Category: Recordings

Recorded on 9 November 1959 at Symphony Hall (now Symphony Center), this recent issue of a classic performed of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde translates the then state-of-the-art RCA “Living Stereo” sound for the LP vinyl medium to the enhanced sound currently available in SACD format.

JÈrÙme Savary, director of this December 2007 Semperoper Dresden production of Leh·r’s Die Lustige Witwe, expresses a view in the booklet essay that many others will probably share: “What I like most of all about The Merry Widow is its music, which is literally bursting with colours, gyrating movements and sensuality…”

The Kurt Weill-composed operetta Arms and the Cow premiered in 1935 under the title A Kingdom for a Cow, according to Erwin Berger’s booklet essay for this DVD of a 2007 VolksOper Vien staging of David Pountney’s production.

Some opera aficionados who take a look at the contents of this two-CD Fritz Wunderlich collection from Profil might shake their heads in bemused wonder: the German lyric tenor as Turridu, let alone Pinkerton and Rodolfo?

The CEO of the Ravenna Festival, one Cristina Mazzavillano Muti, understandably takes top billing at the top of this DVD booklet’s three – count ’em, 3! – pages of credits for the Festival, not counting the single page of credits for the production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale itself.

Entering the Linbury Studio for this production of The Beggar’s Opera, one might have been forgiven for thinking that one had wandered into the main house by mistake.

The emergence of a standardized western liturgy with a uniform chant repertory, while to a significant degree realized, neither completely silenced regional liturgies nor extinguished the additions to liturgical practice that comprise much medieval creativity.

A sticker on the cover of the Decca DVD Jessye Norman a portrait describes the contents as “An intimate new film portrait of the great soprano.”

I am an ardent fan of Stephanie Blythe, and if you revel in sheer sound, she will delight you, too.

The first solo operatic recital from the great German bass RenÈ Pape bears a title that serves as an homage to an esteemed predecessor, George London.