4: Spontini, Josephine and Julia
The Paris that greeted Spontini on his arrival in 1803 was a very different city from the one in which Cherubini had settled in 1786. An epic decade had gone before him, presided over finally by Napoleon.
Spontini found an influential friend in the empress-in-waiting,
Josephine Bonaparte , who helped him score his first success with the opera La
Vestale. Graham Fawcett introduces highlights of this operatic blockbuster set in republican Rome. Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala,
Milan, conductor Riccardo Muti Discs Repeated from last Thursday