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Gaetano Donizetti - La Fille du regiment / Dessay, Florez, Palmer, Corbelli, French, Campanella, Pelly (Royal Opera House 2007)

starring: Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Florez, Felicity Palmer, Alessandro Corbelli, Dawn French
directed by: Laurent Pelly

April 15, 2008
I remember seeing a traditional La Fille a long time ago; I was bored stiff. But on the strength of the many 5 star reviews, I took a risk on this La Fille.

Do it! Like the Le Elisir d'amore with Netrebko and Villazon Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore / Eschwe, Netrebko, Villazon, Wiener Staatsoper, it takes middling music and makes it tremendous fun. Don't let the anachronistic setting (WW I?) scare you off; this is one of those cases where it works.

Dessay starts out as a near-manic, but her acting quickly turns the prosaic story into a dramatic hoot.

And then there's Florez' high C's: enough said.

I haven't seen the competing La Fille with Ciofi and Florez, but this one is simply too much fun. ... Read More:

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Gianni Schicci [Blu-ray]

starring: Alessandro Corbelli, Sergei Leiferkus, Marie McLaughlin, Felicity Palmer, Sally Matthews
directed by: Francesca Kemp, Ann Abel Arden

September 30, 2008
I remember seeing a traditional La Fille a long time ago; I was bored stiff. But on the strength of the many 5 star reviews, I took a risk on this La Fille.

Do it! Like the Le Elisir d'amore with Netrebko and Villazon Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore / Eschwe, Netrebko, Villazon, Wiener Staatsoper, it takes middling music and makes it tremendous fun. Don't let the anachronistic setting (WW I?) scare you off; this is one of those cases where it works.

Dessay starts out as a near-manic, but her acting quickly turns the prosaic story into a dramatic hoot.

And then there's Florez' high C's: enough said.

I haven't seen the competing La Fille with Ciofi and Florez, but this one is simply too much fun. ... Read More:

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Rossini - La Cenerentola

starring: Cecilia Bartoli, Enzo Dara, Raúl Giménez, Alessandro Corbelli, Michele Pertusi
directed by: Christoph Eschenbach, Fabio Sparvoli

June 11, 2002
While this is a delightful opera, I felt that the production was lacking in many ways. For one thing, Cecilia Bartoli does not look at all as Cinderella should. Mostly because she is obviously overweight, it's hard to see why the prince is SO captivated by her appearance. The prince himself did not look half as handsome (or young) as Prince Charming should, although I could forgive these small faults if those were my only objections to this recording. I realize that Raul Giminez and Cecilia Bartoli were not chosen for their looks but for their vocal talent. However, that's not the only problem. The make-up people did a HORRENDUOUS job on the prince's valet, Dandini, making him as ugly as possible. The step-sisters were worse...who's idea was it to make ... Read More:

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Puccini - Gianni Schicchi / Corbelli, Palmer, Giordano, Matthews, McLaughlin, Jurowski, Glyndebourne Opera

starring: Massimo Giordano, Felicity Palmer, Alessandro Corbelli, Vladimir Jurowski, Marie McLaughlin

July 19, 2005
This is a truly brilliant production of Puccini's comic masterpiece. Although this one-acter, the third in Puccini's "Il Trittico" (trilogy) of one-act operas dealing with the subject of death, is less than an hour long, it packs a more than satisfying punch in the way of great music, well-drawn characters, and entertaining plot.

Annabel Arden has done a marvelous job in drawing out the dark side of humanity in the story, which keeps this production from veering into caricature and slapstick; yet humor is still here in abundance. Vladimir Jurowski leads the London Philharmonic in a brilliant, well-paced reading of Puccini's motif-packed score.

In the title role, Alessandro Corbelli once more shows us why he is considered one of today's ... Read More:

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Mozart - Cosi fan Tutte / Dessi, Ziegler, Corbelli, Scarabelli, Kundlak, Desderi; Muti, La Scala Opera

starring: Daniela Dessi, Jozef Kundlak, Delores Ziegler, Alessandro Corbelli, Riccardo Muti
directed by: Adelina Scarabelli

September 21, 2004
In several of the scenes in Act Two, the conductor Muti, larger than life, is superimposed upon the stage action, in some cases completely blocking out the singers. I found this disconcerting, particularly distracting as the opera is ending. None of the reviewers have mentioned this; if I had known, I should never have purchased this DVD version of the opera. I have never seen such disrespect for the performers, nor such disregard for viewers like me who want to watch the performance, not the conductor.

