Year: 2007

Decca loves to repackage this set. Your reviewer first acquired it as a low-price “Double Decca” release, with no libretto. Just a couple years ago saw another incarnation, with a great cover pic of Price and Karajan locked in an embrace – Karajan as Scarpia? Or Cavaradossi – take one’s pick.

The cover art for the Opus Arts DVD of Wagner’s Siegfried, from the Nederlandse Opera in 1999, features Mime, as impersonated by Graham Clark, in amazing make-up and costume: a bald, bulging head almost split down the middle by a furrow of anxiety, and clad in a ghastly green insect-like carapace, including wire-like hair and a bobbing tail-sack.

Notable among recent releases, the set of the Complete Symphonies by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) on DVD makes available some fine performances of the composerís important contributions to the genre.