Melodies of Love and Death - Opera Senza Parole

This nifty album is a bit different from what it seems; although it delivers the goods for lovers of instrumental arrangements of opera, it also reflects something of a clever Dutch take on the passionate operatic music of the European south. On offer are arrangements of operatic arias by Dutch composer Bob Zimmerman, for piano trio. Although instrumental arrangements of opera were common enough in the entire era before recordings, the piano trio format would have been a good deal less common by the late 19th century, the period from which these famous pieces were drawn. And setting them as piano trios turns the arias in some interesting directions. Consider even the relatively straightforward "Una furtiva lagrima," from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (track 7). The piano gets the bulk of the melodic material, but it is far from being simply accompanied by the violin and cello. In the various Puccini arias the distribution is even more flexible. The result is something more than a simple arrangement but something less than an instrumental fantasia: a group of instrumental dialogues, perhaps, based on operatic material. Although the arrangements seem uncomplicated at first, they actually represent a set of subtle emotional realizations of these arias, with superb ensemble work from the Osiris Trio. Recommended.