[ Château de Versailles Spectacles - L'opéra de Napoléon CD + DVD / CD/DVD ]
Release Date: Friday 27 August 2021
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.
Napoleon's fervor for opera was extreme. This music-loving conqueror brought to him a young Italian star, the contralto Giuseppina Grassini, and the most dazzling castrato: Girolamo Crescentini, the only singer to move the Emperor to tears. Invited to France from 1806 to 1812, Crescentini spent glorious evenings in the Imperial Chapel at the Tuileries in the company of Grassini, named First Singer of His Majesty the Emperor - and his mistress. Napoleon's musical passion went to Italian opera, 143 concerts by Italian soloists at the Court between 1810 and 1815 bear witness to this!
Grassini and Crescentini's hobbyhorse was Zingarelli's opera Giulietta e Romeo, premiered at La Scala in 1796, then performed many times in Paris before Napoleon by his two favorite singers. "They excite heroism in me" said Napoleon. This duo of stars of the Empire comes back to life with Franco Fagioli and Adèle Charvet, for a selection of the great numbers of this totally forgotten opera by Zingarelli, while he enjoyed triumph throughout Europe for three decades, thanks to a Sumptuous Bel Canto: here is Napoleon's Opera!