Bru Zane future plans

[Mark Thomas]

Full details of the Zampa recording, due to be released next week, are at Presto here. There's also a promotional video on YouTube. In my early days the sparkling Overture was difficult to avoid, but not so for the last few decades, and the opera itself doesn't seem to ever to have had a full recording.

[eschiss1]

"Ordinarily speaking" I can't stand using AI (though I had a weirdly good success yesterday in music things while trying to fill out the movement headings in my William Brocklesby Wordsworth quartets recordings*) but it turns up this information that may be worth following up?

"A complete historic audio recording of Ferdinand Hérold's opera comique Zampa ou La Fiancée de marbre is available to stream on Internet Archive, and a new professional complete studio release by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester on the Bru Zane label is scheduled for release on September 18, 2026."

I find the historic recording I think they're referring to  on Youtube here rather than on IA, and would have to take 143 minutes I don't have right now to see how cut it is. But it would be interesting to compare.

*But more importantly, getting it to unhesitatingly fix a mistake -it- had (that it shouldn't have, agreed), where I had the correct information off a copy of a quartet I'd borrowed from an Illinois library. It then invited me to contribute further, which I have debated doing - or not doing, since I definitely know the downsides- but that's WAY offtopic; I apologize.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Eric. This (Zampa, not the Wordsworth quartets!) is a French radio recording in reasonable sound for YouTube. I believe it's never had a commercial recording.

[Mark Thomas]

As I settle down to enjoy Zampa, released today, I see that the next enticing offering from Palazzetto Bru Zane is in the offing:

Delibes' opera Jean de Nivelle. It's completely unknown to me, but the generous sound bites (at Presto here, with full details) are most promising to anyone with a love of French opera. Due out in just over a month on 2rd October.

[eschiss1]

Interesting sidelight from Wikipedia on the Delibes: "Franz Liszt in 1881 [the year after the opera was premiered], in his late sparse style, began to compose a free fantasy on the orchestral introduction to the opera, followed by the introduction to the ballad itself. But the manuscript is incomplete and unfinished. It is numbered S698 in Liszt's catalogue of works, and is the only operatic fantasy Liszt contemplated on themes by Delibes.".