Description

Decca: Juan Diego Flórez - Rossini Arias - Riccardo Chailly - Audio CD

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Product Details:

Product Type: Audio CD
Label: Decca
Catalog Number: 470 024-2
Composer: Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
Tenor: Juan Diego Flórez
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly
Orchestra & Chorus: Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
Genre: Opera / Classical / Tenor Arias
Publisher: Decca / Universal Music Company
Barcode (UPC): 028947002420
Condition: Brand New

Product Features

Format: Single CD (standard jewel case)
Audio: DDD
Language: Italian (opera arias)
8 tracks from 8 different Rossini operas

Overview

Juan Diego Flórez arrived on the international opera scene in the late 1990s like a correction to a long-standing problem. Rossini's tenor roles had been largely unperformed or drastically cut for decades - the stratospheric high notes, the impossible coloratura, the relentless ornamentation simply outran most voices. Flórez's voice does not have that problem.

This Decca debut recital, conducted by Riccardo Chailly with the Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, draws from eight different Rossini operas - from the familiar (Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola) to the rarely heard (Zelmira, Semiramide, La gazza ladra). The range of the programme is itself a statement: Flórez is not here to do the greatest hits. He is here to show what Rossini actually wrote.

The voice is in remarkable shape throughout - precise in the ornamental passages, easy at the top, and never pushed. Chailly keeps the orchestra lean and buoyant beneath him. The 11-minute "Terra amica" from Zelmira is the centrepiece and the most demanding test on the disc; Flórez handles it with a composure that makes the difficulty seem incidental.

For anyone interested in bel canto tenor singing, this is one of the essential recordings of the past three decades.

Interesting Facts

Flórez was born in Lima, Peru in 1973 and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; his professional debut came in 1996 at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, substituting at the last minute for an indisposed singer - a debut that immediately established his international reputation.
At La Scala in 2007, Flórez became the first tenor in 74 years to encore an aria mid-performance when he repeated "Ah! mes amis" from Donizetti's La fille du régiment nine times; the previous encore at La Scala dated to Giacomo Lauri-Volpi in 1933.
Rossini wrote his tenor roles during the bel canto era for singers specifically trained in florid technique; after his retirement from opera in 1829 at age 37, the style gradually fell out of fashion and many of his operas went unperformed for over a century.
Riccardo Chailly (born Milan, 1953) served as principal conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi from 1999 to 2005; he later became chief conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Music Director of La Scala.
Semiramide (1823) was Rossini's last Italian opera before he moved to Paris; its overture remains one of the most performed orchestral showpieces in the repertoire.
La donna del lago (1819), from which "Oh fiamma soave" is taken, was based on Sir Walter Scott's narrative poem The Lady of the Lake - one of the earliest operatic adaptations of Scott's wildly popular verse.