Mercadante - Il Bravo - Ferro (76, Fonit Cetra)

ClassicMusicCafe

[maxgutbrod]

Excellent recording of a highly interesting work with excellent singers and adequate, dramatic reading, a maybe better version than the Wexford one that also is on youtube. In particular it is good to have real bass voices. (I remember Gabrielle Ferro well from his time at the Stuttgart Opera, where he had to fill in when the controversial decisions of the opera direction for the likes of Denis Russell Davies lead to impasses and the likes of Leitner, Carlos Kleiber and Silvio Varviso were remembered with too much of a regret. Ferro was a reliable, tastefull specialist for ever new works, as notable in the then second row as Janos Kulka was).

On Mercadante, different from typical, I believe he is more relevant than just a predecessor of Verdi, just look at the different characters in his duos, but this should be further discussed separately.

[maxgutbrod]

Antonio Savastano (tenor)
Gino Sinimberghi (tenor)
Maria Parazzini,
Miwako Matsumoto, Paolo Washington bass,
William Johns (tenor)