Il signor Bruschino

Rossini Il signor Bruschino opera to a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa. Performed 2012 by the Teatro Sotterraneo collective at the Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro. Stars Roberto De Candia (Bruschino Senior), Francisco Brito (Bruschino Junior/Police Officer), Carlo Lepore, (Gaudenzio), Maria Aleida (Sofia), David Alegret (Florville), Andrea Vincenzo Bonsignore (Filiberto), and Chiara Amarù (Marianna). Daniele Rustioni conducts the Orchestra Sinfonica G. Rossini (Répétitieur and Fortepiano by Carmen Santoro). Set and costume designs by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino; lighting by Roberto Cafaggini. Directed for TV by Tiziano Mancini. Sung in Italian. Released 2015, Blu-ray disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

This 90-minute, one-act, operatic farce, composed by Rossini at age 21, stresses comic acting more than expert singing. Staging this kind of thing is exactly what the Pesaro Rossini Opera Festival and the Teatro Sotterraneo are all about. Per ArkivMusic, there are 2 CDs and 1 DVD of this, so subject title is the world premiere in HD video. This must be pretty good for Opus Arte to offer it. Show Il signor Bruschino in your HT first, take a long break for more wine, and then show Don Pasquale.

If you have any doubts, this short clip might make a believer of you:

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.