Author: James Sohre

If, dear reader, a desire has ever swept over you (a desire such as a pregnant woman’s craving for vanilla ice cream with pickles) to hear music reminiscent of both Messiah and the Fingal’s Cave overture, CPO is just the musical ice cream parlor/deli for you.

The true opera fan devotes almost as much time, if not more, to the “what might have been” careers as to those of the superstars.

Archival radio recordings of complete operas seldom have ideal sound, but the audio is usually sharper than that of a live performance while still carrying a comparable dramatic immediacy.

This 4-CD set gathers together solo recital material and extracts from complete opera sets that Franco Corelli recorded between 1959 and 1968, the prime of his career.

This 1958 RAI broadcast of Bellini’s early masterpiece requires the accustomed aural compromise for maximum enjoyment.

The opera venue at Macerata shares some features with its famous counterpart in Verona: both are outdoors, with huge stages that can accommodate spectacular productions.

As the detail-filled booklet essay to this CPO set reminds its readers, Franz Leh‰r’s operettas enjoyed widespread, though rarely lasting, success, with the music theater world of the time eager for each successive work.

Good directors don’t always create good productions.

The two one-act operas – operettes? – on this disc play something like mediocre episodes of The Twilight Zone set to music, though without the quirky memorability of that show’s opening theme.

On a good night an opera performance can come across with visceral excitement without a classy production, top-name singers, or the benefit of being of one of the more familiar titles.