Catalogue

Summary:

“This live Liverpool performance (2008) goes swimmingly under Vasily Petrenko. Soprano Dora Rodrigues has allure as Susanna, with baritone Marc Canturri graceful as her volatile husband … Canturri is solid [in the songs] too, with Anna Tilbrook supplying spirited accompaniments.” ★★★★ BBC Music Magazine

“The songs, a set of five, are as charming as the opera, and like the opera are full of elusive musical allusions. The excellent Anna Tilbrook accompanies, and in the opera the Liverpool Philharmonic plays stylishly for its young conductor Vasily Petrenko.” – Gramophone

“This addictive entertainment was as much a showcase for Vasily Petrenko and the Liverpool Phil as it was for Canturri’s incisive, handsome baritone and Rodrigues’s smooth, well-focused soprano” – The Independent on Sunday (on the live performance of Susanna’s Secret in Liverpool)

Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO first collaborated with the Liverpool-based European Opera Centre on a Russian double-bill of Shostakovich’s The Gamblers and Rothschild’s Violin by Fleishman. The resulting 2-CD set on Avie garnered a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and contributed to Petrenko’s winning the Young Artist of the Year accolade at the 2007 Gramophone Awards. The team reunites for a rare, live recording of Wolf-Ferrari’s humorous one-act opera, Susanna’s Secret. Wolf-Ferrari’s neo-classical score is as seductive as the Edwardian plot in which the new wife of a jealous Count attempts to hide her smoking habit. When he catches her, their improbable reconciliation results in a rather different sort of smouldering. The young singers of the EOC throw themselves into their roles with appropriate passion. The recording is uniquely rounded out with Wolf-Ferrari’s Serenata, five songs extracted from his seldom-heard Italian Songbook.

Tracklist:

ERMANNO WOLF-FERRARI (1876–1948)

Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna’s Secret) – An intermezzo in one act
Libretto by Enrico Golisciani (1848–1919)
1. Overture
2. Mantiglia grigia… cappellino rosa… figura snella…
3. Ben lo conosco, l’odor molesto
4. Evitiam che un domestico sospetti ch’io sospetto
5. Guardala!… Con quell’aria ingenua e franca
6. Dal suo gesticolare mi sembra di capir…
7. Ah! L’odore fatal sin nella veste!
8. Ah!!! Scellerata! Da tua madre andro tosto a reclamare!
9. Intermezzo
10. Via cosi non mi lasciate
11. Bravo Sante. Chiudiam tutte le porte
12. Chi e la? Son io, Susanna
13. Oh gioia la nube leggera cogli occhi socchiusi seguire
14. Ti colgo questa volta!

Dora Rodrigues, soprano
Marc Canturri, baritone
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko, conductor

Serenata – Cinque canti per baritono
15. Si dà principio a questa serenata
16. Alza le trecce bionde e non dormire
17. O tu che dormi e riposata stai
18. Il letto ti sia fatto di vïole
19. Commiato – E giacchè vedo qui l’alba apparire

Marc Canturri, baritone
Anna Tilbrook, piano