Donizetti: Olivo e Pasquale - BLU-RAY

Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes was among the many musicians who travelled to Italy to master the language and the rules of operatic works. He studied in Milan and succeeded in having a few operas staged at Italian venues, before returning to Brazil where he was hailed as the most famous living national composer. Gomes felt compelled to commit his work to the country's anti-slave cause, which was still legal practice then. Lo schiavo was therefore conceived as a politically engaged work. However, the issue was rather volatile and the composer had to change the contemporary time setting to a more distant one. In Brazil the opera was a triumph, but elsewhere it failed to gain popularity and soon fell into oblivion. This recording of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari's production documents the opera's first performance in modern times and reveals Gomes' flamboyant richness of melodic creativity, his sound grasp of construction, and a technical mastery of the theatrical mechanisms that are always of the highest level. InchThe most popular title of the entire Brazilian repertoire. The most represented and, perhaps, the most loved one.Inch (John Neschling, conductor)

Don Pasquale [BLU-RAY] Released 2014 product/publication from Opus 111

Royal Opera favourite Bryn Terfel heads the cast for this exhilarating production of Donizetti's comedy of domestic drama across two generations. Don Pasquale is the witty story of a middle-aged man whose supposed young wife runs rings around him - with her own ulterior romantic purpose in mind - and has long delighted and surprised audiences, not least as presented with the sparkle of it's music and the virtuoso skill of it's performers. Damiano Michieletto's production shows how contemporary the characters still are and how immediate and touching the story remains.