When the ORFEO label was established in Munich forty years ago, surely no one with the music scene back then would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player on the classical music market. One of the label’s main priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and since the mid 1980s the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory by discovering and nurturing young artist. This “ORFEO 40th Anniversary” 2-album sampler well reflects these two sides of the label by combining highlight tracks of historical recordings with today’s global stars.

Johan Botha was heard at the Vienna Staatsoper a total of 222 times before his untimely death. His powerful, truly great voice shone like a beacon across the world of opera. Though he was mostly known as a singer of the German opera repertoire, he also had amazing success with Italian operas which are documented on this double album. Alongside partners like Krassimira Stoyanova, Violeta Urmana and Dmitri Hvorostovsky he knew how to enthrall the Vienna Opera Community. The present release features arias from Italian standards such as Don Carlo, Aida, Otello, Tosca, Turandot, and others.

With "Il tabarro" Puccini wrote the first part of his projected opera triptych, with which he ultimately intended to parody and reverse Wagner’s Ring tetralogy by stringing together three completely incoherent short stories. Once more, for Il tabarro the composer virtually emigrated to France, to which he had already made declarations of love with La Bohème and Manon Lescaut. This affinity is now mirrored more clearly than in these two operas in the music of The Cloak, which emanates French, well-nigh Impressionist perfume. Bertrand de Billy knows how to make the score come alive with a fantastic cast on his side. World famous tenor Johan Botha was on the top of his career at the making of this album, and the results of the entire ensemble together are historically beautiful.