SAVERIO MERCADANTE (1795-1870): I Briganti.

Description: This 1836 melodramma serio was the only opera Mercadante wrote for Paris and its source is the same Schiller play which inspired Verdi's I masnadieri. Its four scenes are organised into seven large-scale numbers, the traditional Italian forms still visible and while the notes extol it as a "missing link" between Bellini and Verdi, the French audience of the time found it neither fish nor fowl and Mercadante stuck to his native Italy thereafter. 2 CDs. Libretto available on-line. Maxim Mironov (tenor), Petya Ivanova (soprano), Vittorio Prato, Bruno Praticò (basses), Rosita Fiocco (mezzo), Camerata Bach Choir, Poznan, Virtuosi Brunesis; Antonino Fogliani.