TCHAIKOVSKY: Sleeping Beauty

Tchaikovsky counted Sleeping Beauty as one of his best works. The idea came from Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), director of the Russian Imperial Theatres from 1881 onward. He had staged several of Tchaikovskyís operas, and he wanted Tchaikovsky to produce a ballet score with him.

STRAUSS: Daphne

The formidable Straussian Sir Georg Solti wrote that after the 1929 death of Straussís long-time librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ìStrauss lived for another twenty years, but he never again wrote a great work.î

KHACHATURIAN: Spartacus

Khachaturian was one of the few Soviet composers of the Stalin regime to overcome his public demotion in 1948. Even though he was removed from his job and his works disappeared from the theatres, Khachaturian moved to the world of film music and waited for the storm to blow over.

Hear My Prayer

This anthology, a twentieth-anniversary commemoration of Aled Jonesí first recording for the Welsh company, Sain, is a re-issue of that 1983 recording, ìDiolch ‚ Ch‚n,î along with several other tracks from the mid-1980ís. Jones stepped out of the choir stalls at Bangor Cathedral to become a highly marketed treble, and his relative celebrity, as attested here, was well deserved.

MÈthodes & TraitÈs, series II: France 1800-1860 (Les grandes mÈthodes romantiques de chant), Vol. IV

As far back as the Middle Ages, students (often only identified as Anonymous) have recorded the methods of performance imparted by their masters. In later centuries, such illustrious teachers wrote and published their own methods.

RIGHINI: Il Convitato di Pietra (The Stone Guest)

Born in Bologna on January 22, 1756, Righiniís musical career started early when he was a choirboy at San Petronio. When he was nineteen, Righini made his professional singing debut as a tenor in Parma, and one year later he joined the Bustelli Opera in Prague.

ROSSINI: Der Barbier von Sevilla (Barbiere di Siviglia)

Rossiniís masterpiece is based on Beaumarchaisí first of three playsóLe Barbier de SÈville, La folle journÈe ou Le Mariage de Figaro, and La MËre Coupableódetailing the adventures of Figaro, a barber from Seville, Spain. Rossini was not the first, nor the last composer to set the story to music: Giovanni Maria Pagliardi, Friedrich Ludwig Benda, Johann AndrÈ, Francesco Morlacchi, Miguel Nieto and GerÛnimo JimÈnez, Nicolo Isouard, and H. R. Bishop are some of the names that come to mind.

BORODIN: Prince Igor (Highlights)

Not long ago the record label Delos announced that they would embark on a series of studio recordings of highlights from operas. This intriguing idea seemed to address the recording crisis spawned by the shrinking market for full studio sets, with their high cost for both producer and purchaser.

BIBER: Missa Christi resurgentis

In 1682 the Archbishopric of Salzburg celebrated its 1100th anniversary with an appropriately festal service in the Cathedral, depicted in an engraving by Melchior K¸sel. K¸selís engraving is a striking image, bringing into harmony the grand scale of the building (not yet one hundred years old), the ornamental richness of the interior, and the strong subdivisions of its space.

SAINT-SAÀNS: Samson et Dalila

French composer Camille Saint-SaÎns was a child prodigy, musicologist, astronomer, archeologist, poet, writer, teacher, and one of the most important and prolific composers of his generation. Yet, Saint-SaÎnsí reputation has, for some time, mainly rested on his instrumental works the ìOrganî Symphony, the overture Carnival of the Animals and his oratorio turned opera, Samson et Dalila.