For the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s opera, L’Orfeo, first produced in Mantua, Italy in 1607 and recognized as the earliest opera still performed today, naïve celebrates in suitably grand style with a new and lavishly packaged recording of the landmark work conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. The new recording was issued in Europe this summer, coinciding with Alessandrini’s performances of L’Orfeo – with the Concerto Italiano and the cast featured on the recording – at the 25th annual Festival Beaune.

Rinaldo Alessandrini is a noted Monteverdi specialist. His biography of the composer is considered definitive, he is the official editor of the composer’s scores, and his previous Monteverdi recordings have been widely praised (his recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and the Sixth Book of Madrigals were both Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” selections). The new release is Alessandrini’s first recording of L’Orfeo and it features his new performing version of Monteverdi’s ravishing score. Italian tenor Furio Zanasi sings the title role, which he has performed to consistent acclaim at Europe’s leading opera houses and music festivals (additional cast details follow).

naïve’s new recording of L’Orfeo is presented in a luxurious limited edition 2CD + book that spans a remarkable 172 pages. Highlights include an illuminating introductory text, in which Rinaldo Alessandrini explains not only Monteverdi’s music and its interpretation, but also the mythology contained in the libretto; a fascinating – and hitherto unpublished – short story by the writer Camille Laurens, setting the Orpheus myth in the present day; iconography presenting the faces of Orpheus, from Italian Renaissance representations to those of Edvard Munch and the engravings of Raoul Dufy; and the complete libretto, featuring annotations by Alessandrini.

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who attempts to rescue his dead lover Eurydice from Hades, the underworld. Though Monteverdi wrote eighteen operas, L’Orfeo is one of just three of his operas – along with Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea – to have survived. Four centuries have not diminished the dramatic power, transcendent beauty, and emotional resonance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, which finds in Alessandrini an advocate of singular authority, insight and passion. Says Alessandrini, “Orpheus, even before being a love story, is a grandiose celebration of the power of music.”

London’s Guardian has recently published a superlative, five-star review of the new recording:

The 400th anniversary this year of the premiere of the first operatic masterpiece has already been widely celebrated, but this recording by Rinaldo Alessandrini’s outstanding group of singers and instrumentalists puts the icing on the birthday cake. It follows on naturally from Concerto Italiano’s superlative cycle of the Monteverdi madrigals, and emphasizes once again the advantage of having a cast of native Italians in an opera in which music and text have equal importance.

Alessandrini puts a vivid, theatrical stamp on the proceedings, from the very first drum beats of the opening Toccata, and shows his preference for fast tempi in the ritornelli that punctuate La Musica’s opening invocation, sung with rapturous intensity by Monica Piccinini. Furio Zanasi is the peerless Orfeo… The rest of the cast, including Sara Mingardo as a wonderfully moving Messenger, is equally fine, and instrumental playing unfailingly deft and loaded with character.”

Antonio Vivaldi: Atenaide (world-premiere recording)
Sandrine Piau, Vivica Genaux, Guillemette Laurens, Romina Basso, Nathalie Stutzmann, Paul Agnew, Stefano Ferrari
Modo Antiquo / Federico Maria Sardelli
3-CD set available in the U.S. October 30, 2007

Susan Orlando, the director for naïve’s acclaimed Vivaldi Edition, calls the label’s new world-premiere recording of Vivaldi’s tour-de-force opera Atenaide “a little miracle,” that rare opera recording where a remarkable work is performed by an equally and uniformly remarkable cast. Orlando explains:

“This work was commissioned from Vivaldi by the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and premiered in 1728. What’s especially exciting about this recording is that when we did the casting for it everything came together perfectly. When you cast an opera you put together a dream list, but you rarely end up with your number one choices. For some reason – pure luck, I suppose – we got all our number one choices – Sandrine Piau [Atenaide/Eudossa], Vivica Genaux [Teodosio], Nathalie Stutzmann [Marziano], Guillemette Laurens [Pulcheria], Romina Basso [Varane], Paul Agnew [Leontino], and Stefano Ferrari [Probo]. It’s an extraordinary cast!

