Acclaimed Italian mezzo-soprano Annalisa Stroppa’s career began in 2011 when she made her debut as Cherubino in Mercadante’s I due Figaro conducted by Riccardo Muti at the Salzburger Festspiele. She has subsequently performed in major theatres around the world, including Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Teatro Real in Madrid, collaborating with conductors such as Roberto Abbado, Marco Armiliato, Zubin Mehta and Teodor Currentzis in operas, concerts and recitals. Recent engagements include Madama Butterfly at the Bregenzer Festspiele and Bayerische Staatsoper and Il barbiere di Siviglia at the theatres of Treviso and Padua.

www.annalisastroppa.it

Award-winning Mexican tenor Javier Camarena is a bel canto specialist, and regularly appears in leading roles alongside today’s foremost stars at the world’s top opera houses. Recent highlights include Elvino in La sonnambula at the Vienna State Opera, his signature role of Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore at the Staatsoper Munich alongside Pretty Yende, and Tonio in La Fille du régiment at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.

Camarena’s discography includes three solo titles for Sony and the acclaimed album Contrabandista for Decca. He also appears on numerous operatic audio-visual releases, including Falstaff (C Major) and Rossini’s Le Comte Ory with Cecilia Bartoli (Decca). In 2021 he was recognised as ‘Male Singer of the Year’ by the International Opera Awards.

javiercamarena.com

A highly sought-after lyric artist with a thriving international career, baritone Florian Sempey has appeared at the Opéra National de Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, with orchestral collaborations including the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Orchestre National de France. Sempey studied under Maryse Castets at the Bordeaux Conservatoire and debuted as Papageno at the Opéra National de Bordeaux. In 2022 he was honoured with formal recognition for his contribution to opera when the French Government awarded him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

www.floriansempey.com

Riccardo Frizza is one of the most highly acclaimed conductors of his generation and a regular guest at Italian and international theatres and festivals such as the Opéra de Paris, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Teatro Real, Rossini Opera Festival, Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Parma Verdi Festival, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Dresden Sächsische Staatskapelle.

In March 2022, his appointment as chief conductor of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir was announced during their concert in which he conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’. He returned to the Hungarian podium in 2023 to conduct works by Puccini, Fauré, Rossini, Debussy, Rodrigo and Prokofiev.

A native of Bergamo, Donizetti was, for nearly a decade after the early death of Bellini in 1835, the leading composer of Italian opera. He had his first success with Zoraida di Granata in 1822. There followed a series of nearly 60 more operas and a move to Paris, where Rossini had been induced to settle to his profit. His final illness confined him to a hospital in France for some 17 months before his return to Bergamo, where he died in 1848. Donizetti was not exclusively a composer of opera; he wrote music of all kinds – songs, chamber music, piano music and a quantity of music for the church.

Operas

The opera Anna Bolena, which won considerable success when it was first staged in Milan in 1830, provides a popular soprano aria in its final ‘Piangete voi?’, while ‘Deserto in terra’, from the last opera, Dom Sébastien, staged in Paris in 1843, has been a favourite with operatic tenors from Caruso to Pavarotti. The comedy Don Pasquale, staged in Paris in 1843, is a well-loved part of standard operatic repertoire, as is L’elisir d’amore (‘The Elixir of Love’), from which the tenor aria ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ (‘A hidden tear’) is particularly well known. Mention should be made of La Favorite and La Fille du régiment (‘The Daughter of the Regiment’), both first staged in Paris in 1840 and sources of further operatic recital arias. The second of these was revised for Milan under the title La figlia del reggimento. Lucia di Lammermoor, based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, provides intense musical drama for tenors in the last act with ‘Tomba degl’avei miei’ (‘Tomb of my forebears’), and for the heroine in her famous mad scene.

Orchestral Music

Donizetti’s orchestral music dates largely from his earlier years. It includes symphonies and concertos written in adolescence but showing the extent of his early gifts.

Songs

Donizetti’s many songs demonstrate his particular gift for melody, exemplified also, of course, in his operas.