Release Date: 17 November 2023
Label: Opera Discovery
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 8055136150015
Description
This new release from the Opera Discovery label presents Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. In July 1888 the music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense.
Mascagni heard about the competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, a poet and professor of literature at the Italian Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, to provide a libretto. Targioni-Tozzetti chose Cavalleria rusticana, a popular short story (and play) by Giovanni Verga, as the basis for the opera. He and his colleague Guido Menasci set about composing the libretto, sending it to Mascagni in fragments, sometimes only a few verses at a time on the back of a postcard.
The opera was finally submitted on the last day that entries would be accepted. Cavalleria rusticana won and opened on the evening of 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome with Gemma Bellincioni as Santuzza and Roberto Stagno as Turiddu and the orchestra conduced by Lepoldo Mugnone. It was a sensation, with Mascagni taking 40 curtain calls.
The opera's premiere in 1890 was a tremendous success, which Mascagni built on the following year with L'amico Fritz. He became increasingly prominent as a conductor and in 1892 conducted his opera I Rantzau around Europe. He was director of the Liceo Musicale in Pesaro 1885-1902. Pietro Mascagni died in Rome the August 2, 1945.
Performers on this recording:
Santuzza - Silvia Dalla Benetta, Soprano; Turiddu - Fabio Armiliato, Tenor; Compar Alfio - Alberto Mastromarino, Baritone; Lola - Giulia De Blasis, Soprano; Mamma Lucia - Camilla Antonini, Mezzosoprano; Opera Discovery Orchestra; Corale Quadriclavio di Bologna; Francesco Ledda; Chorus Master: Lorenzo Bizzarri
Tracklisting
Orchestra Classica Italiana, Fabrizio Da Ros, Paoletta Marrocu, Fabio Armiliato
Lisa Houben, Filippo Arlia
Francesco Ledda, Opera Discovery Orchestra, Silvia Dalla Benetta, Fabio Armilato, Alberto Mastromarino, Giulia De Blasis, Camilla Antonini, Corale Quadriclavo di Bologna, Lorenzo Bizzarri
Francesco Ledda, Opera Discover Orchestra, Silvia Dalla Benetta, Fabio Armiliato, Carlo Colombara, Chiara Di Dino, Camilla Antonini, Moon Jin Kim
Thomas Sanderling, Orchester des Nationaltheaters Mannheim
Malcolm Sargent, Mary Lewis, Tudor Davies, Maggie Teyte, Clive Carey, Marie Howes, Harry Plunket Greene, James Johnstone
Maria Callas
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
