Release Date: 10 January 2005
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313282722
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: MARTINEZ, Ana Maria
Description
ANA MAR?ìA MART?ìNEZ: Soprano Songs and AriasO mio babbino caro Vilja-Lied Ba?»leroThe present set of soprano arias opens with the popularsetting of Alfred de Musset's evocation of Spain by LeoDelibes. The French composer is particularly known forhis ballet Coppelia, based on a story by E.T.A.Hoffmann, first staged in Paris in 1870. His FlowerDuet from his opera Lakme has, for various reasons,won contemporary popularity. In common with otherFrench composers of his generation, Delibes exploredthe exotic, in Lakme an Indian setting. His setting of deMusset's poem, Les filles de Cadix, with its celebrationof the bolero, conjures up the spirit of Spain.Shakespeare may have at first seemed primitive anduncouth in a French theatrical tradition that had drawnheavily on the principles of Aristotelian classicism. Bythe nineteenth century, however, tastes were changing,thanks to the advocacy of writers like Victor Hugo.Gounod's version of Romeo and Juliet, first staged inParis in 1867, uses a libretto inevitably reduced from theoriginal play. The opera opens with old Capulet, Juliet'sfather, welcoming guests to his house to a masqued ballinto which Romeo and his friends will intrude. Juliet,intended as the bride of Count Paris, in her waltz-songJe veux vivre confides in her nurse her feelings, soon tobe turned towards Romeo.The short opera Gianni Schicchi forms part of atrilogy by Giacomo Puccini, first seen in New York in1918. Based on an episode in Dante's Inferno, the plot,like that of Ben Jonson's Volpone, revolves round adeception in which Gianni Schicchi is invited by greedyrelatives of a man recently dead to take the dead man'splace and write a new will in their favour. He acceptsthe imposture, but making sure that everything will goto him, an outcome that the dead man's family dare notdispute for fear of the law. Gianni Schicchi's daughterLauretta is in love with the gallant young Rinuccio, amember of the dead man's family, and in her famousaria O mio babbino caro she pleads with her father toallow her to marry the man she loves, an outcomeeventually achieved, before the opera ends.The Austrian composer Franz Lehar's famousoperetta The Merry Widow has a plot that also revolvesaround the search for wealth, in this case for patrioticreasons, as the Pontevedrin ambassador to Paris tries toensure that the rich banker's widow Hanna Glawaridoes not marry abroad, removing her money from herown country. In her Vilja-Lied Hanna evokes thePontevedrin spirit, recounting the legend of a forestmaiden and a lovelorn huntsman. All ends happily, as itshould in operetta, when Hanna marries the youngPontevedrin diplomat Danilo, who has for long secretlyresponded to her love for him.Pablo Luna was a prolific writer of Zarzuelas. HisEl Nino Judio concerns Samuel, the Jewish boy of thetitle, whose poverty prevents his marriage to his belovedConcha. On his supposed father's deathbed it is revealedthat Samuel is in fact the son of a rich merchant fromAleppo, kidnapped
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yaqi Yang; Margarita Parsamyan; Robynne Redmon; Minghao Liu; Frank Ragsdale; Kim Josephson; Kevin S
Vilmos Csikos; Olivier Lechardeur; Manon Lamaison
Tomas Cotik; Martingale Ensemble; Ken Selden
