Alfredo Casella was one of the 'Generation of the eighties' who sought to shake Italian music from it's longstanding operatic heritage and the dominance of Puccini. La donna serpente was Casella's only full-scale opera, it's fantastic plot based on Carlo Gozzi's renowned fairy tale that perpetually alternates between tragedy and comedy, expressed in neo-Classical music that skillfully portrays the sinister and ethereal world of the fairies as well as the intense emotions of the human realm. This production was acclaimed for Arturo Cirillo's dreamlike setting and Gianandrea Noseda's pin-point conducting: 'What energy, what precision!... he delivers the complexity of this score with a disconcerting ease. ' (resmusica. Com)