Rigoletto is regarded as the first operatic masterpiece of Verdi’s mature artistic period. Its complex psychology identifies characters with different styles of music, and with an incredible variety of accents for a central figure conceived by the composer as "deformed and laughable, but actually passionate and full of love". From the famous aria "La donna è mobile", to the final horrific tragedy as the curse unfolds, the triumphant success of Rigoletto since its premiere in 1851 has endured to the present day. © Dynamic

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Nashville is rough on the living, but she really speaks well of the dead, says a country song, and opera is the same way. Recordings by the late Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky have soared on the charts since his untimely death. Along with the superb song album Russia Cast Adrift, this one makes a suitable memorial. Hvorostovsky was never a typical Italian opera baritone, and that was what made his performances of Rigoletto over the years so well loved; they stood apart from the crowd. This version was made in Kaunas, Lithuania (in the Philharmonic Hall -- it is not a live recording), in 2016, after the baritone's diagnosis with brain cancer. Cognoscenti may grouse that at certain junctures Hvorostovsky's voice has less power than formerly (which, at his age, would have been true even without his illness), but the essential qualities that made him a great Rigoletto are on full display here. Where Western baritones sing, Hvorostovsky growls, rasps, and snarls, and the role of the exquisitely bitter jester has rarely come alive as it does here. The rest of the cast is decidedly not as strong; soprano Nadine Sierra can't decide whether Gilda should be a wounded innocent or something more substantial, and her pitches are often less than stable. Yet this is how it should be. With a star of Hvorostovsky's magnitude, the focus should be on the star, and that is where it resides. Clean accompaniment by the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra that effectively stays out of his way is another plus. An essential for Hvorostovsky lovers. © TiVo

No one knows better than Rinaldo Alessandrini that Monteverdi's madrigals – to which he has dedicated a major part of his work and recordings over the past thirty years – were above all texts where the music was the servant, and not the mistress. This form of a cappella vocal polyphony, responding sensitively to the inflections of a highly expressive poetry, was born in the full flowering of Renaissance humanism and developed in the 17th century by composers such as Monteverdi, Marenzio and Gesualdo, before being supplanted by the opera. As the Italian maestro explains, in the Third Book of Madrigals, "we can already see how carefully the twenty-fiveyear-old Monteverdi chooses poetry, e.g. by Guarini and Tasso, which is capable of 'responding to the needs of the drama, of truth, humanity and emotionality, culminating at the end of his life in the lustrous triumph of his final works". This is the fifth collection of madrigals Rinaldo Alessandrini has recorded with Concerto Italiano, and it is the cornerstone of his quest for an intimate understanding of Monteverdi's repertoire – and all the music that came after it. These madrigals have "the power to allow the performers to read the human passions, perceive them empathetically, and restore them in the very finest dress" (Esteban Hernández Castelló). Their analytical yet sensitive approach leads to a precise intonation, a direct transmission of naked emotions, and the restoration of details we can only glimpse behind the words, revealing in all its beauty what lies hidden in the music: mirror images of the soul. © naive classique

For his last season at the helm of the Opéra de Bordeaux, Marc Minkowski—always keen to conduct forgotten works which have, in some way, marked the history of music—sets his sights on Robert le Diable, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera which was a true social phenomenon in 19th century France. The Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française has followed suit by officially publishing this concert version, which also features some excellent vocal soloists. Admired by Balzac, Sand and Dumas, this ‘grand opéra à la française’ (great French opera) faded into obscurity after the First World War. Its creator became a sort of pariah – one met with both condescension and mockery. With its ‘seductive and haunting melodies’ (Alexandre Dratwicki), it’s nevertheless a flamboyant work that greatly inspired his contemporaries, such as Verdi, who referred to it in La Traviata. The extraordinary impact of Robert le Diable was such that it was performed a great many times on every continent. A true one-man band, Marc Minkowski has invested himself entirely in this undertaking, learning this vast score practically by heart and conducting it with his usual power and conviction. The international cast is full of surprises thanks to their deep understanding of the work and the protagonists’ fantastic pronunciation. This new release, to the credit of the Bru Zane label, revitalises our knowledge of this work that’s scarcely mentioned in specialised dictionaries. © François Hudry/Qobuz

