Lorenzo Regazzo

At the age of 29 Hasse was on his first visit to Italy when he wrote 'La Contadina' in Naples. The music of the intermezzo, which sparkles with wit and temperament, enjoyed such a great success that a total of 38 productions in major European opera houses can be documented between 1728 and 1769. 'La Contadina' was one of the hits of the 18th century.

It is hard to believe that this work was composed at the same time as Bach’s cantatas and passions. Its strengths include a spirited libretto full of humour and earthy eroticism, and, above all, extremely modern music that is already endowed with all the characteristics of the subsequent Classical style. The timeless vitality of the agile recitatives and individually fashioned arias will also captivate today’s listeners.

At a time of a substantial reappraisal of the work of composers such as Porpora, Vinci, and Mancini, as well as Hasse himself, Glossa and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis are pleased to be able to reissue this splendid recording which, apart from featuring notable singers in Graciela Oddone and Lorenzo Regazzo, involves fine instrumental players such as Pablo Valetti, Amandine Beyer, Riccardo Minasi and Attilio Cremonesi.

Le Concert d’Astrée, under its founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, celebrates its 10th anniversary in style with a charity concert in Paris featuring 23 of the world’s most distinguished singers of baroque repertoire.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Le Concert d’Astrée, under its founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, will give a concert entitled ‘Fête Baroque’ at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 19th December 2011. Joining Haïm and the orchestra are no less than 23 of the world’s most distinguished singers of baroque repertoire. Among the sources of the evening’s arias and ensembles are Giulio Cesare, Alcina, Rinaldo, Tamerlano, Come Ye Sons of Art, Thésée, Dardanus, Hippolyte et Aricie, and Les Indes galantes. The recording of this spectacular concert will join 15 discs that Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée already have in the Virgin Classics catalogue.

The concert also benefits a good cause as will this CD. Under the patronage of Madame Simone Veil, the former President of the European Parliament, the proceeds of the concert will go to the Révolution Cancer 2010-2013 programme of the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, south of Paris. The institute, with a staff of 2,600, is the leading oncology centre in Europe.

Recording Country: France

Recording Location: 15-22 January 2003. Eglise Notre Dame du Liban, Paris.

Mix Date: 22 Jan 2003

Executive Producer: Alain Lanceron

Producer & Editor: Daniel Zalay

Balance Engineer: Jean Chatauret (Musica Numeris)

WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING on CD of Carnicer’s “heroic-comic drama”

CD is presented in a slip case and includes a booklet with information about this little-known opera as well as the complete Italian libretto and English translation.

Rossini adapted his own Italian opera of 1820, Maometto, for the Parisian stage under the title of Le Siège de Corinthe. As Rossini’s original work had already absorbed distinctive French characteristics such as heroic arias, and characterisation through orchestral colour, the newly composed music for the reworking makes for a powerful and compelling operatic tour de force. With its historical subject matter and tragic ending, Le Siège de Corinthe anticipates the advent of grand opera.

It is an important work, showing how Rossini both absorbed and continued to propagate the demands of the new French opera movement of the first third of the nineteenth century which required a strong sense of historic narrative and tragedy.

In the fashionable circles of late 19th century musical Venice, it was a matter of pride that among the small number of scores the great Gioachino Rossini kept at his home in Passy were several canzonettas by Antonio Buzzolla. Buzzolla was known then, as now, primarily as an inspired composer of ariettas in Venetian dialect. Though he produced two early operas, he went on to be maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, in which role he wrote part of the collaborative Requiem for Rossini. But his central legacy is seven collections of Venetian ariettas and canzonettas, around 80 works in all.

These are the peak of a genre: the dialect song inspired by the barcarolles of the gondoliers of Venice, that enchanted, fantastical place which, by the late Romantic era, was seen as the spectral haunt of lugubrious Lisztian gondolas.

With this album of Venetian songs, most of them never been recorded before, Lorenzo Regazzo seeks to alert a wider audience to this little-known and under-appreciated strand of vocal chamber music and to encourage a revival of Buzzolla’s music in general.

The Vivaldi Edition pays tribute to the Venetian composer’s wonderful and all too rarely heard arias for bass voice. Lorenzo Regazzo, with his rich bass and perfect technique, shows that he has all the vocal qualities that are needed for this fine repertoire.