Richard Strauss - Giuseppe Verdi - Gaetano Donizetti - Jules Massenet - Giacomo Puccini - Georges Bizet - Camille Saint-Saëns - Leoš Janáček

Melodies of Love and Death - Opera Senza Parole

Osiris Trio

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917237320

Catalog number: CC 72373
Releasedate: 03-06-11

This is opera senza parole, these are timeless melodies of love and death. The strength of opera melodies is so strong that even without words the messages will come across. When these araia's are performed by a trio of world class, these small jewels really come alive from the very first note. This is pure joy, this is a feast of recognition, this is great music, brilliantly played by the Osiris Trio!

Superb arrangements made by Bob Zimmerman of opera aria's for piano trio
Brilliantly played by the Osiris Trio, which has international quality
Won awards such as the `Philip Morris Finest Selection` award and the Annie Bosboom Prijs
Critics praise this piano trio such as for instance the New York Times: "...showed graciousness and musical fitness; created a twist of edgy brilliance...." and Le Figaro: "..a beautifully controlled tension with an innate sense of true poetry."
A bouquet of arias, for the most part Italian, but also many French, and for the colour contrast, two Czech and one German
A feast of recognition these opera aria's without words!

“Melodies of Love and Death”, “Opera Senza Parole”... what remains of the famous arias if the singers hand over their notes to their colleagues the instrumentalists? Opera is theatre, drama, driven by stories, action, the turbulent emotions of people: the passion of lovers, the vengeance of enemies. Can a violin make love to a cello? Can a piano take vengeance on strings? But, then, there is a reason the great composers are immortal. Their melodies, harmonies and rhythms transcend the concrete fact of the plot and lend to the drama in words the abstraction of the primal themes of human existence as it turns inexorably toward pitiful failure. And we listeners can’t get enough of it! We want to hear all these melodies time and again, and through them, experience what the unfortunate opera personages experience. We want to share in the passion of Love, tremble before the terrors of Death. All too often, we hardly know what an aria is literally about, and, strangely enough, we are often content to understand little or nothing of all the lyrical words, whether they are simple doggerel or poetry of the highest literary quality—the music tells the whole story!" (arranger Bob Zimmerman in the linernotes of this cd

Song to the moon (from Rusalka)