Every Friday we choose a monitor from a Naxos Music Group album launched twenty years in the past to supply the accompaniment for 5 minutes of your downtime.
This week’s decide from the Dynamic label (CDS488) relies on the story of Pia de’ Tolomei, a hapless noblewoman present in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Italian playwright Giacinto Bianco wrote a drama entitled Pia de’ Tolomei which was staged in Naples in 1936, and which Donizetti actually knew; Donizetti’s opera of the identical title premiered the next 12 months. The opera was staged till about 1860 earlier than disappearing from the repertoire; it wasn’t till 1967 that the work was revived. Right here’s the opera’s joyous conclusion which options soprano Patrizia Ciofi within the title function.