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Donizetti - Don Pasquale

starring: Alessandro Corbelli, Eva Mei, Roberto De Candia, Antonino Siragusa, Gerard Korsten

November 21, 2006
This is an opera which deserves to be staged once in a while, and a DVD which is enjoyable enough to watch once. Rent it, don't buy it.
Four stars for the opera within the canon of Donizetti's buffa. It's quite ingenious musically, the ensembles reaching par with Rossini, but there's no momentum or development, just one musical trick after another. Much the same might be said of the comic action, which is so much stock slapstick that the viewer has to choose to laugh out of courtesy. In short, it's not a great libretto but it makes for a better evening than Fox sit-coms.
Likewise the performance: four stars, almost five, for making the best of an occasionally perfunctory score. The tenor Siragusa has a beautiful almost feminine voice, well suited to his role as a ... Read More:

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Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri

starring: Jennifer Larmore, Bruce Ford, Simone Alaimo, Alessandro Corbelli, Jeannette Fischer
directed by: Andrei Serban

April 24, 2007
For a load of fun this opera takes the cake. It is high camp, and very well acted as well as sung, by the end of the opera i was left bemused .
The 3 main characters cast a shadow of doubt on my mind , did Isabella (sung by Jennifer Larmore) have a fetish for leather or plastic (her costume gave me that impression) or was she just a merry hooker.
Lindoro,(sung by Bruce Ford) was he the boy friend or the pimp as well as being the favourite slave of Mustafa
And was Mustafa (sung by Simone Alaimo) the client (or was this just my wishful thinking??) as well as the egotistical Bey of Algiers.
Everything in this production was acted and played to the limit the singing was excellent, the costumes outragious.
It is a fun filled production and well worth ... Read More:

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Giordano - Fedora

starring: Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Alessandro Corbelli, Olga Sukarev, Gianandrea Gavazzeni

October 31, 2006
There is another DVD of 'Fedora' starring Mirella Freni and Plácido Domingo and I think it was made within a year or two -- in the mid-1990s -- of this one; that one was at the Met and was conducted by Claudio Abbado. This one is a live performance at La Scala Milan and is conducted by the 82-year-old Gianandrea Gavazzeni, an acknowledged master in this repertoire. I've not seen the Met DVD and cannot make a direct comparison of the two versions. But I can say that I watched this one with great interest and found myself drawn into the highly melodramatic goings-on of Fedora and her lover Loris Ipanov, which requires a fair suspension of disbelief. Freni plays the haunted Fedora with passion and verisimilitude. It is unfortunate that there is no great soprano aria in the opera, or at ... Read More:

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Donizetti - Roberto Devereux

starring: Giuseppe Sabbatini, Ildiko Komlosi, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, Roberto Servile, Alessandro Corbelli

June 27, 2000
I now have two Roberto Devereux's on DVD, one with Beverley Sills & this one with Alexandrina Pendatchanska. I raved about the Sills recording; but having seen this one, I am gob-smacked. I thought Sills could act! You haven't seen anything till you see Pendatchanska's Elizabetta. It is so life-like, it's scary. To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of this woman until now. I did not know what I was getting, as I did not know any of the cast, so I was apprehensive when I first played this DVD.
All I can say, I was glad no one could see me when it finished as I was clapping and shouting like a fool. I was in tears & could hardly speak as I was so emotional. Never have I seen such a production like this. The staging, cast, costumes, lighting & Orchestra were much more ... Read More:

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Rossini - La Scala di Seta / Luciana Serra, David Kuebler, Alessandro Corbelli, Alberto Rinaldi, Jane Bunnell, David Griffith, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Schwetzingen Opera

starring: Luciana Serra, David Kuebler, Alessandro Corbelli, Alberto Rinaldi (III), Jane Bunnell
directed by: Claus Viller

March 21, 2006
The music and singing are for 5 stars, specially Luciana Serra. Her technique is really great. Her coloratura is perfect and reminds Sutherland's because both had a perfect technique, specially coloratura, but not a particularlly pretty voice. As a reviewer said in other review they don't make singers like those now. What bothers me in this DVD is the stage and costumes as in all other DVD recorded at Schwetzingen, always so classical. They need a Dario Fo or similar to create something different, a new atmosphere as it is happening arround the world. Examples are La Gazetta (Barcelona), all the Mozart series and the Netrebko-Villazon Traviata at Salzburg, many others at the Zurich Opera (Cosi fan tutte, Macbeth, etc), Trovatore, Faust (Alagna-Terfel) and others at Covent Garden, to name a few. ... Read More: