Audio: Dolby Digital, DTS surround
Video format: High Definition, NTSC Colour, Picture 16:9
Region Code: 0 (No regional coding - playable in all regions)
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish
Notes and synopsis: English, French, Italian, German
Running time: 120 minutes
Jules Massenet (1842-1912): Cherubin
Complete opera
Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
Emmanuele Villaume, conductor
Recorded live, Cagliari, January 2006
Cherubin - Michelle Breedt, soprano
L'Ensoleillad - Patrizia Ciofi, soprano
Nina - Carmela Remigio, soprano
Le Philosophe - Giorgio Surian, bass
La Comtesse - Teresa di Bari, soprano
La Baronne - Alessandra Palomba, mezzo
Le Comte - Nicola Ebau, baritone
Le Baron - Riccardo Novaro, baritone
Le Capitaine Ricardo - Emanuele Giannino, tenor
L'Aubergiste - George Mosley, baritone
Un Officier - Alessandro Perucca, bass
Dynamic, which has already published in CD and DVD other neglected Massenet works, now has the pleasure to offer music lovers another rarity, this Chérubin recorded live in Cagliari. The old Mozartian Cherubino of Le nozze di Figaro is no longer the young lad in his first naive contacts with women: his age moved on from 13 to 17 years and, of course, takes on more adolescent connotations. Massenet brings these aspects out well as he characterises Chérubin with vocal scoring that favours ample, intensely cantabile phrases, with leaps towards the acute register that give full vent to the lyrical soprano voice, with moments of sudden emphasis and equally rapid disappointments - a real tempest of hormones, light years away from the Voi che sapete of Mozart’s page boy. The orchestration, too, is noteworthy (not so grandiose as usual, lighter and more attentive to detail), some eighteenth-century echoes, various Mozart references, and Italian but especially Spanish accents which ”colour” the score at several points.
World Première recording