The performance shows generally high competence and comfort, no surprise given that the work is a longtime staple in Croatia: indeed, it is the single most-performed opera in the entire repertory of the Croatian National Theater.
Opera
Opera Album Review: A First-Rate World-Premiere Recording of a Short Baroque Opera about the Young Aeneas
I don’t recall encountering a recent Baroque recording that is sung with such a fine balance of smoothness and character.
Opera Album Review: A Rossini “Semi-Serious” Opera That Works Like a Charm
This new recording would be a great, and inexpensive, way to enter the sound world of Rossini’s mature operas.
Opera Album Review: An Italian Comic Opera, or Is It a German One? You Decide
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s delightful 1906 comic opera, via the first recording of the version heard at the work’s premiere.
Opera Album Review: An Important Early Opera by the Composer of “Cavalleria Rusticana”
I felt at times that I was listening to the Italian equivalent of a Broadway musical, though a serious rather than jolly one.
Classical Album Review: “The Other Cleopatra”—Three Major Opera Composers Bring Us the Forgotten Queen of Armenia
A delightful recording — and the first ever! — of arias from Hasse’s and Gluck’s operas about Tigranes and Cleopatra of Pontus. Plus four arias by Vivaldi for that same Cleopatra.
Opera Album Review: August Enna’s Wagnerian “Kleopatra” — Revived on Danish Soil After 122 Years
August Enna’s colorful and vividly melodramatic score does justice to the robust exoticism of H. Rider Haggard’s novel.
Opera Album Review: Up There with Handel and Vivaldi — One of Gluck’s Earliest Operas, in Its First-Ever Recording
This world-premiere recording of Gluck’s Demofoonte is stylishly performed, under the experienced hand(s) of conductor/harpsichordist Alan Curtis.
Arts Reconsideration: The 1971 Project — Celebrating a Great Year in Music (July Entry)
Arts Fuse writers continue their countdown of great music celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and this month’s list includes Little Feat, Jonathan Edwards, Hot Tuna, The Red Detachment of Women, and Jimmy Witherspoon & Eric Burdon.
Opera Album Review: A Captivating World-Premiere Recording of One of the Most Oft-Performed Operas in the 17th Century
Cross-gender disguises and comic banter liven up the melodrama in this presentation of Antonio Cesti’s famous opera, thanks to a spirited and virtuosic traversal by a mostly Italian cast.