Domenico Cimarosa’s 1794 Commedia per musica; Le astuzie femminili, is extremely silly. It’s like an early Rossini farsa but a full two acts running almost three hours. There’s a girl called Bellina, who bears a more than passing resemblance to Rossini’s Rosina. She has been left a fortune by her father contingent on her marrying a dude from Naples called Don Giampaolo Lasagna. But she is in love with the penniless Filandro. Worse, her guardian, the notary Don Romualdo also wants to marry her despite having promised to marry his housekeeper Leonora. There’s also Ersilla, a friend of Bellina, who doesn’t seem to be in love with anybody.
Benjamin Appl’s latest CD is a selection of Schubert Lieder arranged for orchestra. Most of the arrangeents are by Max Reger or Anton Webern but there are a few surprising ones like an arrangement of “Ständchen” by Jaques Offenbach. The songs themselves are a mix of the very familiar; “Die Forelle”, “An die Musik”, and the less well known such as “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” but, to be honest, it’s mostly Schubert’s Greatest Hits.
Dancing with Love is a new CD of music by Afarin Mansouri on the theme of “love” in its many variants from the erotic to the transcendent. Eleven of the twelve tracks set Persian/Farsi poetry, from the 12th century CE to the present. The twelfth is a lament for solo flute. The musical style varies a lot with traditional Persian influences combining with modern Western compositional techniques in different ways. It leads to interesting results. Just to pick a few tracks, “Unattainable” for mezzo-soprano and piano sounds rather like a French chanson whereas a track like “Pain (Sorrow)” for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, piano, tar, cello and udu sounds much more like traditional Persian music. Other tracks incorporate electronics or jazz elements. One thing almost all the tracks have in common is that there’s a lot of melodic invention which makes it a very easy, as well as a very varied, listening experience.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
operaramblings 