Category: Recordings

Originally directed by Brooks Riley for German television, this updated staging of Engelbert Humperdinck’s familiar opera H‰nsel und Gretel is based on a production created by Johannes Felsenstein, the son of the well-known director of the Komische Oper Berlin, Walter Felsenstein.

In the parlance of a Hollywood film pitch, Britten’s penultimate opera might be described as “War Requiem” meets “Turn of the Screw.”

Like Violetta Urmana, Nadja Michael had a substantial career as a mezzo before deciding to venture into soprano territory.

When considering his next recording project, notes Rolando VillazÛn, the idea of working on a set of Handel arias with Paul McCreesh was “not an obvious choice.”

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.

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.

Among the impressive contributions to the American song literature of the twentieth century are works by Samuel Barber (1910-81), whose efforts in this genre reflect his own musical training as a singer, as well as the influence of his aunt, Louise Homer, whose professional relationships put her nephew in contact with other vocalists of the day.

Heinrich Brockes’s famous poetic setting of the Passion, Der f¸r die S¸nden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (1712), was one of the most significant devotional texts of its day in Germany.

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.

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