Best Of Opera, Vol. 2

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Cat No: 8553167

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099416726

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BEST OF OPERA, VOL. 2

Description
The Best of Opera Vol. 2Christoph Willibald von Gluck was a figure of great importance in theoperatic reforms of the second half of the eighteenth century that ensured agreater degree of dramatic realism, notably with his Orfeo ed Euridice of1762, based on the traditional story of the legendary Greek musician Orpheus andhis beloved Eurydice, bitten by a snake and taken down to the Underworld, fromwhere, by the power of his music, Orpheus seeks to rescue her. The reportedsuccess of this venture varies. In Gluck's opera, however, Orpheus fails toobserve the command of Pluto, God of the Underworld, not to look round to see ifEurydice is following him. He looks round and she dies, only to be revived byAmor, providing the opera with the necessary happy ending. In the famous secondact aria Che far?? senz'Euridice Orpheus laments the apparent loss of hisbeloved.Mozart belongs to a slightly later generation. He realised his ambitions as acomposer of opera primarily during the last ten years of his life, spent inVienna. Here he won his first success with a German opera, Die Entf??hrungaus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio). Four years later, in 1786,he embarked on his first collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte in the Italiancomic opera, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), based on a playfrom the Figaro trilogy by Beaumarchais in which the servant Figaro helps tobest his master, Count Almaviva. There is a sparkling overture and in the firstact aria Non pi?? andrai Figaro makes fun of the amorous page Cherubino,whose affections have turned towards the Countess.The last collaboration between Mozart and da Ponte was Cosi fantutte (They all behave the same way), a satire on the fickleness of women,staged in Vienna relatively briefly in 1790, the year of the death of theEmperor Joseph II. The lovers Ferrando and Guglielmo resolve to test the loyaltyof their betrothed, Fiordiligi and Dorabella by pretending to go away to thewars and returning in disguise, each to make overtures to the other's girl,finally with some success. In the beautiful trio Soave sia il vento (Gentlyblow the wind) the two girls, and the cynical master of the plot Don Alfonso,bid the two men farewell, as they leave, supposedly for the war.Mozart's German opera Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) was the lastto be staged in Vienna, in the autumn of 1791, the year of the composer's death.The masonic plot, by the actor-manager Emanuel Schikaneder, centres on theordeals to be undergone by Tamino, a prince, in his search for truth and love inthe shape of his Pamina. Tamino is accompanied by the peasant bird- catcherPapageno, a r??le taken originally by Schikaneder himself, who announces histrade and identity in Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja (I am the bird-catcher).The French composer Jacques Offenbach, son of a Cologne cantor, became amaster of light opera in mid-nineteenth century Paris, not least with his parodyof Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales ofHoffma
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