The Parisians were hooked on Italian grand opera in the heady days of post-revolutionary France—and composers such as Donizetti, Verdi and Rossini duly obliged, feeding the public’s almost unquenchable thirst for high musical drama. This is a rich collection of rare moments from these operas, many of them long consigned to the archives. In an impressive debut solo recital, American tenor Michael Spyres, alongside the Hallé Orchestra, makes us wonder what we’ve been missing, with beautiful moments from rarities such as Verdi’s Jérusalem, Rossini’s Othello and Halévy’s Guido et Ginévra.
- 2010
- Pier Giorgio Morandi, Marco Berti, Cristina Gallardo-Domas, Rossana Rinaldi, Luca Salsi, Filippo Polinelli, Orchestra e Coro del Festival Puccini & Ferdinando Fontana
- Zubin Mehta, Orchestra Of The Rome Opera House, Birgit Nilsson, Franco Corelli & Grace Bumbry
- Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Edita Gruberová, Kathleen Battle, Kurt Moll, Philippe Huttenlocher, José Van Dam, Peter Hofmann, Norbert Orth, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg & Alain Lombard
- Angela Gheorghiu, Coro Sinfonico di Milano Giuseppe Verdi & Riccardo Chailly
- Dame Joan Sutherland, Nello Santi & Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire