The Zurich Op­era is known for sta­ging works that star sing­ers have al­ways wanted to sing and Gio­vanni Pais­i­ello's "Nina" was evid­ently a role coveted by Cecil­ia Bar­to­li, one of today's most sought-after per­formers. There are many op­er­as where the heroine goes mad at the cli­max of the ac­tion, but this op­era buffa (with sung and spoken text) has to be the only one where she is mad from the start. It re­quires a sing­er of im­mense vo­cal and dra­mat­ic tal­ent to pull off such a role but Bar­to­li is phe­nom­en­al in this Cesare Lievi pro­duc­tion.

"Her sud­den changes of emo­tion­al gear are con­stantly sur­pris­ing, her eyes re­flect­ing the glit­ter­ing ar­ray of tones em­an­at­ing from her throat. The col­our-range of her voice is truly stu­pendous... and there are those sen­su­al, al­most vo­lup­tu­ous over­tones, which lend her every ut­ter­ance an un­mis­tak­able per­son­al fla­vour." - Op­era News

The pièce de résis­t­ance is her per­form­ance of Moz­art's con­cert aria K272, Ah lo pre­vidi..., which aug­ments this re­vised two act ver­sion of Pais­i­ello's ori­gin­al. Lászlo Polgár, Jo­nas Kaufmann, Ju­li­ette Gal­s­ti­an and An­gelo Vec­cia provide an ex­cel­lent foil for Bar­to­li's tour de force. Adam Fisc­her con­ducts. The rich col­ours used by Maur­iz­io Balò for his simple, styl­ised set and eight­eenth-cen­tury cos­tumes add a visu­al lustre to this live re­cord­ing. Adam Fisc­her con­ducts the Chor­us and the Or­ches­tra of the Zurich Op­era.

This op­era comes to­geth­er with the spe­cial fea­ture "Gio­vanni Pais­i­ello - A For­got­ten Geni­us", a por­trait of the com­poser, on DVD.