Montserrat Caballe sings Bellini & Verdi Arias
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Label: EMI
Cat No: 6828722
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Opera
Release Date: 4th March 2013
Contents
Works
I PuritaniArtists
Montserrat Caballe (soprano)Alfredo Kraus (tenor)
Julia Hamari (mezzo-soprano)
Matteo Manuguerra (baritone)
Agostino Ferrin (bass)
Flora Rafanelli (soprano)
Elizabeth Bainbridge (mezzo-soprano)
Thomas Allen (baritone)
Ambrosian Opera Chorus
Philharmonia Orchestra
Coro e Orchestra della RAI
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductors
Gianandrea GavazzeniRiccardo Muti
Carlo Maria Giulini
Anton Guadagno
Works
I PuritaniArtists
Montserrat Caballe (soprano)Alfredo Kraus (tenor)
Julia Hamari (mezzo-soprano)
Matteo Manuguerra (baritone)
Agostino Ferrin (bass)
Flora Rafanelli (soprano)
Elizabeth Bainbridge (mezzo-soprano)
Thomas Allen (baritone)
Ambrosian Opera Chorus
Philharmonia Orchestra
Coro e Orchestra della RAI
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductors
Gianandrea GavazzeniRiccardo Muti
Carlo Maria Giulini
Anton Guadagno
About
Her long and highly successful career has encompassed a wide range of repertoire, including roles in a number of demanding bel canto operas in which she followed Maria Callas, who had brought these works back into public favour.
This CD, together with the 5-CD set 'The Sound of Montserrat Caballé', is being released to mark the diva’s 80th birthday.
The recital opens with the aria ‘Son vergin vezzosa’ sung by Elvira, the daughter of an English Puritan nobleman, to express happiness at her forthcoming marriage to the Cavalier Arturo in Bellini’s I puritani. But her joy gives way to madness when she wrongly believes Arturo has betrayed her, and her extended mad scene that begins ‘O rendetemi la speme’ is one of the high points in the bel canto repertoire. These two items give Caballé the opportunity to demonstrate her exquisitely beautiful voice and also to make use of her outstanding technical ability to sing florid music, as well as bring it to life dramatically when required.
Next comes the closing scene from Bellini’s Il pirata, another long scene in which the heroine Imogene is deranged by grief as she watches the man she loves ascending the scaffold to be executed. This is another feast of bel canto singing at its most accomplished.
We then move to Verdi and his unfortunate heroine Aida, torn between her love for the dashing Egyptian soldier Radamès and her beloved homeland Ethiopia as she awaits him in a secret desert assignation: ‘Qui Radamès verrà...O patria mia’.
Caballé then gives us a superb account of the poignant scene in Don Carlo where the queen Elisabetta recalls how happy she was in France when she was betrothed to Don Carlo, a Spanish prince, before she was forced for political reasons to marry Don Carlo’s elderly father, King Philip II of Spain
In the next aria, ‘Pace, Pace, mio Dio’ from La forza del destino, Caballé, tackles perhaps the most dramatic of the arias heard here. Leonora, a Spanish noblewoman, believing her lover to have deserted her after he accidentally killed her father, is living as a hermit in a cave in the mountains. She longs for the peace that death will one day bring her, but her solitude is interrupted by the abrupt arrival of a stranger at the entrance to her cave.
Verdi was a great admirer of Shakespeare and the programme ends with extracts from his settings of two of the bard’s plays. These are the eerie Sleepwalking Scene from Macbeth where Lady Macbeth is re-living in her dreams the horrendous murder of King Duncan that she carried out earlier in the play, and the poignant Willow Song and Ave Maria from the final scene of Otello where Caballé’s Desdemona is heartbreakingly moving.
Contents:
Vincenzo Bellini
I puritani
1. Son vergin vezzosa (Act I)
2. O rendetemi la speme...Qui la voce...
3. Tornò il riso....Vien diletto (Act II)
Alfredo Kraus (tenor) • Julia Hamari (mezzo-soprano) • Matteo Manuguerra (baritone) • Agostino Ferrin (bass)
Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra / Riccardo Muti
Recorded: 18–30.VI & 1, 4.VII.1979, Kingsway Hall, London
Il pirata
4. Oh! s’io potessi...
5. Col sorriso d’innocenza...
6. Qual suono....Oh Sole! ti vela (Act II)
Flora Rafanelli (soprano)
Coro e Orchestra della RAI / Gianandrea Gavazzeni
Recorded: 14–31.VII.1970, RAI Studios, Rome
Giuseppe Verdi
Aida
7. Qui Radamès verrà...O patria mia (Act III)
New Philharmonia Orchestra / Riccardo Muti
Recorded: 2–9 & 11.VII.1974, Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London
Don Carlo
8. Tu che le vanità (Act IV)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Carlo Maria Giulini
Recorded: 18–31.VIII.1971, Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London
La forza del destino
9. Pace, pace, mio Dio (Act IV)
Macbeth
10. Una macchia è qui tutt’ora (Act IV)
Otello
11. Era più calmo?...Mia madre aveva una povera ancella (Act IV)
12. Ave Maria (Act IV)
Elizabeth Bainbridge (mezzo-soprano) • Thomas Allen (baritone)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Anton Guadagno
Recorded: 8–11.VI.1971, No.1 Studio, Abbey Road, London
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