Best Of Opera, Vol. 1

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Cat No: 8553166

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099416627

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BEST OF OPERA, VOL. 1

Description
The Best of Opera Vol.1The first volume of the Naxos selection of operatic excerpts includes musicranging from Mozart to Puccini. The first of these composers is represented bythe famous aria of the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute. Mozarthad settled in Vienna, independent of a patron and of his father's guidance, in1781. Ten years later, after variable successes, his fortunes seemed about totake a turn for the better. In 1791, the year of his death, he w rote twooperas, the coronation opera La clemenza di Tito for Prague and theGerman Singspiel Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) for a suburbantheatre in Vienna. The latter was still running at the time of his death inearly December. The opera, imbued with masonic symbolism and with a libretto bythe actor-manager Emanuel Schikaneder, who took a leading comic r??le in thework, deals with the ordeals and initiation of Tamino and his earthiercompanion, the bird-catcher Papageno, into the mysteries of enlightenment andhis final union with Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night. In the firstact of the opera the latter appears to Tamino, seeking his help in the rescue ofher daughter from Sarastro, whom she brands as evil, although it latertranspires that he is the leader of the enlightened band into which Tamino iseventually admitted. In Der Holle Rache she declares, in brilliantcoloratura, her enmity to her former consort Sarastro.Giuseppe Verdi dominated Italian opera in the second half of the nineteenthcentury. For many he seemed a symbol of national unity, at a time when this wasa matter of great moment, his very name an acronym for Vittorio Emanuele, r?¿d'Italia (Victor Emanuel, King of Italy). His first great success came in 1842with the production in Milan of the opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). Thesubject, the captivity of the Jewish people under Babylon, had obvious politicalsignificance in an Italy partly dominated by foreign powers. The chorus ofHebrew slaves, Va pensiero (Fly, my thoughts, on golden wings), toilingby the waters of Babylon, struck a necessarily patriotic note, particularly atthe words O mia patria, si bella e perduta (O my country, so fair and yetlost).Rigoletto, first staged in Venice in 1851, is based on Victor Hugo' s Leroi s' amuse. The opera deals with the fate of the court jester Rigoletto,who abets the lascivious Duke of Mantua in his amorous exploits only to have hisown beloved daughter Gilda seduced by his master. He seeks revenge through theagency of the hired assassin Sparafucile, but his scheme misfires, resulting,instead, in the murder of Gilda. Bella figlia dell'amore, a quartet forthe Duke, Maddalena, Rigoletto and Gilda, comes at the climax of the opera. TheDuke, whom Rigoletto has planned to have killed, is in the house of his proposedmurderer, dallying with Sparafucile's sister, Maddalena, who is to lure him tohis death. Rigoletto secretly observes the scene, to the distress of Gilda, whostill loves her seducer.Two years later La Traviata was staged
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