A new chapter in the Ricordi Oggi series, the collection that enacts the strong partnership between Stradivarius and the prestigious Casa Ricordi publishing house.

This world première recording is dedicated to Luca Francesconi and his Ballata, a two-act opera whose libretto, by Umberto Fiori, is based upon S. T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Francesconi confirms his particular confidence for large-scale musical thought, rather than merely show a flair for illustrative brilliance.

"Coleridge’s Mariner confronts a natural world that is implacably adverse, one that [...] remains magnificently indifferent to its needs. To respond to that requires a sense of pacing, of large-scale dynamic proportion, that must prevail over any proclivity to exuberant detail.[...] That sense of scale [...] is everywhere in Francesconi’s recent work. [...] Fiori’s fine libretto is so constructed as to allow for the enchained series of numbers that are integral to that form of dramaturgy, because they pace the opera’s progress through a sequence of images and actions whose synopsis could be presented in a few, trite sentences, but whose power and resonance can only be felt when worked through at the slow, remorseless pace common to Francesconi’s opera, and Coleridge’s poem” David Osmond-Smith, liner notes.