Lawrence Brownlee, Sarah Coburn, Constantine Orbelian, and the Kaunas City Symphony and Kaunas State Choir’s new complete opera recording of I Puritani gets its first review from the Art Music Lounge:

“this performance of Bellini’s old warhorse bids fair to overtake all previous commercial recordings of it, In part this is due to the perfectly-balanced cast, but also to the energetic approach of all singers concerned, the …orchestra, and the fact that this issue finally restores all cuts to the score. … I’ve liked [Constantine Orbelian] ever since I heard his recording of Simon Boccanegra with the late Dmitri Hvorstovsky years ago, and even his aria recital disc with Sondra Radvanovsky was very well conducted. … He achieves a fine if lean and clean orchestral sound from start to finish… Nor is it just the choral singing that’s first-rate. Filling out this cast after the big stars Coburn and Brownlee are Kazakhstan baritone Azamat Zheltyrguzov, who has a lovely, warm voice as Riccardo and a bevy of Lithuanian soloists who are probably not at all well known outside their native country (Tadas Girininkas, Liudas Norvaišas, Tomas Pavilionis and Jovita Vaškevičūtė) filling out the other solo roles, and by golly every single one of them sings well… if I had to put one singer on a pedestal it would be Sarah Coburn. She really does give her all, not just vocally with her rich, heady voice and sterling technique, but also in at least trying to make a real character out of Elvira. I greatly prefer her to Sutherland, Sills, Caballé or Netrebko in this role. As for Lawrence Brownlee, it’s rather amazing to think that he was 45 when he made this recording and had been singing professionally for about 20 years. His voice sounds as fresh, clean and unstrained as when I first heard him back in the 1990s… Orbelian injects life and feeling into the orchestra musicians. They do not sound like a bunch of automatons playing on autopilot. Bottom line, I really enjoyed this recording and consider it the finest overall Puritani on the market, LP, CD or DVD. If you keep an open mind, I think you’ll agree.”

—Lynn René Bayley, Art Music Lounge

See the full review on the Art Music Lounge!

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