The Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Fabio Luisi release a landmark live recording of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, captured over several concerts at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas in 2024. Representing a rare undertaking for an American orchestra, this historic project is released in 2026, during the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's 125th anniversary season, which falls 150 years after the first performance of the complete "Ring" cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Recorded by GRAMMY winning producer Dirk Sobotka, it launches a new partnership between Delos and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. "The Ring cycle is one of the deepest and most complex musical works ever written. Across the entirety of the story, you are transformed at the end," says Maestro Luisi. Issued worldwide by Delos both digitally and as a 13CD box set, this release marks a major addition to the recorded legacy of Wagner's epic masterpiece; a significant achievement for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the history of American orchestras.

For five decades Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) held a central position in the musical world. That centrality was reflected in a series of top orchestral and operatic posts and in his interpretations, free of self-regarding eccentricities. His modest but highly effective conducting technique also made him the ideal recording artist. Sawallisch was a Bavarian born in Munich, city of orchestras and a great opera company, which he headed for 21 years. He started his career as an outstanding pianist and remained a sought-after accompanist to great Lieder singers and instrumentalists. Volume 1 of a complete conspectus of his Warner Classics recordings (made for Electrola and EMI Classics between 1954 to 1997) includes wonderful Lieder and song collaborations, as well as famous concerto accompaniments for eminent soloists and a heartwarming traversal of Schubert's secular vocal and sacred choral music with Bavarian Radio colleagues. But the main focus among the 65 discs is on his symphonic achievements: Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Dvorak - the latter's Eighth Symphony was his first published recording, from 1954. Richard Strauss, an early influence, is strongly represented. This 65CD-box brings together all the non-operatic recordings that the German conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1954 to 1997 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics).

Maria Callas is credited with changing the history of opera. Known as La Divina, she continues to fascinate as a supreme artist, but also as a woman and an icon of style. Her interpretations were as compelling for their dramatic truth as for their musical integrity. Her voice, with it's extraordinary range, was as distinctive as her infallible sense for a phrase. A magnetic presence, she brought operatic heroines to vivid life, magically shaping and colouring her tone, and making insightful use of the text of the libretto.

*** Please note: while the booklet includes a synopsis and notes in English, the printed libretto is in German only. ***

Schwarzschwanenreich ("Realm of the Black Swan") is that dark chamber of the human psyche in which a woman is driven by guilt and shame to kill her own illegitimate child. She is execrated by a cruel, intolerant society, and even the love of a good man cannot save her from the flames, although it does reconcile her to her fate.

Siegfried Wagner had all the basic skills needed to conceive a viable operatic plot and put together a serviceable libretto. The plot can obviously be linked with that of many operas whose heroines are in some sense outsiders, from Euryanthe to Elektra, and in 1910, when Schwarzschwanenreich was written, it could almost have been taken as a bid to wrest the high ground of expressionistic melodrama from such wild radicals as Schoenberg, not to mention the more conventional Zemlinsky or Schreker. Wresting the high ground was not Siegfried Wagner's way, however, and the leisurely lyricism of the opera's Prelude, harmonically constrained and rhythmically flaccid, gives notice that he prefers the happy endings of fairy tales to the harsh resolutions of tragedy. As with his first opera, Der Beirenhiriuter, the livelier scenes work best. There's a shameless rip-off of Hagen's vassalsummoning (GOtterddmmerung) in Act 1, and some strong moments of confrontation and recrimination later on, but even these tend to run out of steam, and attempts to modulate to a more elevated tone are at best bland and at worst banal.

Most of the Thuringian team throw themselves uninhibitedly into the piece. Kerstin Quandt is too restrained a villainess, but Beth Johanning and Walter Raffeiner, as the unfortunate heroine and her honest but ineffective lover, work through moments of vocal bluster to achieve some robustly ardent characterization. The recording strikes a reasonable balance between voices and orchestra, and the conductor sustains as high a level of dramatic engagement as the patchy score permits. The libretto included is in German only, but there is a detailed English synopsis.

-- Gramophone [11/1995]

The full glory of Karajan's "beautiful, dramatic reading" (High Fidelity) of Die Walk�re is revealed by Blu-ray technology. Half a century later, this recording still offers up surprises, especially now when fans can hear it at it's very best. "Listen to Gundula Janowitz and Jon Vickers in Act 1 and be seduced" (Limelight). Blu-ray Audio in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. The CDs are produced from Emil Berliner Studios remastering. Clamshell Box; 106pg booklet with libretto in German and English. 4CDS/1BR

For sheer vocal opulence in Wagner, these tracks would be hard to equal. Her ‘Ho-jo-to- ho!’ in 1935 announced on the gramophone her arrival as a Wagnerian prima donna and the splendour of the singing is unsurpassed.

-- Gramophone [10/1990]

This 1961, Wieland Wagner directed Bayreuth Tannhäuser, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, stars Victoria de los Angeles as Elisabeth and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (at his last Bayreuth Festival) in the role of Wolfram. This discovery in the radio archives of a Tannhäuser from the first of the subsequent performances to a less-than-optimal initial performance is a real find, and is here released on CD in the series of historical recordings of the Bayreuth Festival. By a stroke of luck, all the protagonists were on form on this early August evening, as can now be heard for the first time.