantly tackles the demanding role of Noraïme, while Edgaras Montvidas displays his lyric tenor voice in a series of sublime airs whose beauty was already hinted at by none other than Roberto Alagna in a recital disc released in 2003. Around this couple, a plethoric cast of soloists (Dolié, Sargsyan, Williams, Martin, Lavoie, etc.) achieves the same high standards of French diction and style. The Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi, flanked by the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, reveals here another key milestone of French Romantic opera. © Bru Zane
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Parry: Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Blest Pair of Sirens

London Mozart Players

Choral Music (Choirs) - Released September 8, 2023 | Chandos

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month
Hubert Parry's Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, from 1880, here receives its world-recorded premiere. Perhaps recording companies thought there wouldn't be much of a market for a heavy 19th century choral work with, it must be said, a ponderous text by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Prometheus was a play intended to be read, not performed, just to give an idea). How wrong they were. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, and it is altogether enjoyable. At the time, Parry was under the spell of Wagner, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet. That influence certainly shows up in Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, with its basically declamatory text, partly through-composed music, wind-and-brass-heavy orchestration, and splashes of chromaticism. Yet what is remarkable is that the music does not come off as an imitation of Wagner at all. Rather, it uses elements of his style to match a specific kind of English literary text. The work gradually disappeared, but it would be surprising if Elgar, whom it clearly prefigures, did not know it well. The performances here are luminous, with William Vann using the lighter-than-expected London Mozart Players to create transparent textures against which he can set the substantial voices of Sarah Fox, Sarah Connolly, and other soloists. Parry did write some shorter pieces that remain in the repertory; one of these, Blest Pair of Sirens, is included here as a finale. However, the Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound are the main news here, and this performance, showing how this kind of thing should be done, may generate a new life for the work. © James Manheim /TiVo
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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris

Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Legrenzi: La morte del cor penitente

Ensemble Masques

Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Casta Diva - Operatic arias transcribed for trumpet

Matilda Lloyd

Opera - Released April 28, 2023 | Chandos

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Five years after her solo debut recording, Direct Message, which programmed 20th and 21st century works for trumpet and piano, trumpet player Matilda Lloyd departs the traditional repertoire (aside from the two Arban arrangements from the Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet). Instead of following more well-worn routes, Lloyd elects to present a program of Romantic period opera arias, mostly in arrangements for trumpet and chamber orchestra (undertaken here by the Britten Sinfonia under Rumon Gamba) by William Foster, who worked closely with Lloyd on this project. Lloyd's skill as a musician is evident throughout, though the two Arban tracks most clearly allow her abilities to shine. The arrangements throughout are good, though how much they add to the performances rather than transcriptions and transpositions is up for debate. Lloyd notes with excitement the decision to include two pieces by Pauline Viardot, and one of the highlights here is the treatment of Viardot's Havanaise. This is certainly a trumpet release aimed at a wider audience than trumpet and brass circles, and it has already found success on the retail market. Chandos delivers just the right atmosphere from the Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, in London. The future is bright for this trumpeter, and one looks forward to where her path may take her. © Keith Finke /TiVo
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So Romantique !

Cyrille Dubois

Classical - Released March 10, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Handel: Finest Arias for Base (Bass) Voice, Vol. 1

Christopher Purves

Classical - Released December 2, 2012 | Hyperion

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There's no shortage of Handel aria recitals these days, especially in Britain, but this one by bass baritone Christopher Purves stands out from the crowd in several respects. First of all, it is rare in collecting arias for bass voice, which was, in Handel's time as it was later on, generally associated with a few fixed and generally negative character types (tyrants, rogues, repressive patriarchs). Second, it's a very pleasantly varied collection of tunes, including displays of brilliant passagework, out-of-the-norm writing in service of characterization (Fra l'ombre e gl'orrori, from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, track 4), and high climactic drama (the big, three-part Revenge, Timotheus cries, from Alexander's Feast, track 19, is a familiar example). Finally, Purves unearths some rarely heard pieces and programs them intelligently. When did anyone last year anything from Muzio Scevola, or Riccardo Primo, rè d'Inghilterra, which must have pleased London audiences in 1727 despite its Italian-language text. Purves does not have the biggest voice in the bass baritone universe, and there could be a bit more sound in the very low notes. But the dimensions of the music are right for the period. He's pleasingly accurate in the passagework, and he's a real actor who makes these potentially stilted characters come alive. Listeners will want to hear Purves in a small production of one of these operas after hearing this album, preferably accompanied by the strong historical-instrument group Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen, as he is here.© TiVo
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Mozart: Don Giovanni by Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Opera - Released January 8, 2022 | Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording

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I Am Hera

Hera Hyesang Park

Classical - Released November 6, 2020 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Cellopera

Ophélie Gaillard

Opera - Released March 5, 2021 | Aparté

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Cellists rarely think of themselves as "prima donnas", and yet this is Ophélie Gaillard's gambit on this album, which is perhaps a questionable choice. The answer may be found on the cover showing the cellist opening the heavy red curtain of an opera stage with an amused look. It's a hint at the fact that it takes a good dose of courage and nerve to tackle the greatest pages of the operatic repertoire, from Don Giovanni to the operetta Toi, c'est moi, via the hits of Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini (E lucevan le stelle!!!), but also Tchaikovsky (Lenski's great aria in Eugene Onegin) or the famous O! du mein Holder from Wagner's Tannhäuser. During a rehearsal of Don Giovanni at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, the solo cello of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra suddenly had to replace an absent singer, under the direction of Daniel Harding. It was at that moment that Ophélie Gaillard developed the idea of this original programme of operatic arias without words. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Mozart: Don Giovanni

Freiburger Barockorchester

Opera - Released January 1, 2007 | harmonia mundi

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : La finta giardiniera

René Jacobs

Full Operas - Released October 9, 2012 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Disque de la semaine France Musique - Choc de Classica
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Il gioco della cieca. Madrigali, Canzoni & Villanelle per cantare, et sonare

Concerto di Margherita

Classical - Released February 4, 2022 | Arcana

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A young ensemble of instrumentalists and singers revives the precious historical practice of singers accompanying themselves (already brought back into currency by the soloist Vivabiancaluna Biffi), thus producing a wholly new sound in music usually assigned to unaccompanied voices. With Concerto di Margherita, self-accompanied singing becomes "collective" for the first time in our era, and is amplified in a shared gesture in which all the members of the group – playing and singing together with extraordinary coordination – produce a sonority unprecedented in this repertory. Created at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, the group (which is named after the Duchess of Ferrara, Margherita Gonzaga) performs as a consort of five voices, theorbo, harp, viola da gamba, guitar and lutes, inspired by the "Concerto delle dame" of Ferrara. The recording debut of Concerto di Margherita presents arrangements of a wide range of instrumental and vocal works (madrigals, villanellas and canzonas), drawing on music by De Wert, Gastoldi, Monteverdi and the "blind man’s buff" scene from Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il pastor fido (1580). © Arcana
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Leclair: Scylla & Glaucus

Sébastien d'Hérin

Classical - Released November 27, 2015 | Alpha Classics

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La Flûte Enchantée

Hervé Niquet

Classical - Released April 23, 2021 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Ladies Sing Baroque

Sara Mingardo

Classical - Released February 6, 2012 | naïve classique

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Handel: Tamerlano, HWV 18

Riccardo Minasi, Il Pomo d'Oro

Classical - Released March 31, 2014 | naïve classique

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice
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Liszt : O lieb !

Cyrille Dubois

Classical - Released October 4, 2019 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or - Choc de Classica
A scribe of Schubert’s lieder, piano virtuoso, composer of powerful symphonic works, a precursor to modern music which would blossom at the start of the twentieth century, Franz Liszt is also the author of many lieder and other melodies. This great European traveller spoke many different languages, never holding back from putting German romanticism to music through the words of Heine, Schiller, Rellstab or Goethe, the French smoothness of Victor Hugo or the perfect language of Petrarch’s Sonnets in Italian. At 35 years old, the French tenor Cyrille Dubois already has a long career behind him. A young singer in the Caen children’s choir in Normandy, he started his solo career at the age of 12, playing Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at the Opéra de Lyon, before joining the Opéra de Paris’ Atelier Lyrique program in 2010. He has since performed on various international stages. His accompanist Tristan Raës studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning several prizes, including that of Anne Le Bozec’s accompaniment class. The two musicians that make up Duo Contraste met for the first time over ten years ago during their studies. Driven by a passion for melody which they admirably deliver, they have dedicated themselves to this repertoire with a skilful blend of simplicity and clarity, as well as a remarkable sense of nuance and expression all while avoiding any over-exaggerated sentimentality. © François Hudry/Qobuz