Welcome back for this week’s look at the latest CD and DVD releases in the opera world.

This week, audiences will be able to see two new DVDs, one from the Donizetti Opera Festival and the other from the Dutch National Opera. There are also world premiere recordings and rare works on offer.

Gaetano Donizetti: Don Pasquale

Dynamic releases a recording of “Don Pasquale” from the Donizetti Opera Festival featuring a cast that includes Roberto de Candia, Giulia Mazzola, Javier Camarena, Dario Sogos, and Fulvio Valent. Iván López-Reynoso conducts the production by Amélie Niermeyer.

George Frideric Händel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Naxos will release a production of Händel’s well-known work with a cast that includes Julie Fuchs, Teresa Iervolino, Christophe Dumaux, and Cameron Shahbazi. Emmanuelle Haïm conducts the production by Calixto Bieito. The recording comes from the Dutch National Opera.

In a review, Operawire called it “a masterful production, and not just for the wonderful performances from Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée or for the excellent contributions from all the singers. It succeeded because it was both a gripping drama, superbly directed by Bieito and relevant to the present day.”

TOGETHERNESS

Navona releases soprano Helen Hancock and pianist Paul Cibis’ new album. Originally performed as a recital in Würzburg, Germany as part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, the program showcases the duo’s passion for cross-cultural expression and their expansive repertoire, with music by contemporary composers and classical luminaries and several debut recordings of works in the Irish language. The album includes music by Schumann, Loewe, Britten, Anne-Marie O’Farrell and Criostóir Ó Loingsigh.

Chansons & Frottole

Naïve Classiques releases Chansons & Frottole, a new album featuring soprano Sophie Klussmann and lutist Hopkinson Smith, which showcases French chansons and Italian frottole (a term referring to popular Italian songs that combine musical and poetic forms) from the first half of the sixteenth century.

Haunted 

Composer Paul Salerni releases his latest album which features a quartet of contemporary works for solo voice and chamber ensemble. The album features Keith Phares, Miles Salerni, Jessica Bowers, Oren Fader, Michael Jorgensen, Dalí Quartet, and Attacca Quartet. Navona releases.

Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos

Sonnambula, an ensemble of New York City-based early music luminaries, make their AVIE debut, traversing an aural intersection of beliefs with northern and southern European styles. Here is the beauty of William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing in Protestant England; of Leonora Duarte, a Portuguese-Jewish woman forced to live as a converso (“New Christian”), in Antwerp, and Parisian Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, whose lost works have re-emerged with a vengeance in our own time; of the Bolognese Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder who emigrated to England, and Salomone Rossi who unusually set Hebrew texts to Western-style polyphony from his relatively tolerant position in the court of Mantua.

The release of Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos coincides with Sonnambula’s 2025-26 residency at New York City’s recently renovated Frick Collection.

My Dancing Sweetheart