Beauty and The Beast meets The Taming of The Shrew, and Juan Diego Florez is the Beast and the Shrew!
I have to admit from the start that I absolutely loved Matilde di Shabran since I first heard it as 2006 audio only release of Pesaro production and to be able to watch it finally and with even better cast is a dream comes true for me. I think music is first rate Rossini, not auto-pilot, especially ensemble pieces, which are among the best Rossini had ever written. I don't have any problems with the plot neither, yes it's a broad slapstick tongue-to-chick comedy, sort of Beauty and The Beast meets The Taming of The Shrew, but it's precisely the genre where Rossini still reigns supreme and with a capable cast it's a total delight. So, I don't think the music or the story were the real reasons why this opera went into oblivion for a century and a half - after its premiere in Rome in 1821, London in 1821 and New York in 1834, they were just a couple of staging until almost the end of 20th century. During all this time, there was simply no tenor capable of doing justice to extremely...
Never mind the plot, it's Flórez and Peretyako doing Rossini!
No-one however could possibly lay any kind of claim for there being anything like a credible plot or even credible characters in Matilde di Shabran, and musically, it's a bit Rossini on autopilot, but if writing for entertainment alone is justification enough for an opera, then that's certainly what Rossini delivers here. The work's true potential moreover is fully realised at the Rossini Opera Festival by some of the best Rossinian performers in the world today.
The plot however is just ridiculous. Corradino, the Ironheart, is a fearsome warrior ("a lion, an ogre, a devil"), who resides in a dark castle on a hill, with dire pronouncements placed around to strike fear into the hearts of the local villagers. The woman who is intent on storming Corradino's castle (metaphorically speaking) is of course Matilde di Shabran. Matilde has been left as a ward to Corradino by her father on his deathbed, the old man for some inexplicable reason thinking it was a great idea to...
Superb Pesaro production of delightful Rossini score
Once again, The Rossini Opera Festival has released an excellent dvd of a recent performance, this time the rarely seen Matidle di Shabran. And it is a winner on all fronts.
First, let's start with the opera itself. This is an "opera semisera", which is, in fact, a different animal from a buffo comedy. The tone of such a piece (like "la Gazza Ladra") is largely comic, sometimes with quite uproarious situations and staging. But about half way through, it becomes much darker, with the hero/heroine being threatened by real bad consequences- condemned to death here. The tone then become quite a bit darker (not farcically so, but actually so), before a happy ending where all is righted, and the hero(ine) reprieved.
Here, Corradino (villain) is a woman hater/everything hater and, though not evil, impossible to like. His comic servants (nothing new here) get along as best they can, though the villagers fear him. He is pursued ion marriage by the Countess D'Arco,...
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