Rossini - Guillaume Tell

Facts • Performed for the first time in it's original uncut version, thisfour-plus hour-long production of Guillaume Tell was thejewel in the crown of the 25-year history of the 'Rossini inWildbad' opera festival.• Rossini's final, great, operatic masterpiece, based uponthe libretto by Victor Joseph Etienne de Jouy and HippolyteLouis Florent Bis after Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell andClaris de Florian's Guillaume Tell, is a story of liberation, theoppressed Swiss attaining their ideal of emancipation byhounding the tyrannical Habsburgs out of their country.• Although it was composed for the complex demands of theParis Opera, numerous dances, choruses and arias weredropped for reasons of practicality.• These are restored in the present recording which alsoincludes the stunning finale of the shorter 1831 version ofthe opera, to be found on Disc Four.• Recorded live at the Trinkhalle, Bad Wildbad, Germanyover the course of four days in July, 2013 by the combinedforces of the Camerata Bach Choir, Poznan and the VirtuosiBrunensis, conducted by Antonino Fogliani.• Soloists include baritone Andrew Foster-Williams as Tell,tenor Michael Spyres as Arnold Melcthal and soprano JudithHowarth as Mathilde.