It was time for Ludovic Tézier to finally provide his admirers with a recital. His performances as a Verdian baritone are impressive: Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Falstaff, Giorgio Germont (La Traviata), Posa (Don Carlo), Le Conte De Luna (Il Trovatore), Renato (Un ballo in maschera), Iago (Otello). And almost all of these are reprised in this solo album. To this impressive list of stage roles, Tézier brings the welcome addition of arias from Ernani, Macbeth and Nabucco all accompanied by Frédéric Chaslin at the head of the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. It was in 1998 in Tel Aviv that the French baritone played his first Verdian role. He was thirty years old when he was Ford in a production of Falstaff. "There is an absolutely fascinating energy in Verdi, both for the audience and for the singers", he admits. "His roles are usually very challenging, but his music acts at the same time as a fountain of youth. Verdi is brimming with vitality, which is what allowed me to return to the stage just two days after my father's death". Now with a fully-matured voice, Ludovic Tézier is in demand all over the world for his Verdi roles. He is one of the best performers of Verdi's work, standing alongside the late Piero Cappuccilli who remains his great role model. This record offers timely confirmation of his stature. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

Giulia Frasi is best known to posterity for having given the first performances of the principal soprano parts in Handel’s last oratorios – all of them containing vivid scenes of sentimental and spiritual drama that depict suffering women reacting to extremely distressing events with courage, dignity, and selflessness. This album explores her speciality: playing characters whose emotional journeys are charted with affecting pathos. However, the thirty-one-year career that Frasi enjoyed in London was broader, more complicated, and richer than being merely Handel’s last prima donna. Retracing her music making in different environments – not only operas and oratorio concerts in theatres but also music in numerous other contexts – reveals a perfect microcosm of the cultural and stylistic diversity of musical life in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. It is a story that has seldom been told, and has never before been presented through a cross-section of Frasi’s musical repertoire. Reputedly trained in Milan and having made her operatic debutin Italy, Frasi came to Britain to join Lord Middlesex’s Italian opera company in 1742 – not long after Handel had decided to stop composing and performing operas on the London stage. Initially allocated minor roles but gradually rising in importance to the company, Frasi participated in at least fourteen opera seasons at the King’s Theatre on the Haymarket between November 1742 and 1761. Her early London appearances in 1743 prompted this recollection by Charles Burney in his General History of Music: Giulia ‘Frasi was at this time young, and interesting in person, with a sweet and clear voice, and a smooth and chaste style of singing, which, though, cold and unimpassioned, pleased natural ears, and escaped the censure of critics.’ Burney praised the fact that, having come to this country at an early period of her life, ‘she pronounced our language in singing in a more articulate and intelligible manner than the natives.’ It seems that Handel’s attention was attracted by her determination to sing articulately in English – which coincided with her increasing usefulness to the topsy-turvy Italian opera company – and an emerging knack for conveying musical pathos. Soprano Ruby Hughes, who has chosen a large variety of works, not only by Haendel but also from all of Frasi’s London repertoire, from Arne to Smith, won first Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2009 London Handel Singing Competition, and is also a former BBC New Generation Artist. She made her debut at Theater an der Wien with René Jacobs, She has sung major roles at the Buxton International Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, London Handel Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Musikfestspiele Potsdam, and Schwetzinger Festspiele, as well as at English National Opera, Garsington Opera, Scottish Opera among so many others. © SM/Qobuz

When it comes to posterity, Vivaldi has been quite lucky. Thanks to a series of happy accidents, his personal manuscript collection has survived through the centuries, allowing his music to be preserved and later played and recorded. Contralto Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone, the director of the Accademia Bizantina, drew from this invaluable batch of nearly 450 compositions to develop this album’s program of sacred music dedicated to the alto voice.This recording includes two “introdutioni” for alto, a kind of motet whose form would have been devised by Vivaldi for his Venetian work for the Pietà. You can also find the vespertine hymn Deus tuorum militum for alto and tenor (Alessandro Giangrande), as well as a Regina coeli, a Marian antiphon played on Easter Sunday.At the heart of this album is a violin concerto written for the day of the The Assumption of Mary (August 15th). The importance of this celebration in the Italian liturgical calendar is underlined here by a score of an unusual length for a Vivaldi concerto, with it being divided into two orchestral parts that exchange a sometimes and sometimes joyous dialogue. Written for his student Anna Maria, the solo violin part preserved in the archives is played here by Alessandro Tampieri, who has once again enriched it with a very virtuoso "capriccio" of his own making. © François Hudry/Qobuz