MUSIC
Cavalleria rusticana (2022)
Riccardo Muti - Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus - Anita Rachvelishvili - Piero Pretti - Luca Salsi
CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA | CSO Resound
Riccardo Muti leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Chorus and a cast of outstanding soloists in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. As an opera, Cavalleria rusticana is one of the most enduring works for the stage, and its extraordinary popularity has never waned. This exquisite concert performance from February 2020 vividly captures the unforgettable cut of its melodies, the intoxicating colors of its Sicilian atmosphere and the urgent, heart-racing pace of its drama, which has few equals in the repertoire.
The entire ensemble, featuring the notable portrayal of Santuzza by mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, captures all the emotion and nuance of Mascagni’s opera as it hurtles toward its inevitable catastrophe — the celebrated Intermezzo offering the only moment of respite.
Cavalleria rusticana marks the first CSO Resound release to be available in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos® format.
“Muti’s forces provided all the passion imaginable yet never descended into sensation or vulgarity. One basked in the idiomatic italianata of it all. This was the most beautiful orchestral performance in memory of Mascagni’s seminal score.” — Opera News
“CSO, Riccardo Muti, soloists triumph. An utterly superlative offering in every way.” — Chicago Sun-Times
“Riccardo Muti lights the fuse to music that is already on fire.” — Corriere della Sera
“A performance for the ages.” — Chicago on the Aisle
ÉLÉGIE (2021)
Piano - Vincenzo Scalera
ÉLÉGIE | Sony Classical, Lenø Records
Piano - Vincenzo Scalera
Sony Classical is proud to present Élégie, the new album from the Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, showcasing her in the song repertoire to which she has a special connection despite being best known as a star of the world's greatest opera houses. Riccardo Muti has called her 'without doubt the best Verdi mezzo-soprano today on the planet,' but here she reveals another side to her art. The album is released July 9, 2021, and pre-orders are available now. - courtesy Jensen Artists
ANITA (2018)
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI
Director - Giacomo Sagripanti
ANITA | Sony Classical
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI | Director - Giacomo Sagripanti
For her highly anticipated first album on Sony Classical she joins forces with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and the dynamic conductor Giacomo Sagripanti, winner of the Young Conductor prize at the 2016 International Opera Awards. The programme naturally includes two arias – the seductive ‘Habanera’ and ‘Seguidilla’ – from what has become her signature role. The selection goes on to reflect her broad dramatic and dramatic range, and personal history. It includes Lyubasha’s haunting a cappella song from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, an opera in which she subsequently sang under Daniel Barenboim at Berlin’s Staatsoper.
Prince Igor (2015)
Met Metropolitan Orchestra
Director - Gianandrea Noseda
PRINCE IGOR | Metropoletan Opera
For the first time in nearly 100 years Borodins defining Russian epic, famous for its Polovtsian Dances, comes to the MET for the first time with a Slavic, Russophone cast.
Dmitri Tcherniakovs production is a brilliant psychological journey through the mind of its conflicted hero, and his […] wonderful staging is dreamlike, wrenchingly human and viscerally theatrical. (New York Times)
Star bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov takes on the monumental title role and […] masterfully probed Igors guilt and regret. (Wall Street Journal)
Orfeo ed Euridice
BandArt Orchestra
Director - Gordan Nikolić
ORFEO ED EURIDICE | Festival Castell de Peralada
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the small but ambitious Castell de Peralada Festival, the famous Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus and its director Carlus Padrissa staged Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. A splendid cast as well as an avant-garde production that makes extensive use of large projection screens and includes the members of the orchestra as actors onstage result in one of the most exciting opera performances in recent years. La Fura's concept is surprising and its originality demands our attention ... it gives rise to moments of great beauty and evocative power (El País).