Verity Wingate, Martin Mkhize, Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam Sinfonietta & Geoffrey Paterson
Release Date: 11 December 2020
Label: Challenge Classics
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 0608917284928
Description
'Ritratto' or 'Portrait' is an opera by Dutch composer Willem Jeths which focusses on the legendary figure of Luisa Casati, the richest Italian woman living at the beginning of 20th Century and muse of many great artists.
"I wish to be a living work of art," reads the famous comment made by Luisa Casati, the extravagant Marchesa who drew everyone's attention to herself as a high society personality in the early 20th century and who inspired a number of leading artists to take up their writing pens, paintbrushes and cameras: Casati was the most prolifically portrayed woman of her age. She was both Muse and Maecenas who gathered an extensive coterie of famous artists around herself � an egregious set of people, some of whom were also her lovers, including Gabriele D'Annunzio, Man Ray, Filippo Marinetti, Kees van Dongen, Giovanni Boldini and Romaine Brooks. The Russian designer L�on Bakst dressed her in the most exotic of costumes.
She led a split existence. On the one hand, she turned herself into a living work of art and organised grotesque parties as the backdrops to her own performances; on the other hand, she commissioned artists to immortalise her as a "piece of art" � and artists were queuing up at her door as she had enormous wealth at her fingertips to realise these whims.
In the opera, Casati's biography is compressed into a single party evening at her Venetian palazzo. Over seven scenes, we see a melange of events from the heroine's life that actually occurred over many decades, to which the creators then added their own dreamed-up plot. Jeths's palette as a composer has become ever richer and more dramatic as the years have passed. His spectrum ranges from attention to sound and colour to a subtle use of harmonic tension. His musical language was originally more atonal, but he has always flirted with tonality. And now more than ever, his notes are at the service of the text, the theatrical impression and the beauty of the human voice. In his music, Jeths employs multiple references to existing music.
"Jeth's story about the meaning and purpose of art is a powerful and accomplished piece of music theatre." � Christopher Cook, BBC Music Magazine Opera Choice of the Month, Performance: 5 STARS / Recording: 5 STARS
Tracklisting
Piano Duo Scholtes & Janssens
Matteo Cicchitti, Musica Elegentia
Cappella Pratensis, Stratton Bull, Sollazzo Ensemble
La Sfera Armoniosa, Oscar Verhaar, Mike Fentross
Simona Marchesi, Bartolomeo Dandolo Marchesi
Ben Kim, Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend
Daniel Rowland, Stift Festival Orchestra
Soloists; Eroica Berlin; Jakob Lehmann
Luigi De Donato; Collegium 1704; Vaclav Luks
Anna Moffo; Cesare Valletti; Fernando Corena; Erich Leinsdorf
Soloists; Orchestre classique de Montreal; Alain Trudel
Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi, Natalia Rubis, Pawel Konik, Krzysztof Baczyk, Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir
Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi, Jan Martinik, Olga Pasiecznik, Stanislav Kufliuk, Mariusz Godlewski, Adam Palka, Podlasie Opera Philharmonic Choir
The Norwegian National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Terje Boye Hansen
Orchestra Classica Italiana, Fabrizio Da Ros, Paoletta Marrocu, Fabio Armiliato
