ZANDONAI: FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

Francesca da Rimini is a tapestry of sumptuous orchestral color and florid arabesques with a Salomé-like savagery. Kabaivanska sings with plenty of vehemence, while Arena conducts with feeling for the alluring colors and textures of the score. Zandonai is a fascinatingly anomalous figure, a fundamentally flawed composer but at times a very impressive and curiously original one. Born in 1883, he was one of the generation of Italian composers who had to decide whether to continue the Puccinian line or to contract one or other of those modernisms that Puccini himself described as "venereal diseases of music that come from beyond the Alps". Zandonai did neither; his music is variously described by Italian critics as art nouveau, 'Liberty' (after the London furnishing store) or pre-Raphaelite, and in defining his style some such visual metaphor seems more apt than a recital of the obvious influences upon him of Wagner, Richard Strauss and his teacher Mascagni... Francesca da Rimini has b