Author: James Sohre

A traditional production of Mozart and Schikaneder’s singspiel Die Zauberflˆte can go for charm, fantasy, and enjoyable camp. It can also turn trite and cloying.

The title of Anna Netrebko’s most recent recital disc apparently springs from the musical selections’ ability to prompt memories in the singer.

On this 1955 recording of Dvo?·k’s folk-tale based comic romp Kate and the Devil, conductor Zden?k Chalaba offers a lighter, faster approach than that heard on the modern studio version Supraphon released in 1981, under conductor Ji?Ì Pinkas.

More than just three letters distinguishes “rarity” from “oddity.” In opera, a rarity would be an admired work seldom performed.

This performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, recorded live at the ThÈ‚tre des Champs-…lysÈes in June 2004, prompts much admiration for RenÈ Jacobs, its conductor.

Dynamic offers devotees of classical era opera a rare and quite rewarding opportunity to hear I Giuochi d’Agrigento, a little-known opera by Giovanni Paisiello, best known as the man who composed a popular Barbiere di Siviglia before Rossini came along and eclipsed his predecessor.

An annual event televised around the world, the Vienna Philharmonic’s Neujahrskonzert has become a classical music institution, and as such is impervious to criticism. But not beyond it.

Ondine provides a treasure of a booklet for Fever, Karita Mattila’s traversal of some standards from the so-called “Great American Songbook,” plus two Brazilian numbers.

Can this truly be the production of Verdi’s Aida that earned world-wide headlines in December 2007?

Alberto Cant˘’s booklet essay for the Dynamic release of Umberto Giordano’s rare one-act opera Marcella quotes a review from the day after the 1907 premiere, which indicates that the premiere’s audience’s expectations of “greater originality of melodic invention” went unmet.