COMPOSERS: Gomes
LABELS: Sony
WORKS: Il Guarany
PERFORMER: Hao Jiang Tian, Verónica Villarroel, Plácido Domingo, Chorus of the Oper der Stadt Bonn, Beethovenhalle Orchestra, Bonn/John Neschling
CATALOGUE NO: S2K 66273 DDD
Styled ‘the national opera’ of Brazil (though its libretto is Italian), this intriguing rarity owes more to Donizetti and Verdi than to the traditional music of the composer’s Guaraní Indian ancestors. It’s a stirring, if only intermittently exotic, work (stage directions call for a bugle made of human thigh bone), but this rapturously received live performance has much to commend it, especially Villarroel’s effervescent coloratura and Domingo’s forceful Guaraní chief. Claire Wrathall
Gomes
Styled ‘the national opera’ of Brazil (though its libretto is Italian), this intriguing rarity owes more to Donizetti and Verdi than to the traditional music of the composer’s Guaraní Indian ancestors. It’s a stirring, if only intermittently exotic, work (stage directions call for a bugle made of human thigh bone), but this rapturously received live performance has much to commend it, especially Villarroel’s effervescent coloratura and Domingo’s forceful Guaraní chief. Claire Wrathall
Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:06 pm