Category: Recordings

I was impressed by Karajan’s intense conducting, which seems so right in the wake of the unavoidable tragedy that is going to happen.

Record companies are dominated by accountants and short term cost structure seems to be more important than artistic results or even sale figures. This is a prime example.

For those OperaToday readers prone to fantasies about being a member of royalty with one’s own cozy opera house tucked away on the hereditary estate, this Hungaroton DVD will enable that desire. Filmed in August 2005 at the royal palace at Gödölló, Il barone di rocca antica, an operetta giocosa from Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, requires only four singers.

There is a (no doubt apocryphal) story that if one listens carefully to CaballÈís recordings there is a slight sshhh-sound in the background; the sound of the knife she uses to cut open her scores while recording.

This issue from DGís own classic recital series is a copy of the 1963 LP.

Serge Jaroff and his Don Cossacks Choir were for many decades legendary performers of Russian choral music, ranging from the liturgical works of Orthodoxy to beloved regional folk melodies.

This Sellars production had its origins at the 1985 Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase NY.

These recordings prove decisively a well-known thesis: more or less realistic productions always age better than so called innovative modern productions which often only aggrandize the clichÈs of the time of their conception if one views them a few decades after their premiËre.

Some interesting repertory choices and the participation of some of today’s most attractive singers make this particular “gala” evening of “walk on-sing-walk off” entertainment more consistently enjoyable than these affairs often are.