Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: Giuseppe Gazzaniga - L'Isola d'Alcina (Dramma Giocoso per Musica) - 2 CD Set

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Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD (2 CD-Set)
• Label: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi / Sony Music
• Catalog Number: 19658813472
• UPC: 196588134722
• Artist / Performers: l'arte del mondo, Werner Ehrhardt
• Composer: Giuseppe Gazzaniga
• Release Year: 2023
• Genre: Classical - Baroque Opera
• Recording Type: World Premiere Recording

Product Features

• Format: 2 CD-Set
• Total Runtime: CD 1 - 65:08 / CD 2 - 66:55
• WDR The Cologne Broadcasts production
• Condition: Factory Sealed / Brand New
• Made in the EU

Overview

Giuseppe Gazzaniga's L'Isola d'Alcina is one of the great rediscoveries of recent Baroque opera. First performed in Venice in 1772, this comic opera — a dramma giocoso per musica — captivated audiences with its cheerful, allusive libretto and brilliantly inventive music. For 250 years it sat largely unheard. This 2023 world premiere recording changes that.

Conducted by Werner Ehrhardt at the helm of l'arte del mondo, the two-disc set captures the full opera with the period-instrument precision and expressive warmth the ensemble is known for. Recorded under the auspices of WDR — The Cologne Broadcasts, the production brings together a cast of specialist voices ideally suited to Gazzaniga's demanding, emotionally layered writing. The Neue Musikzeitung called it "a wealth of fantastic music" and "a wealth of parodic situational comedy" — praise that barely scratches the surface of what this set delivers.

Gazzaniga (1743-1818) was a Verona-born composer who spent much of his career writing for Venetian theaters, producing more than fifty mostly comic operas. His command of ensemble writing and his ability to charge a scene with simultaneous humor and genuine feeling place him firmly in the same tradition as his more famous contemporaries. This recording is the first chance most listeners have ever had to judge that for themselves.

For collectors of Baroque opera and early music enthusiasts alike, this is exactly the kind of release that justifies keeping shelves instead of playlists.

Interesting Facts

• Giuseppe Gazzaniga was born in Verona in 1743 and trained under Nicola Porpora and Niccolò Piccinni — two of the 18th century's most influential opera teachers.
• L'Isola d'Alcina premiered at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice in 1772, one of the city's most active comic opera houses of the period.
• The opera's libretto draws on the enchantress Alcina from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — the same source that inspired Handel's Alcina (1735), though Gazzaniga's treatment is decidedly comic rather than heroic.
• l'arte del mondo, founded by Werner Ehrhardt, is a Düsseldorf-based period-instrument ensemble that has recorded for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Capriccio, and Audite, specializing in the Baroque and Classical repertoire.
• This 2023 release marks the opera's first-ever commercial recording in its 250-plus-year history.
• The recording was co-produced with WDR Cologne, one of Germany's most respected public broadcasters for classical music, and supported by Bayer Kultur and the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Publishers

Released by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi under license to Sony Music Entertainment Germany GmbH. Produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln. Distributed worldwide by Sony Music Entertainment.

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