The Music of Semiramide

Arias From 18th and 19th Centuries For Soprano and Mezzo-Soprano

This elegant volume presents in first modern edition (and largely in first edition in absolute) thirteen Arias, in a reduction for Voice and Piano, from Operas of the 18th and 19th centuries dedicated to the fascinating personality of Semiramide. The publication is accompanying, in this rediscovering activity, the recording of Semiramide. La Signora regale (©2014 DHM-Sony), winner of The International Opera Award 2015.

Besides giving birth to an exciting musical journey on the traces of historical and human personality of the first Queen of the Orient, this collection is of a significant importance from a musicological point of view. In fact the publication of the scene from La morte di Semiramide – attributed to Sebastiano Nasolini and sung by Isabella Colbran in Naples in August 1815 – in which are contained large sections composed by Gioachino Rossini completely unknown before the mentioned recording Semiramide. La Signora regale (2014), is testifying de facto – albeit in disguise – Gioachino Rossini’s debut in Naples in an antecedent date compared to the one always believed. The same importance for the historian as the performer assumes, furthermore, the publication of the first version of the rossinian «Bel raggio lusinghier», reconstructed directly from the autograph manuscript of Semiramide, preserved today in Venice.

Between the copious and particularly beautiful musical pages proposed in the volume (that consent also to bring to light composers today unjustly forgotten as Bernasconi, Bertoni or Borghi and, at the same time, to discover jewels less known by celebrated Porpora, Caldara, Händel, Jommelli and Paisiello), are indicated the intense cavatina «Son infelice, son sventurata», that has been descovered to have been written by Girolamo Crescentini, as well as «Al mio pregar t’arrendi» from Semiramis by Manuel García (Ciudad de México, 1828), “saved” from a state of serious deterioration that has made almost illegible the autograph manuscript.