Customer Reviews

Cavalli: Gli amori d'Apollo e di Dafne

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

i do not agree with the other comments,even if you are not a baroque specialist,which they are by his words,this recording it is something to be treasured.The story told here is moving,and if you know italian, bring tears at your eyes at some passages, maybe it is not period-instrumented,but the voices do their job,especially mario zeffiri as apollo,carlo lepore as peneo and mariana pizzolato as dafne.Anyone that say they are amateurs must try to sing like them.It is easier destroy than create and this is a worthy creation if you have the open mind and ears.do not believe the voices of the negativity,if you do so, you do not exercise your judgement,trust me, i have heard some opera,and if i were to follow the opinion of some comments,i would not have listened some.Try yourself,if you do not like,fine,but say it so,it is not your liking,but let others try, no one it is the arbiter of music.opera do not need people trying that other people do not listen an opera because they did not like the performance.Grazie, maestro Zedda, per questa registrazione.as of june 2010, i bought the other recording of this opera,with Gabriel Garrido and the Ensemble Elyma, and listening to it,being on period instruments and not live, made me appreciate more this live recording, and taught me that the Venetian operas of the public theatres in the Cavalli era,like this one, had sparse instruments and relied more in the voice,that is why the recitatives are so long and magnificients,a strange case of less is more.That is not saying that the Garrido set is bad,no, quite the contrary,it is excellent,but the difference is not as much as in an opera by ,let us say ,Handel,because the original instrumentation was not large,and the voices were the REAL IMPORTANT instrument.

I agree with the other reviewer - this is an abysmal performance, especially given the generally high quality of contemporary performances of seventeenth-century opera these days. It is deeply disappointing that this is the only available recording of Cavalli's Gli amori..., and in many cases I'd say that even a middling recording of an important work is better than none at all, but this particular recording would do much to turn off a listener who has not heard Cavalli performed well, and thus does a major disservice. Stay away.

I bought this recording last week. I didn't have time to listen to it until yesterday and I only wish I'd listened to it before I bought it.

I had some high hopes for this recording. However, I am usually forgiving of slightly less than perfect recordings if the singers, musicians and conductor exhibit a dedication to and love of the music and the composer. The conductor here does exhibit a love of a composer, unfortunately, the composer he loves is manifestly NOT Francesco Cavalli! I get the impression that he would have rather been conducting Rossini, Donizetti or Verdi or, maybe even Puccini!

The youth orchestra on this recording is playing music and playing it reasonably well - with their modern instruments and a warm vibrato. However, the composer on display here is usually the conductor, with his Rossini fantasies in the way of us hearing and feeling the music of Cavalli.

The singers sing with patently 19th century styles - or, should I say, patently old fashioned 20th century styles we normally associate with 19th century Grand Opera - wide and constant vibrato and a melodramatic style.

This isn't how Cavalli should be done. This isn't how a Cavalli opera needs to be presented. This isn't the sort of recording that is going to please fans of Cavalli's music. It won't please fans of Rossini and Verdi.

The whole enterprise is an unhappy fiasco.

I returned my copy to the music shop and demanded my money back.

Hopefully, my fellow music lovers won't have to get that far and they will give this hapless recording a wide berth in the first place.

Yes, we do need a recording of Gli Amori d'Apollo e di Dafne, but we need a sympathetic and stylish recording.