Naxos
Opera Album Review: A Fittingly Fresh First Recording of a Flexible One-Acter by Donizetti’s Teacher
Johann Simon Mayr’s delicious L’Accademia di musica gets a spiffy performance from the “Rossini in Wildbad” Festival.
Rossini’s one-act opera from 1812 rings fresh changes on a host of comic-opera clichés.
This re-release of a superb recording of a major Meyerbeer opera reminds us what treasures are available to opera companies (and college opera programs) willing to step beyond the well-trodden path.
For Derek Bermel fans, Intonations is a must. For new music enthusiasts and the otherwise curious – ditto.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
This first-rate performance highlights the special attractions of the “half-serious” operatic genre.
Halka struts its stuff, impressively, in this new recording with an all-Polish cast conducted by internationally renowned Gabriel Chmura.
For Joan Tower fans, this disc is a must; for the Tower-curious, it offers an excellent introduction to the composer’s wider work, all of it compellingly played.
This new recording would be a great, and inexpensive, way to enter the sound world of Rossini’s mature operas.
The composer of Les huguenots and L’Africaine was already an accomplished master at age 26, as this first-rate recording reveals.
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