Opera Today

As much as Richard Wagner espoused opera reform in his theoretical writings by bringing to his works for the stage a closer unity between music and text, his actual means of doing so at times involved the use of orchestral forces that sometimes overwhelmed the sung word.

The budget label Gala purveys live performances both historic and relatively recent; of the three discussed here, the La Scala Fedora dates back to 1931, while the Attila comes from a 1987 La Fenice performance.

National styles of music in the seventeenth century were often distinctive, and in the case of French and Italian music, famously so.

With its recent release of Mahlerís symphonies conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, EMI Classics makes available in a single place an outstanding contribution to the composerís discography.

This DVD records and commemorates a 1981 production of Parsifal in its Bayreuth lair, and the singers of 1981 are as fine as recollection might paint them.