back to New Releases Page
Alan Curtis, described by the New York Times’ as “one of the great scholar-musicians of recent times”, conducts a brilliant cast including Sonia Prina, Ann Hallenberg, Max-Emanuel Cencic and Topi Lehtipuu in Gluck’s Ezio. Described by Curtis as “from a dramatic point of view, perhaps the finest of Gluck’s pre-Orfeo operas,” this recording presents the original version of Ezio, which received its premiere in Prague in 1750.
Written to a libretto by the prolific and influential Metastasio, Ezio exemplifies the formal opera seria that Gluck sought to leave behind with his so-called reform operas such as Orfeo and Alceste. However, after Orfeo’s epoch-making premiere in Vienna in 1762 he revised Ezio in the reform opera style for performance at the city’s Burgtheater in 1763.
