Guillaume Tell

Guillaume Tell

• Guillaume
• Rossini
• Tell

Performed for the first time in its original uncut version, this four-plus hour-long production of Guillaume Tell was the jewel in the crown of the 25-year history of the 'Rossini in Wildbad' opera festival. Rossini's final, great, operatic masterpiece, based upon the libretto by Victor Joseph Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Louis Florent Bis after Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and Claris de Florian's Guillaume Tell, is a story of liberation, the oppressed Swiss attaining their ideal of emancipation by hounding the tyrannical Habsburgs out of their country. Although it was composed for the complex demands of the Paris Opera, numerous dances, choruses and arias were dropped for reasons of practicality. These are restored in the present recording which also includes the stunning finale of the shorter 1831 version of the opera, to be found on Disc Four. Recorded live at the Trinkhalle, Bad Wildbad, Germany over the course of four days in July, 2013 by the combined forces of the Camerata Bach Choir, Poznan and the Virtuosi Brunensis, conducted by Antonino Fogliani. Soloists include baritone Andrew Foster-Williams as Tell, tenor Michael Spyres as Arnold Melcthal and soprano Judith Howarth as Mathilde.