CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

Gaetano Donizetti - La Fille du regiment / Dessay, Florez, Palmer, Corbelli, French, Campanella, Pelly (Royal Opera House 2007)

starring: Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Florez, Felicity Palmer, Alessandro Corbelli, Dawn French
directed by: Laurent Pelly

Release Date April 15, 2008
Marvelous singing, fun to watch, wonderful acting and great comic timing by Natalie Dessay, 9 high Cs by Juan Diego Florez. If you want to buy only one bel canto opera buffa, get this one.

CD-Charts Position 2
Average Rating:

Gianni Schicci [Blu-ray]

starring: Alessandro Corbelli, Sergei Leiferkus, Marie McLaughlin, Felicity Palmer, Sally Matthews
directed by: Francesca Kemp, Ann Abel Arden

Release Date September 30, 2008
Marvelous singing, fun to watch, wonderful acting and great comic timing by Natalie Dessay, 9 high Cs by Juan Diego Florez. If you want to buy only one bel canto opera buffa, get this one.

CD-Charts Position 3
Average Rating:

Rossini - La Cenerentola

starring: Cecilia Bartoli, Enzo Dara, Raúl Giménez, Alessandro Corbelli, Michele Pertusi
directed by: Christoph Eschenbach, Fabio Sparvoli

Release Date June 11, 2002
While this is a delightful opera, I felt that the production was lacking in many ways. For one thing, Cecilia Bartoli does not look at all as Cinderella should. Mostly because she is obviously overweight, it's hard to see why the prince is SO captivated by her appearance. The prince himself did not look half as handsome (or young) as Prince Charming should, although I could forgive these small faults if those were my only objections to this recording. I realize that Raul Giminez and Cecilia Bartoli were not chosen for their looks but for their vocal talent. However, that's not the only problem. The make-up people did a HORRENDUOUS job on the prince's valet, Dandini, making him as ugly as possible. The step-sisters were worse...who's idea was it to make ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 4
Average Rating:

Puccini - Gianni Schicchi / Corbelli, Palmer, Giordano, Matthews, McLaughlin, Jurowski, Glyndebourne Opera

starring: Massimo Giordano, Felicity Palmer, Alessandro Corbelli, Vladimir Jurowski, Marie McLaughlin

Release Date July 19, 2005
This is a truly brilliant production of Puccini's comic masterpiece. Although this one-acter, the third in Puccini's "Il Trittico" (trilogy) of one-act operas dealing with the subject of death, is less than an hour long, it packs a more than satisfying punch in the way of great music, well-drawn characters, and entertaining plot.

Annabel Arden has done a marvelous job in drawing out the dark side of humanity in the story, which keeps this production from veering into caricature and slapstick; yet humor is still here in abundance. Vladimir Jurowski leads the London Philharmonic in a brilliant, well-paced reading of Puccini's motif-packed score.

In the title role, Alessandro Corbelli once more shows us why he is considered one of today's ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 5
Average Rating:

Pergolesi - Lo Frate 'Nnamorato / Corbelli, Focile, Norberg-Schulz, di Nissa, D¿Intino, Felle, Muti, La Scala Opera

starring: Luciana D'Intino, Alessandro Corbelli, Amelia Felle, Bernadette Manca di Nissa, Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz
directed by: Nuccia Focile

Release Date August 17, 2004
Too late did I realize that this opera was baroque...which I really don't care for. I find the music monotonous! And, I would not normally review a baroque opera for that reason. Let those who enjoy and appreciate it influence the rest.

BUT, I have to comment on the wonderful performance of Alessandro Corbelli as Marcaniello. I love this guy!!! He deserves an academy award for his singing and acting. He was made to look like an old man with an artificial hooked nose, a ridiculous wig and a bad case of gout. He was hilarious! He's the only reason I watched the whole thing, which otherwise dragged on and on and on...every song sung four times at least. (I kept thinking, "Make it stop!")

In all fairness, everything about this pastel production ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 6
Average Rating:

Mozart - Cosi fan Tutte / Dessi, Ziegler, Corbelli, Scarabelli, Kundlak, Desderi; Muti, La Scala Opera

starring: Daniela Dessi, Jozef Kundlak, Delores Ziegler, Alessandro Corbelli, Riccardo Muti
directed by: Adelina Scarabelli

Release Date September 21, 2004
In several of the scenes in Act Two, the conductor Muti, larger than life, is superimposed upon the stage action, in some cases completely blocking out the singers. I found this disconcerting, particularly distracting as the opera is ending. None of the reviewers have mentioned this; if I had known, I should never have purchased this DVD version of the opera. I have never seen such disrespect for the performers, nor such disregard for viewers like me who want to watch the performance, not the conductor.

CD-Charts Position 7
Average Rating:

Donizetti - Don Pasquale

starring: Alessandro Corbelli, Eva Mei, Roberto De Candia, Antonino Siragusa, Gerard Korsten

Release Date November 21, 2006
This is an opera which deserves to be staged once in a while, and a DVD which is enjoyable enough to watch once. Rent it, don't buy it.
Four stars for the opera within the canon of Donizetti's buffa. It's quite ingenious musically, the ensembles reaching par with Rossini, but there's no momentum or development, just one musical trick after another. Much the same might be said of the comic action, which is so much stock slapstick that the viewer has to choose to laugh out of courtesy. In short, it's not a great libretto but it makes for a better evening than Fox sit-coms.
Likewise the performance: four stars, almost five, for making the best of an occasionally perfunctory score. The tenor Siragusa has a beautiful almost feminine voice, well suited to his role as a pampered ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 8
Average Rating:

Rossini - L'Italiana in Algeri

starring: Jennifer Larmore, Bruce Ford, Simone Alaimo, Alessandro Corbelli, Jeannette Fischer
directed by: Andrei Serban

Release Date April 24, 2007
For a load of fun this opera takes the cake. It is high camp, and very well acted as well as sung, by the end of the opera i was left bemused .
The 3 main characters cast a shadow of doubt on my mind , did Isabella (sung by Jennifer Larmore) have a fetish for leather or plastic (her costume gave me that impression) or was she just a merry hooker.
Lindoro,(sung by Bruce Ford) was he the boy friend or the pimp as well as being the favourite slave of Mustafa
And was Mustafa (sung by Simone Alaimo) the client (or was this just my wishful thinking??) as well as the egotistical Bey of Algiers.
Everything in this production was acted and played to the limit the singing was excellent, the costumes outragious.
It is a fun filled production and well worth the purchase. ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 9
Average Rating:

Giordano - Fedora

starring: Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Alessandro Corbelli, Olga Sukarev, Gianandrea Gavazzeni

Release Date October 31, 2006
There is another DVD of 'Fedora' starring Mirella Freni and Plácido Domingo and I think it was made within a year or two -- in the mid-1990s -- of this one; that one was at the Met and was conducted by Claudio Abbado. This one is a live performance at La Scala Milan and is conducted by the 82-year-old Gianandrea Gavazzeni, an acknowledged master in this repertoire. I've not seen the Met DVD and cannot make a direct comparison of the two versions. But I can say that I watched this one with great interest and found myself drawn into the highly melodramatic goings-on of Fedora and her lover Loris Ipanov, which requires a fair suspension of disbelief. Freni plays the haunted Fedora with passion and verisimilitude. It is unfortunate that there is no great soprano aria in the opera, or at least nothing ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 10
Average Rating:

Donizetti - Roberto Devereux

starring: Giuseppe Sabbatini, Ildiko Komlosi, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, Roberto Servile, Alessandro Corbelli

Release Date June 27, 2000
I now have two Roberto Devereux's on DVD, one with Beverley Sills & this one with Alexandrina Pendatchanska. I raved about the Sills recording; but having seen this one, I am gob-smacked. I thought Sills could act! You haven't seen anything till you see Pendatchanska's Elizabetta. It is so life-like, it's scary. To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of this woman until now. I did not know what I was getting, as I did not know any of the cast, so I was apprehensive when I first played this DVD.
All I can say, I was glad no one could see me when it finished as I was clapping and shouting like a fool. I was in tears & could hardly speak as I was so emotional. Never have I seen such a production like this. The staging, cast, costumes, lighting & Orchestra were much more than I expected. ... Read More: