Verdi: Great Verdi Voices (CD, Br-Klassik)

Between 1962 and 1984 the radio recordings were made which are compiled on the BR-Klassik CD under the title “Great Verdi Voices”. All of them offer an impressive view of the vocal presence of their well-known interpreters, their characteristics and their always highly sensitive empathy for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera music; Most of the examples are also of historical importance, as they once captured a singer at the absolute height of his career and his vocal abilities, and sometimes they document repertoire rarities that are otherwise undocumented, such as in the case of Arleen Auger, who was hardly known as a Verdi interpreter. The recordings organized and produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk, most of which were recorded at concerts in Munich, but some were also made as studio productions, also offer a highly interesting insight into the development of Verdi reception in those more than two decades as it turned out to be Germany has completed. Anneliese Rothenberger is an example of the fact that Italian operas were sung in German on German theaters at that time. which was not interpreted in the original language, but is still hardly less haunting. A number of recordings also offer interesting alternatives to the studio recordings made at the time, in which the renowned singers also took part. Their names read like a who’s who of the most excellent Verdi interpretation: Arleen Auger, Sena Jurinac, Leontyne Price, Margaret Price, Anneliese Rothenberger and Julia Varady are the ladies presented here, Wladimir Atlantow, Carlo Bergonzi, Franco Bonisolli, Renato Bruson, Piero Cappuccilli, José Carreras, Nicolai Gedda, Neil Shicoff and Giuseppe Taddei the gentlemen. The selection of arias and opera scenes ranges from Verdi’s early operas “Ernani”, “Macbeth” and “Il corsaro” (“The Corsair”) to the middle ones “Rigoletto”, “Il trovatore” (“The Troubadour”) and “La traviata” “and the later” Un ballo in maschera “(” A masked ball “),” Don Carlo “and” Aida “up to his later works” Otello “and” Falstaff “. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester always accompanies you under changing, but equally respectable German and international conductors. The title of the CD Great Verdi Voices newly released by BR Klassik says it all: it is about the most important Verdi voices of that time and probably of all times. The arias and scenes, arranged according to Verdi’s creative chronology, are also a representative cross-section of his compositional uvre.