Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de Perles

Woolcock finds a double drama in Bizet's opera..., Noseda drawing sumptuous playing from the Met Orchestra...The Met fields a magnificent cast. Matthew Polenzani is a puppyish Nadir...whil Mariusz... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2017, More…

Release Date: 13th Jan 2017
Catalogue No: 9029589361
Label: Erato

Presto Recording of the Week

13th January 2017
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2017
Grammy Awards

60th Awards (2017)

Nominee - Opera Recording

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Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de Perles

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Gianandrea Noseda, Penny Woolcock (dir.)
Diana Damrau (Leïla), Matthew Polenzani (Nadir), Mariusz Kwiecien (Zurga), Nicolas Teste (Nourabad)

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Recording of the Week, Diana Damrau sings in Bizet's The Pearl Fishers from the Met

13th January 2017

Katherine enjoys a new staging of Bizet's glorious exotic opera, starring Diana Damrau, Matthew Polenzani and Mariusz Kwiecien.

Read Presto's complete review of this disc here

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, set in Sri Lanka, is known above all for its unforgettable duet for tenor and baritone, but it its score is full of delightful and dramatic music. When recently staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York it proved a major success, both for the production by Penny Woolcock and the musical performance, conducted by Paolo Noseda, with (once again) Diana Damrau as the priestess Leïla and, as the two men competing for love, the tenor Matthew Polenzani (Nadir) and the baritone Mariusz Kwiecien (Zurga). Woolcock’s concept brought the production up to date, with photographic and video references to the 2004 tsunami, and offered a superb ‘aquatic’ spectacle during the overture: the whole stage appeared to be beneath the Indian Ocean and acrobatic divers ‘swam’ down from the surface (located in the flies of the theatre).

Reviews

April 2017

Woolcock finds a double drama in Bizet's opera..., Noseda drawing sumptuous playing from the Met Orchestra...The Met fields a magnificent cast. Matthew Polenzani is a puppyish Nadir...whil Mariusz Kwiecien's Zurga clearly relishes power...But it's Diana Damrau's Leïla who steals the audience's hearts.

13th January 2017

It could hardly have been granted a better comeback, with a trio of superb singers...Damrau's Leïla is manifestly a real woman with real desires and demons…Polenzani surely has one of the most beautiful lyric voices around...But it’s Mariusz Kwiecien’s Zurga who gives the production its real dramatic impetus.

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