As luck would have it that this happens to be one of Vivaldi’s most spectacular operas. Basically, he took the best arias from his other operas and put them all into this one opera. What you end up with is a collection of great bravura arias with singers who have all of the agility to rise to the demands of this very challenging music. The result is unbelievable – a little miracle! Everything came together perfectly for this recording, and that rarely happens.”

Eminent Florentine conductor and Vivaldi specialist Federico Maria Sardelli achieves his long-held goal of recording this exotically-set and compulsively entertaining opera not only in his native Florence, but in the very theatre in which it was first performed two hundred and seventy-nine years ago.

Susan Orlando explains the genesis of naïve’s Vivaldi Edition:

“When Vivaldi died in 1741 he had at home the original music scores of most of what he had written during his lifetime, some 450 pieces including 110 concerti for violin, 40 concerti for bassoon, 20 operas, sacred music, and much more. Most of it had never been published. Through an intriguing tale that I won’t go into now, that enormous bulk of music ended up intact in the National Library in Torino (Turin), Italy in the 1930s, and has been there ever since. Specialists have occasionally performed a few of the scores but for the most part this music has remained totally unknown to the greater public. An eminent Italian musicologist living in Torino, Alberto Basso, conceived the idea of recording the entire collection. He divided the works by genre so that you have, for example, theatrical music, sacred music, concerti for violin, concerti for two or more soloists, etc. He presented the idea to naive, they were enthusiastic, and thus in 2000 the Vivaldi Edition began.”

On October 30, Naxos releases Bartók’s one-act masterpiece Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Marin Alsop leading the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and soloists Gustáv Belácek (bass) and Andrea Meláth (mezzo-soprano).

Bluebeard’s Castle, which premiered in 1918 at the Royal Opera House in Budapest was, according to the composer, “… simultaneously my first stage and first vocal work.” Despite its early date, Bluebeard’s Castle also features some of Bartók’s most expansive orchestral writing, using the entire orchestra to support the singers and illustrate the drama. Composed in the form of a large arc, the music mirrors the progress of the drama and features one of most memorable uses of a C Major chord in 20th opera as Judith opens the fifth door to see the vista looking out over all Bluebeard’s domain. In an instant, a violently dissonant wave of sound transforms to a massive C major chord throughout the orchestra.

Bluebeard’s Castle is Naxos’ fifth major Alsop release this year, following the September release of the final installment of a complete cycle of Brahms’s Symphonies, for which she led the London Philharmonic. Peter Breiner arranged Symphony No. 4 and Hungarian Dances Nos. 2 and 4-9 especially for this recording. Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun praised Alsop’s recording of Brahms’s Symphony No. 3, released as “glowing music-making, rich in character and atmosphere.”

Critics also praised the first two releases: Adam Baer of the Los Angeles Times described Alsop’s Symphony No. 1 as “Brahms that flows and sings,” while Steve Smith of Time Out New York praised her Symphony No. 2 as “a gorgeous efflorescence . . . The results do conductor and ensemble proud.”

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Raymond Bisha discusses Bela Bartok’s creepy yet magnificent opera Bluebeard’s Castle performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

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CBS’s 60 Minutes will include a segment this Sunday, February 25th on Hans Krasa’s Brundibar, an opera that the composer performed with child inmates in the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin.

The opera is now available on Naxos - featuring an English libretto by Pulitzer Prize - winning playwright Tony Kushner - performed by the Seattle-based organization Music of Remembrance and Gerard Schwarz.

Krasa had originally completed Brundibar in 1938 in Prague. As a Jew, he was imprisoned in Terezin after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, where he revised the score and mounted a production in 1943.

A story built around the themes of good versus evil and the value of courage, Brundibar provided some measure of inspiration for Terezin inmates. In a sick irony, however, the Nazis also found a way to use Krasa’s production as a propanganda tool to demonstrate their “fair treatment” of the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia.