[ Naxos / 3 CD Box Set ]
Release Date: Friday 27 November 2020
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Meyerbeer had already won renown in Italy before conquering Paris with a sequence of much-acclaimed grand operas. In a musical climate dominated by Rossini, Meyerbeer's first Italian opera, Romilda e Costanza, earned the still-unknown 26-year-old composer the sobriquet of 'the genius of the Spree'. The work is a rescue opera overlaid with a love triangle, which was written for specific performers, and the passionate intensity of feeling-from lyricism to unfettered virtuosity-reflects the semiseria nature of the opera. It is performed here in the original version heard at the 1817 premiere.