G. Rossini - Soirees Musicales

Rossini, having composed no fewer than forty operas between the ages of nineteen and thirty-seven, wrote none in the next forty years. However these years were not barren of music. Rossini�s Soirees Musicales and Peches de vieillesse or �Sins of old age� were the musical fruits of salon evenings held weekly in his Parisian home. Elegant, witty, charming and often delicately ironic, these songs for various voices are the perfect exemplar of �salon music�, and of the unmistakable late style of a composer who had already become a legend in his lifetime. They are recorded here by three of the greatest singers of today: Stella Doufexis, who has appeared regularly in the Hyperion Schubert and Schumann songs editions; the wonderful Swedish soprano Miah Persson; and the American tenor and Rossini specialist Bruce Ford, all accompanied with characteristic brilliance and style by Roger Vignoles.