Decca’s new release brings together five of the world’s most renowned countertenors, who bring the rich world of baroque opera to life. Once rarely heard, countertenors are now firmly established on the operatic stage and concert platform and their popularity has reached an all-time high. This album features virtuosic highlights from baroque opera and showcases the extraordinary abilities of five astonishing artists: Max Emanuel Cencic, Yuriy Mynenko, Valer Sabadus, Xavier Sabata and Vince Yi.

The most comprehensive edition devoted to Gioachino Rossini marking his 150th anniversary. Born in 1792, Rossini was the most popular opera composer of his time. Although he retired from the Opera scene in 1829, he continued to compose in other genres, including sacred music, piano and chamber works. He did gather his late works under the ironic title Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), which veils a true collection of masterworks.

In 1587, when the Cremona native Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) offered his first book of madrigals for printing, the popularity of the genre of little vocal pieces had just reached its pinnacle. Such great madrigalists as Luca Marenzio or Philippe de Monte where among the most distinguished composers of the day, and Palestrina, the great master of counterpoint, he just published his second book of madrigals a year earlier. Three years later, Monteverdi was employed as a singer and violist at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua, and the compositions published in his second volume of madrigals immediately made him a rising star among the Italian masters. Without exaggeration, we can call madrigals like Non si levava ancor or Ecco mormorar l’onde the hits of their day. In them, Monteverdi exhibits a highly advanced use of imitation and counterpoint by Italian standards, and he is innovative in his treatment of tone painting and in his a keen feeling for sustaining a dramatic arch extending above the individual compositions.

The Sanremo Music Festival 2020 (Italian: 70º Festival della Canzone Italiana di Sanremo 2020) was the 70th annual Sanremo Music Festival, a television song contest held in the Teatro Ariston of Sanremo and organised and broadcast by RAI. The show was held between 4 and 8 February 2020.

The Sanremo Music Festival 2019 (Italian: 69º Festival della Canzone Italiana di Sanremo 2019) was the 69th annual Sanremo Music Festival, a television song contest held in the Teatro Ariston of Sanremo and organised and broadcast by RAI. The show was held between 5 February 2019 and 9 February 2019. Claudio Baglioni was the artistic director of the contest, and co-hosted it with Virginia Raffaele and Claudio Bisio. 24 entries competed in one section only. Mahmood received first prize with his song "Soldi".

The most comprehensive edition devoted to Gioachino Rossini marking his 150th anniversary. Born in 1792, Rossini was the most popular opera composer of his time. Although he retired from the Opera scene in 1829, he continued to compose in other genres, including sacred music, piano and chamber works. He did gather his late works under the ironic title Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), which veils a true collection of masterworks.

The current renaissance in conjunction with the works of Giovanni Simone Mayr is not surprising, but is certainly necessary. With Demetrio, he left to posterity a masterpiece that belongs on the great stages of the world. Mayr’s late work is a mixture of romantic anticipation, stylistic reminiscences of Mozart and Haydn, bel canto elements and a touch of Rossini, all worked into a unique form. Of particular note is Mayr’s melodic inventiveness. Here OehmsClassics presents a live performace of Demetrio recorded at the Moutier Festival (Switzerland) in June 2011.

Following on from his phenomenally successful Grammy-nominated first Puccini album in 2015, “Nessun Dorma”, Jonas Kaufmann now presents a new album of Puccini highlights to mark the composer’s anniversary year 2024. “The greatest tenor of his generation” (The Guardian) has selected for his new recording six great duets and scenes with six outstanding sopranos – legendary love scenes, emotionally-charged Love Affairs. He is joined by sopranos Anna Netrebko (in Manon Lescaut), Asmik Grigorian (in Il Tabarro), Malin Byström (in La Fanciulla del West), Maria Agresta (in Madama Butterfly), Pretty Yende (in La Bohème) and Sonya Yoncheva (in Tosca). Two famous tenor arias “E lucevan le stelle” (Tosca) and “Che gelida manina!” (La Bohème) complete the attractive programme, with Asher Fisch conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The album is presented in limited edition deluxe packaging, including printed interview with Jonas Kaufmann, full lyrics, photos and many of the original Ricordi opera posters.

Alessandro Scarlatti wrote a huge number of chamber cantatas – about 600, in fact – most of which are, like the five delightful examples on this disc, for solo voice. These ones are sung by countertenor Brian Asawa with stylish support from members of the Arcadian Academy, who provide varying types of accompaniment, sometimes with continuo alone, at other times with a larger instrumental colloquium. Only one of the five cantatas here, Clori vezzosa, e bella, is written for voice and basso continuo throughout, the others calling for two violins and, on occasion, viola. The first work in the programme is the most elaborate of the group with its three-movement instrumental introduction and four each of alternating recitatives and arias.

Now unfairly stigmatised (due to Pushkin and the film Amadeus) as Mozart’s sinister Nemesis, Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) enjoyed the more successful career as an opera composer. His comedy Trofonio’s Cave, written to a clever libretto by Giambattista Casti, was staged at Vienna’s Burgtheater in October 1785, just a few months before Figaro debuted there, and kept its place in the repertory for 30 years. If posterity gave the palm to Mozart, his contemporaries preferred Salieri. And indeed the Italian’s attractive score to this text describing the effects of entering a magic cave upon two pairs of lovers – one quiet and earnest, the other noisy hedonists – is full of good things.

"Arias for mezzo soprano", it says, and authentically minded readers may already have noted that most of them would be sung by a countertenor these days, being originally for castrati. A little while ago I reviewed a record, "Arias for Farinelli", by Vivica Genaux, which came with a fascinating essay by René Jacobs in which he argued that the nearest we can get these days to the sound of the castrati is not the countertenor, which he rudely says should really be called a "falsettist", but the mezzo soprano, who is able to reproduce the strong, warm chest tones in her lower range which contemporary commentators tell us were at the base of the castrato voice production, the voice becoming sweeter and softer as it goes into the higher range.