Category: Recordings

ìEra la notteî presents four highly emotional, seventeenth-century Italian works, sung with commanding theatricality by Anna Caterina Antonacci.

Most heroes in costume drama movies speak lines directly from our own time. Iíve yet to see a cinematic Roman general, being a serious hero, look at an animalís liver and says: ì this smells bad; no battle todayî.

The recording date is given as November the 12th 1994. Since recording sessions usually last more than one day, and as a radio orchestra is playing, we may safely assume this CD to be derived from a public broadcasted concert by the ë4 sopranosí capitalizing on the concept made popular by Domingo, Carreras, and Pavarotti.

The booklet essay by Gottfried Kraus (translated from the German by Stewart Spencer) for this TDK release of the 1983 Salzburg CosÏ fan tutte presents an intriguing history of the opera, with the Austrian festival taking in a central role in the work’s return to the standard repertory.

The artsong in the twentieth century benefits from the efforts of national composers, like Bohuslav Martin? (1890ñ1959), who stimulated the genre by incorporating regional folk elements into their music.

Decca loves to repackage this set. Your reviewer first acquired it as a low-price “Double Decca” release, with no libretto. Just a couple years ago saw another incarnation, with a great cover pic of Price and Karajan locked in an embrace – Karajan as Scarpia? Or Cavaradossi – take one’s pick.

The cover art for the Opus Arts DVD of Wagner’s Siegfried, from the Nederlandse Opera in 1999, features Mime, as impersonated by Graham Clark, in amazing make-up and costume: a bald, bulging head almost split down the middle by a furrow of anxiety, and clad in a ghastly green insect-like carapace, including wire-like hair and a bobbing tail-sack.

Notable among recent releases, the set of the Complete Symphonies by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) on DVD makes available some fine performances of the composerís important contributions to the genre.

A luminous blue backdrop, sliding columns, a solitary iconic prop (an over-sized falcon head in the opening scene, for example), singers frozen in stiff, awkward poses ó yes, it’s a Robert Wilson spectacular!

What kind of opera lovers will appreciate this big DVD box the most?