Author: James Sohre

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.

This 2001 Z¸rich performance of Rossini’s masterpiece Il Barbiere di Siviglia boasts one of the final performances of the great bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, who passed away in 2004.

Naxos, in conjunction with SWR, has been releasing recordings from the Rossini in Wildbad Festival, which focuses not just on the titular composer but also on his contemporaries.

The “2” in this disc’s title indicates that this is the second Chandos recital for Sir Thomas Allen.

EMI owns this recording, so if pride dictates they repackage it in the “Great Recordings of the Century” series, a dissenter shouldn’t moralize.

Both these performances come from mid-2005. Teatro Regio di Parma presented the Ernani in May of that year; August saw I Capuletti e I Montecchi on stage at the Festival della Valle d’Itria di Martina Franca.

Countless must be the number of true opera fans who have heard well-meaning acquaintances say, “Oh I just love opera! Especially Phantom of the Opera.”