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.

“this DVD brings compelling accounts of the master at work, visually as well as aurally. There is a powerful intensity to the Beethoven overtures and the opening of William Tell is beautifully done, with glorious playing from the Berliners…There is plenty of fascinating archival material to see; and within the maestro's obviously glamorous, jet-set lifestyle, he emerges as a musical communicator of warmth - and humour too. A most revealing issue.” (The Penguin Guide)

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.

The gala evening at the Paris Opera on December 19, 1958 was announced in the press as ""the greatest show in the world". Maria Callas, at the height of her glory, performed for the first time in front of a Parisian audience. The diva delivered all the facets of her art through the Italian classics that she loved, with the theatrical genius that is proper to her. Paris gave her a triumphant evening!
The original recording of this evening, broadcast in Eurovision throughout Europe, has been newly restored with the greatest care.

The knock-out concert event of 2006! Anna Netrebko, Plácido Domingo and Rolando Villazón came together for one unforgettable evening of opera arias and ensembles. This is not a cross-over concert, but a genuine collection of operatic gems, performed by three thrilling performers in front of an audience of 20,000 roaring fans. The excitement in the audience brings out the best in each performer. With selections from L'Arlesiana, Gianni Schicchi, Otello, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, Giuditta, La Bohème, West Side Story and much more! Marco Armiliato leads the Deutschen Oper Berlin Orchestra.

In a follow-up to her acclaimed album of Mahler songs, Christiane Karg takes us on a Christmas tour, in the select company of fellow music-makers. Revisiting holiday memories through the eyes of a child, but with the benefit of her superb artistry as a lieder specialist, the German soprano shines a light on some enchanting rarities of German and French repertoire, along with examples of Spanish, Basque, and Scandinavian traditions… A treasure trove of hidden gems!

“Horne is the great star focus…She is predictably brilliant in the coloratura passages, with her commanding presence not getting in the way of a sense of fun…The production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle is brightly attractive, and the direction is at the service of the performance. Levine conducts with characteristic energy.” Penguin Guide

The first joint album from countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and guitarist Thibaut Garcia, À sa guitare takes it's name from a song by the 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc. But it's frame of reference is extraordinarily wide - both culturally and stylistically. It's 22 tracks range across 400 years and music by composers and songwriters from France, Britain, Austria, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and the USA. "The album is a journey between different cultures, different continents and different languages," says Philippe Jaroussky, "but each piece is a world in itself. The idea was to take some risks… sometimes moving to a completely different world between one track and the next." "We can evoke hugely different colours as we juggle between renaissance music and a song by Barbara," explains Thibaut Garcia. "It's our job to play with a palette of colours to produces something unique… We put a great deal of thought into the album, but we also put our hearts into it."

Rossini’s second masterpiece La Cenerentola premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome on the 25th of January 1817, less than a year after the first performance of his The Barber of Seville and it ́s pure, perfect Rossini. In this production, a set-up made to celebrate 200 years Rossini in Rome, Emma Dante ́s “rousing Cinderella” (Corriere della Sera) “succeeds in impressing her own contemporary vision on a classic masterpiece, in perfect symbiosis with the spirit of Rossini.” (Opera Now) “Alejo Pérez deserves the credit for an excellent ensemble and a dazzling rhythmic rendering of the Rossinian score.” (La Nazione – Il Resto del Carlino – Il Giorno)

The title La Gazza Ladra is translated as ‘The Thieving Magpie’, which as expected is a story based around the theft of some silverwear which a magpie has absconded for its nest, a crime which a servant girl is wrongly accused of. La Gazza Ladra is an "opera semiseria", a genre from Rossini’s time which was used to define a drama with a happy ending in which the innocent victim, unjustly condemned, should be saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour and the rascal persecutor punished.

Of Rossini’s thirty-nine operas Il barbiere di Siviglia is the only one to have remained in the repertoire since its composition. When the composer met Beethoven in Vienna the great man told Rossini to only compose buffa operas like Il Barbiere. Verdi was also a great admirer of the work as he was of Rossini’s opera seria and particularly his William Tell. Il Barbiere was one of the works Rossini squeezed in during his contract as Musical Director of the Royal Theatres at Naples and where he was supposed to present two new works every year.

Cecilia Bartoli made this recording when she was still in her early 20s, a mezzo with a rich, vibrant voice who not only copes brilliantly with the technical demands but who also gives a winningly provocative characterization. Like the conductor, Bartoli is wonderful at bringing out the fun.

Anticipating the 50th anniversary of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2022, we present their complete recordings on DG. The intriguing sound culture of Orpheus, especially of the string section, is often explained as a result of the cooperative mindset of the orchestra and its artistic process of rehearsing.

Gioachino Rossini's Messa di Gloria of 1821, right in the middle of the years when he ruled the operatic scene, has been less often recorded than the free-spirited and personal Stabat Mater of his old age. Various reasons could be advanced for this comparative neglect. Stacked up against Rossini's operas of the period it's something of a mixed bag. Some of it is intensely operatic, but it also looks back to the past with its giant contrapuntal "Cum sancto spiritu" (the mass consists of a Kyrie and Gloria). From the point of view of the cult of individual Romantic genius, a major problem is that Rossini may have had a collaborator on the work, one Pietro Raimondi, who honed some of the more polyphonic passages.