Orlando finto pazzo ('Orlando feigns madness') was the second of Vivaldi's numerous operas, and his first for the Venetian stage. The story of Orlando's madness is taken not from the usual source, Ariosto's poem Orlando furioso, but Boiardo's earlier Orlando innamorato, a similarly tragicomic mix of love, intrigue and magic. In Ariosto's poem Orlando's madness is real, but here he pretends it for no obvious reason; in fact it's no more than a couple of episodes in a convoluted and unengaging plot built around a lovepentangle (no less), and further complicated by various disguises and rampant dissembling.

In collaboration with the Opéra de Nice and with the Ensemble Baroque de Nice, Dynamic releases a Vivaldian rarity, Rosmira Fedele, first staged at Venice’s Teatro Sant’Angelo on 27th January 1738. Written on a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia, Rosmira Fedele is the last opera by Vivaldi that has come down to us. Written three years before the composer’s death, this work heralds the end of one of the most fertile theatrical careers in the history of music.

Using the critical edition by Azio Corghi, this recording of L’Italiana in Algeri was made at a jubilee performance of the XXth Rossini in Wildbad Festival in 2008. For his tenth opera, the already celebrated 21-year-old Rossini wanted ‘a humorous libretto full of spectacle’. This spirited opera, completed in barely a month, scored an immediate hit and its manic atmosphere of ‘organized, total lunacy’, as Stendhal put it, has ensured its enduring popularity.

First staged in Naples in 1819, Rossini’s opera La donna del lago is based on Walter Scott’s romantic poem The Lady of the Lake, setting a precedent for later composers, who also drew on Scott for their plots. Set in exotic 16th-century Scotland, the opera deals with the conflict between the Highland clansmen under Douglas and King James V, who generously forgives his enemy and allows the betrothal of his beloved Ellen, Douglas’s daughter, to his former enemy, Malcolm.

Baroque music is not the usual province of soprano Anna Netrebko, or contralto Marianna Pizzolato, or conductor Antonio Pappano, or the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Roma, so the listener might approach this tribute to the 300th anniversary of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi with some skepticism, but the performers do a terrific job. The orchestra uses modern instruments, so this is never going to be mistaken for a recording by Baroque specialists, but everyone involved approaches the challenge with such sensitivity and such evident excitement that listeners who don't demand absolute adherence to cutting-edge developments in early music practice are likely to be swept up.

The great writer Stendhal wrote of Il viaggio a Reims that “this opera is a feast”. The plot is a contemporary farce tailor-made for a particular occasion—the coronation festivities of Charles X—though Rossini valued the music so highly that he reused at great part of the score three years later in the opera Le Comte Ory. With a cast of ten principal and eight smaller rôles, this sparkling work is heard complete for the first time and in accordance with the critical edition prepared by the Fondazione Rossini and Casa Ricordi.

Following his triumphant visit to Vienna in 1822, when several of his operas were extremely well-received, international success beckoned for Rossini. First performed at La Fenice, Venice in 1823, Semiramide was Rossini’s last Italian opera, written at the height of his creative powers. Its subject is Greek tragedy for which librettist Gaetano Rossi drew on an adaptation by Voltaire. Instrumentally sophisticated and classically structured, the opera remains one of the most remarkable examples of Rossini’s cultivation of bel canto.

Juan Diego Flórez stars in the only available blu-ray version of Zelmira, filmed at the celebrated Rossini Festival in the composer s home town of Pesaro. The final opera Rossini wrote for Naples is a dramatic and musical tour de force and a magnificent showcase for the bel canto superstar of our time. Recorded in high definition at the 2009 Festival, Giorgio Barberio Corsettis production places the classical tale, set during the Trojan Wars, in modern times and modern dress. Joining Juan Diego Flórez are a major international cast, described as near miraculous by Opera Today and led by American mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich in the virtuosic title role. The evening remained another distinguished triumph for Juan Diego Flórez as Prince Ilo, whose arrival in his homeland, to rescue Zelmira, was marked by a dazzling tenorial display which evoked a nearly twenty-minute ovation (Opera Today) .

With this second contribution to the Vivaldi Edition, Fabio Biondi and his ensemble Europa Galante sign here the recording of the twentieth opera of the collection - a pasticcio in which Vivaldi ‘recycles’ hit tunes from the ‘World of Warcraft’ operas of his contemporaries.

Fernando is the abandoned first draft of Handel’s opera Sosarme (performed at the King’s Theatre in February 1732)… Curtis’s pacing and shaping of Handel’s music is consistently subtle, astutely rhetorical and firmly connected to the libretto text. Although it might be possible to explore firmer muscularity and create a more vivid sense of surprise in the quicker music, there is something to be said for Curtis’s shrewd reservation of such effects for when it is truly vital for the drama. For instance, Marianna Pizzolato’s powerful arias “Vado al campo” and “Cuor di madre e cuor di moglie” are potently delivered moments of severe agitated passion that are all the more effective for the sweeter elegance that pervades much of this lovely score.

Il Marito Disperato was a very popular opera in the late 18th century, premiered in 1785 and revised for more performances in 1798. The fact that it has such a long and illustrious performance history and has since fallen into oblivion explains why the San Carlo Theatre thought it worthy of revival. The score is exceedingly lively and clever, based on a libretto that is clever as well as hilarious, so much so that even Mozart, in his Don Giovanni, saw it fit to ‘borrow’ from Il Marito Disperato (the statute scene)./quote]