Melba Recordings

"... a label of fragrant distinction"

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News from Melba Recordings

Go behind the scenes for insights on our recordings, our artists and our future plans. Follow our artists' schedules and share the excitement of their journeys.

AUSTRALIAN SOMNAMBULIST

Tuesday, 19 February 2008 - 11:00pm

The world is strange: a man goes to Prague to discover Australia, but more accurately he discovers Melba Recordings, an entrepreneurial CD company unknown to me until now.

This business is named after the legendary Australian Prima-Donna, who gained fame by the well-known dessert and productions of various musical masterpieces and rarities.

Its attempt at the Ring of the Nibelung operas by Wagner was quite successful, the first recording in multi-channel format.

In Prague I met Ms Maria Vandamme – spiritus movens – the heart of the firm who is restlessly searching for forgotten masterpieces. She came to Prague to resurrect two pieces by Saint-Saëns which we will return to on a different occasion.

Thanks to her I got to know a few unique pieces such as La somnambule but not the one by Bellini, it’s by Ferdinand Hérold, a ballet created five years before Bellini’s opera and based on the same story as the Bellini, a play by Scribe.

Directing the musicians of Orchestra Victoria in this recording is the renowned exponent and scholar of romantic repertoire, who is also the husband of [Dame] Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge.

 
Piotr Kamiński
Po Polsku / Radio France Internationale (France)

Read the original article in Polish

La somnambule