Category: Recordings

As an audio-recording, Supraphon’s set of Bedrich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride conducted by Zden?k Koöler deserves the highest recommendation.

A series of historic recordings comes from Profil/Edition: G¸nter H‰nssler, and from those a subset of Staatskapelle Dresden performances brings opera fans a remarkable document.

Here’s another in a series of televised recitals from Lugano, Switzerland to have appeared on DVD.

Alban Berg’s Wozzeck takes almost two hours to induce a sense of soul-crushing nausea and despondency. Kiri Sings Karl achieved that for your reviewer in a couple minutes, and then went on with terrifying, torturous efficiency for almost another hour.

Director Willy Decker’s outstanding Traviata from Salzburg, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, is one of the great contemporary opera DVDs.

Among the available videos of Richard Straussís Elektra, the recently released DVD of the live broadcast from 16 February 1980 stands out for capturing the exciting of an all-star international cast that included the famous Birgit Nilsson in the title role.

A career-making smash for Donizetti at its 1830 premiere, Anna Bolena eventually faded from the standard repertory.

Recorded live at the Stiftsbasilika, St. Florian (Austrian) on 12 and 13 September 2006, this DVD offers a special performance of the famous Cleveland Orchestra outside its home at Severance Hall.

Among the available DVDs of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, the recent release of the production Rolf Liebermann made into a film i the late 1960s stands out for various reasons.

Opera singers today have become almost as famous and publicly worshipped as movie-stars; yet this has always been the case in operatic history.