This is the third album from Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko, whose first two releases included a variety of unusual repertory choices. Here she plays to what has emerged as her undisputed strength with a set of Rossini arias, each with its full complement of introductory material. A few might qualify as rarities, although Peretyatko has been a staple of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, which has been doing a pretty good job of remaking the Rossini canon: the likes of Matilde di Shabran, which supplies a barnburner here (track three), are making increasingly frequent appearances on stages thanks to this festival. At any rate, Peretyatko is an ideal Rossini soprano. Each of these scenes builds dramatically over its ten minutes or so, and you feel that she's in such complete control that the precise coloratura comes as no surprise. And the high notes...they're a marvel, with power, uncanny pitch accuracy, and just a little bit of smoke. Peretyatko gets idiomatic support from the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna under Alberto Zedda, and idiomatic sound, if one can call it that, from Sony's engineers, working in that same theater. This is state-of-the-art Rossini, and Peretyatko is not just another pretty Russian soprano.
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