Search - Rossini, Sills, Verrett :: Rossini: L'Assedio Di Corinto

Sweet Beverly Sills

Pinza Lives | Dulles, Va United States | 08/16/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You can believe the first reviewer and miss out -- or you can listen to the samples, buy it, and love the sublime beauty of Ms. Sills' coloratura. I bought this recording on record 31 years ago and it remains one of my top 5-10 favorite performances of any opera. (e.g. Kirsten in Tristan/Isolde; Solti's Ring; Bjoerling/Tebaldi et al in Turandot; Price and Domingo in Il Trovatore; and Bjoerling/DeLosAngeles in La Boheme; Pinza in Don Giovanni;...). To me opera is the deep emotion I feel as I close my eyes in the dark and just float. Compared to his earlier, fun operas (Roberta Peters in Barber of Seville or Cenerentola) in Siege of Corinth you hear Rossini moving toward a more serious dramatic genre which heralds the age of Verdi. Note the history -- the setting is the 1458 fall of Greece's Corinth to the Ottoman Turks; Rossini wrote it in 1826 in support of the Greek wars of independence (1821-1829); and this recording came out around the time of the Cyprus crisis and Turkish occupation in 1975. -- Eric"