Lossless is available in FLAC and ALAC (For Mac). You select on the download page.
When you purchase a lossless format, we include the MP3 free of charge
Please note: On Mp3 format an unavoidable click may be heard on segue track breaks, to avoid this issue please select lossless
This item is temporarily unavailable.
Why not buy the whole Album?
Your selections total more than the whole disc price.
Notes
In 2020, in a fitting contribution to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival presented a concert performance of the opera Leonora by his contemporary Ferdinando Paër. With this program selection the conductor Alessandro De Marchi rescued from oblivion the counterpart of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio and its model. Spirited recitatives, extended arias, cabalettas, and marvelously mellow duets occur in sequence in Paër's works, including his opera Leonora, premiered in 1804. During the Napoleonic Wars what he presented here was a heroic liberation opera of French stamp. The action corresponds to the spirit of the times, and the faithful wife displays heroism in her rescue of her unjustly imprisoned husband from a self-complacent tyrant’s dungeon. Dark political intrigues are denounced, and honesty, uprightness, and pure love are glorified. Paër’s musical setting of Fidelio’s heroic story differs from Beethoven’s only opera in many respects. First and foremost because the libretto is in Italian, a language that has very different effects on the melodic, rhythmic, and rhetorical flow of the music and its expressive character. Then there is also the fact that Paër composed considerably more coloraturas for the principal singers than Beethoven did. Here an Italian opera composer of the high Neapolitan school clearly continuing to point back to Hasse and Porpora makes his voice heard.
Please login to post a review
Reviews
**** Excellent Album
Damien Colas – Classica magazine (France) – March 2022
“… Despite being a live recording, the audience is for the most part undetectable until the applause at the end of the opera. The CPO recording team have captured the concert in sound of excellent detail and immediacy… Eleonora Bellocci sings the title role with commitment and abandon. She conquers all of the coloratura demands … Marie Lys begins the opera on a high note as a Marcellina with impeccable coloratura skills… The other roles are confidently sung throughout. Carlo Allemano puts his sizeable tenor to good use as Don Pizzarro. Renato Girolami as Rocco begins with a bit of bluster but soon settles down to give a memorable interpretation of Paër’s more comic jailor… Alessandro De Marchi leads the proceedings with a sure hand. Working with a period orchestra, he is … alive to the emotional peaks and valleys of the work … De Marchi is splendid at conveying the painterly qualities found in Paër’s orchestration yet he produces enough punch to vividly project the dramatic outbursts…”
Mike Parr – MusicWeb-International.com – 10 January 2022
“… This live recording of the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music 2020 from the Tiroler Landestheater does not look back and puts the score (in a new edition by Christian Seidenberg) on the verge of highly inspired, lively, historically informed orchestral play …The Innsbruck Festival Orchestra under Alessandro De Marchi offers an excellently crafted carpet that alone offers sufficient musical drama. .. Eleonora Bellocci is a fresh, very good-natured soprano who, despite a certain lightness, can also take on a heroine attitude. This casting decision directs the focus even more strongly on the overall picture: the all-round successful ensemble… Marie Lys is a charming, highly virtuoso Marcellina with an impressive … Luigi De Donato is a harmoniously fitting, no less high-quality partner … overall the sound experience is very convincing. Two rather superficial introductory texts and a complete libretto offer a good overall set-up for an important production…"
Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter – Klassik.com – 5 October 2021
Media Downloads
Whenever possible we provide a high resolution CD cover image and a PDF version of the CD booklet for you to download and keep