The large number of recordings of Bach’s Mass in B minor predispose one to look for distinctions between them.
A typical film soundtrack today might not fill the length of a CD, while being padded with any pop music hits for which the producers would cough up the money for the rights. As often as not the scoring would...
Many an anthology of Puccini's "greatest hits" has found its way to market, and many more will follow this latest from Decca, Puccini Gold.
With the tenth anniversary of her death approaching, Orfeo has released a double-CD box set tribute to Leonie Rysanek in their Wiener Staatsoper Live series.
Jonas Kaufmann’s debut album is a treat to the ears of opera lovers.
The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, after suffering a calamitous fire in the early 1990s, reopened in 1999, lovingly restored. TDK has released a series of DVDs from the Liceu since that date, providing ample evidence of the world...
Premiered posthumously, the symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) remains one of his defining works because of its synthesis of song and symphony, two genres he pursued throughout his career.
In 1851 during his first season as music director in Düsseldorf, Robert Schumann presented a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and unsurprisingly adapted the score both to nineteenth-century taste and nineteenth-century practicalities.
The centrality of dance at the French court helped bring grace, order, and political allegory into the characteristic prominence they enjoyed during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV; theatre presentations of all stripes were infused with choreographic diversions.
In tandem with the recently released set of Sir Simon Rattle’s recordings of Mahler’s symphonies on EMI Classics, the set of the complete symphonies by Jean Sibelius merits attention.
As much as Richard Wagner espoused opera reform in his theoretical writings by bringing to his works for the stage a closer unity between music and text, his actual means of doing so at times involved the use of orchestral forces that sometimes overwhelmed the sung word.
The budget label Gala purveys live performances both historic and relatively recent; of the three discussed here, the La Scala Fedora dates back to 1931, while the Attila comes from a 1987 La Fenice performance.
National styles of music in the seventeenth century were often distinctive, and in the case of French and Italian music, famously so.
With its recent release of Mahler’s symphonies conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, EMI Classics makes available in a single place an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
This DVD records and commemorates a 1981 production of Parsifal in its Bayreuth lair, and the singers of 1981 are as fine as recollection might paint them.
Once the custom of the world's opera houses was to translate great operas into the language of each respective country.
Repackaging older recordings having become the primary focus of a classical recording company's business, Deutsche Grammophon budgeted some funds for art direction for its budget series called "Opera House" (although that appellation only appears in a link found on the back inside cover of the sets' booklets).
Of Rosenkavaliers on DVD, the classics tend to be lovingly detailed productions, going back to the film of Herbert von Karajan leading an exemplary cast, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's iconic Marschallin.
Despite an unsurprising degree of conservatism in liturgical music, devotional life in Rome often found ways of taking advantage of modern musical style.
Why should anyone buy a German language broadcast of a delicious French opéra-comique?
The handsome face of tenor Juan Diego Florez naturally gets the cover of his latest CD, and his arguably unusually slim physique is on view too: on the inside cover of the booklet, on both the interior and rear of the jewel case, and on the back of the booklet.
And in an interior photo the singer, apparently tired of looking at the cameraman, stalks away, hands in suit pockets. In almost all these photos, Florez adopts an impassive affect, with only the slightest hint of a smile on his tightly pressed lips.
The vocal performances on the disc demonstrate what all the star's recordings have to date. His remarkable instrument has agility, a solid top extension, and an appealing tone, neither too sweet nor too tangy. With the exception of his previous disc, an over-orchestrated hodgepodge of lighter material called "Sentimiento Latino," Decca has primarily offered Florez in his trademark bel canto repertoire. Both his Rigoletto Duke and Gianni Schicchi Rinuccio, on the CD "Great Tenor Arias," indicated that his voice can stretch a bit into Verdi and Puccini, but some of the charm of his voice is lost.
Putting aide the awkward double title (Voce D'Italia - Arias for Rubini), this latest disc finds Florez comfortably at home in his beloved Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti. The disc's repertoire covers arias from operas that made Giovanni Battista Rubini a (if not "the") leading tenor of his generation. Philip Gossett's booklet essay argues that Florez "is the acknowledged master of this type of vocalism." And no moment appears when, on a technical level, that judgment can be seriously challenged. On track after track, Florez leaps up to high notes and slides silkily around fast runs, all while maintaining an elegant composure. It's that same composure seen in the photos described above.
But what proves elusive in those photos - a sense of the singer's personality - also evades the ears in these performances. The lead roles in Bellini's Il Pirata, Donizetti's Mariano Falliero, and Rossini's Guglielmo Tell all sound pretty much the same here. And dramatically, perhaps not that much difference exists. However, to listen to Marcello Giordani singing the Pirata arias on a Naxos release of a few years back, one hears more of the hero, the dangerous sea brigand, than one does in the smoother, more secure singing that Florez provides.
But then over 70 minutes of tenor music from bel canto operas may not be the ideal continuous listening experience. Any of these tracks, heard by itself, would amaze and delight the ear. And that is due not only to Florez's great gifts, but also to the excellent support from the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, under the leadership of Roberto Abbado. As a showcase for contemporary operatic singing, this Decca CD is an often stupendous affair. For at least one listener, a bit more individual expressiveness would have made it even more special.
Chris Mullins