Category: Recordings

The best thing about this set, a Norma recorded live at the Teatro delle Muse di Ancona in late 2004, is the booklet essay by Marco Beghelli, offered in both English and Italian (no credit to any translator).

At one time, Verdiís Aida figured as the most performed opera.

This Dynamic recording of Meyerbeer’s Semiramide, an opera title more familiar with Rossini’s name appended, mixes the pleasure of a modestly appealing surprise with regret at key aspects of the performance.

Among the choral music of Anton [Antonin] Dvorak, the familiar Stabat Mater, Op. 58, is known to modern audiences through various live performances and recordings.

A nostalgic charm permeates these filmed productions from the early 1970s of Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmerman and Mozart’s Die Zauberflˆte, collaborations between the Hamburg State Opera and German TV director Joachim Hess.

The opera highlights series from Classics for Pleasure continues its recycling of the EMI catalogue with selections from two of Herbert von Karajan’s recordings.

With this recording of songs by Henry & William Lawes, musical brothers who flourished in Caroline England, countertenor Robin Blaze with lutenist Elizabeth Kenny continue their exploration of early English song for Hyperion, and the results are stunning.

The title of this recording ìJoy: the Laments of Gilles Binchoisî introduces a seeming contradiction, one that plays on a contemporaneous description of the composer as “pÈre de joyeusetË”óthe father of joyóin tension with an affinity for melancholy in his works.

Even though it is one of the important operas of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenbergís Moses und Aron is, perhaps, more esteemed than performed.

Premiered in 1926, Paul Hindemithís opera Cardillac is a three-act work based on E. T. A. Hoffmannís short story Das Fr‰ulein von Scuderi.