In the current weak economy many an opera company has retrenched its programming to present primarily the most popular operas.
Author: James Sohre
Farinelli — Il Castrato
NaÔve re-releases the soundtrack to the film Farinelli here in a handsome “book” casing, appending a second disc of highlights from the discography of Christophe Rousset’s recordings with Les Talens Lyriques, the artists also responsible for the soundtrack.
Paul Robeson: The Complete EMI Sessions 1928-1939
Seven discs, of 170 tracks, amounting to over eight hours of music – this EMI set somehow manages to be both voluminous and narrow in its portrait of Paul Robeson.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Soprano
This DVD contains the contents of four televised recitals of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, with no way of telling from the information provided whether the recitals are presented complete or not.
Domenico Sarro: Achille in Sciro
The birth and death dates of Domenico Sarro (1679 and 1744) are very close to those of his more illustrious contemporary, Antonio Vivaldi.
Mayr Rediscovered
Apparently Opera Rara “discovered” Giovanni Simone Mayr some years ago when it included several excerpts from his operas in their multi-volume series, “A Hundred Years of Italian Opera.”
Tippett: A Child of Our Time
Although an ineffable aura of the 1960s emanates from Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time, its composition came at the start of WWII in Europe.
Luciano Pavarotti: The EMI Recordings
A Decca recording artist for most of his career, Luciano Pavarotti did do a very few items with EMI, probably as part of those “artist-swapping” arrangements recording labels sometime arrange.
Wagner’s Das Rheingold at Los Angeles Opera
There is some slim irony to an opera company pursuing the complicated business of staging Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the current economy — it entails the very sort of dubious compromises that get Wotan and crew into such hot water (if one assumes the cataclysmic fire at the end of Gˆtterd‰mmerung heated the Rhine).