Opera
Rossini
Zelmira
Federico Saachi, Silvia Dalla Benetta, Mert Süngü, Joshua Stewart, Marina Comparato, Luca Dall’Amico, Xiang Xu, Emmanuel Franco; Górecki Chamber Choir, Krakow; Virtuosi Brunensis/Gianluigi Gelmetti
Naxos 8.660468-70 174:51 mins (3 discs)
Zelmira was Rossini’s farewell to Naples in 1822 – he was ambitious at that point to become a European composer, not just an Italian one. So within months Zelmira made its way to Vienna, then to London and finally to Paris in 1826 where Giuditta Pasta took the title role. This is the version that Naxos recorded at the Wildbad Festival in Germany in 2017.
The libretto is shipwrecked by its own implausibility. Why has Zelmira’s father Polidoro, the deposed king of Lesbos,
