LUIGI MANCINELLI (1848-1921): Scene veneziane, Ouverture and Battaglia di Azio from Cleopatra.

Description: Mancinelli's fame is as an opera conductor with a career spanning Italy, Spain, Argentina and the Met in New York but he also found time to compose cinematic, richly colorful orchestral spectaculars like the two (of six) Intermezzi for Cleopatra (a stage play) in 1877; film music for a 70mm Super Panavision movie about 100 years before the movie could have existed. The 36-minute Scene depicts a couple meeting, falling in love, racing from Venice to Chioggia and back and their marriage, all this in five scenes which are as colorful as the Cleo pieces but often quiter and touching; think of them as five miniature tone-poems by a master of orchestral color a generation before Respighi. Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma; Francesco La Vecchia.