Michele Mariotti reviews
Verdi: I Lombardi Alla Prima Crociata
Francesco Meli, Angela Meade, Giuseppe Gipali, Alex Esposito; Teatro Regio Torino Chorus & Orchestra/Michele Mariotti (Dynamic)
Gluck: Orphée et Euridice
Juan Diego Flórez, Christiane Karg, Fatma Said; Hofesh Shechter Company; Chorus & Orchestra of Teatro Alla Scala/Michele Mariotti; dir. John Fulljames (Belvedere, DVD)
Watch Plácido Domingo performing Verdi's I Due Foscari
Just four years after its 1844 premiere, Verdi described this early opera as ‘a funeral with too uniform an atmosphere and colour from beginning to end’. There is some justification for this criticism: the opera presents a single dramatic situation that worsens rather than alters over the course of its three acts. Nevertheless it offers central roles with considerable potential, notably that of the elder of the two Foscari of the title – the Venetian doge unable to save his son from exile and himself from humiliating dismissal.