Intolleranza 1960 was Nono's first work for the opera stage, and is a flaming protest against intolerance, oppression and the violation of human dignity. Premiered in 1961, the premiere night was interrupted by neo-facists shouting "Viva la polizia!" during the torture scene.

Following the release of the DVD box in the spring, OehmsClassics now issues the complete Ring from Frankfurt in the well-known design on 14 CDs. This complete version comprises the individual issues of the four operas with the Frankfurt Opera, produced and released during the years 2010-2012. This release is accompanied by a single CD with orchestral music from the Ring.

OehmsClassics now releases the recording of this controversial production of Doktor Faust by Nicolas Brieger made in 2008 just in time for the Munich Opera Festival. The title role is sung by Wolfang Koch, who will sing Wotan this year at Bayreuth in the Jubilee Ring Cycle. The singer can be assured of an appropriate portion of attention, and the new CD could hardly appear at a more favorable time.

Creating excitement is the aim of this effective music with it's trombone attacks, bell tolls and horrors, sentimental cantilenas, sweet love duets and the famous overture: never was there the least doubt that Sebastian Weigle with the Frankfurt ensemble would succeed in bringing these off. With Rienzi, Oehms Classics now presents the last of the three operas attributed to the youthful years of Richard Wagner.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Carus is building a valuable stable of recordings, many taped in the Frauenkirche in Dresden. For this three CD set the NDR Choir, Festspiel Orchester Göttingen, a sextet of solo singers and Nicholas McGegan have been enlisted to render Samson to the disc-buying public. The result, if I can anticipate my own critical comments, is an equable and well, but small scaled, performance. There are no outstanding singers as such; instead ensemble virtues are promoted in pursuance of a harmonious and expressively equable reading of the score.

One of the most striking things about the set is the excellent diction and spirited incision of the NDR Chorus. The relatively new Festspiel Orchester Göttingen employs period instruments and, as with almost all bands promoted by Carus that I have encountered, are a most adept, rhythmically buoyant and sympathetic one. McGegan directs with style and if one sometimes feels him a little lacking in brio - I tend to feel the same way about his compatriot Robert King in this sort of repertoire - then compensation comes in the shape of his long-term control and of the rise and fall of the work's emotive high ground. Recitative is notably well judged, accompanied recitative especially, where the band points finely, and these are the result of McGegan's acumen.

But Samson is about the voice and here we have some matters to ponder. The singers have been well selected to ensure that warmth and a certain limited expressive range is harmoniously maintained - which is not to say there aren't some outbursts, of which more in a moment. It is all too easy, when this work is staged or semi-staged, as it has been, to allow Samson's gravitational pull to splinter ensemble focus. I saw John Vickers's last performances on a London stage, when he sang Samson, and though this wasn't quite the case here, it was obvious where all eyes and ears were directed. In this Carus things are, for want of a better phrase, democratically apportioned.

Franziska Gottwald is a sonorous but not over inflated Micah - she sings with equalized tone and requisite plangency, as well as fine English diction. It's a voice that can take on a pleasing keen, as in her Act II aria with chorus Return Oh God of Hosts. Thomas Cooley is Samson; he sings with pleasing, neatly controlled eloquence but it's rather small-scaled and arguably a bit neutral, something I felt about his Total Eclipse! which should be more starkly and incontrovertibly conveyed. William Berger has a warm, rounded bass and does well throughout; his recitative control is evident as early as Act I's Oh miserable change! where the band accompanies with spirited interjectory drama. His How willing my paternal love is sensitively graded, modest but not especially expressive. Sophie Daneman sings a pretty but perhaps subdued Let the Bright Seraphim but otherwise gives a controlled, pleasing account. Bass Wolf Matthias Friedrich sports some well nourished but incongruously employed open American vowels, not least in Honour and Arms which gets rather a 'windy' reading.

Who sings the Virgin in Act II, to shadow Daneman? I assume it's a member of the choir but she should be credited, especially as she's good.

The Raymond Leppard directed modern instrument performance is still going strong, and with Janet Baker, Helen Watts, Robert Tear, John Shirley-Quirk and Benjamin Luxon you're assured of first class singing of a certain stamp [Warner Classics 6 CDs 2564695686 - a box set with Messiah and assorted arias]. Harnoncourt [Teldec 2564692602] has pressing claims as does the old Richter with Alexander Young et al [Archiv 453 245 2]. Harry Christophers' 1996 recording with Lynne Dawson, Lynda Russell, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mark Padmore, Matthew Vine, Thomas Randle, Jonathan Best and Michael George is ex-Collins and now on Coro 16008 and is the major opposition. I prefer the Christophers. 

Recorded over two days this is an SACD and sounds a touch reverberant in the tricky acoustic of the Frauenkirche. There are some small cuts, for example To Song and Dance. Whilst admiring the overall, equable nature of the performance, the Christophers gets a more urgent recommendation.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Verbum Nobile is a one-act comic opera by Moniuszko, who developed a thriving national opera movement in the 19th century Polish music. This opera, like Moniuszko's other major operatic compositions, depict the charming and unpretentious picture of old-Polish customs.

Monumental music of great beauty. Kniplová in the title role is magnificent.

Libuše isn’t a traditional opera, rather a large-scale cantata, composed for the coronation of a Czech king. The work was completed in 1872, but it soon turned out that the coronation would not take place and it wasn’t until nine years later that Libuše was premiered to celebrate the wedding of the crown prince and to mark the opening of the National Theatre in Prague. By then Smetana was deaf and wasn’t able to hear a note of this, his most monumental work. The story draws upon an ancient myth about the origination of the Premyslid dynasty of princes and kings, who ruled the country for eleven hundred years.

The opera is divided into three acts. The first is entitled ‘Libuše’s Judgement’ and deals with the conflict between the brothers Chrudoš and Stáhlav; the second is ‘Libuše’s Marriage’ and the third is called ‘The Prophecy’ and concludes with six historical pictures, narrated by Libuše.

For those who only know the opera composer Smetana through The Bartered Bride, the light-hearted and folk-music inspired rural comedy, Libuše may come as a shock – or a revelation. I labelled it ‘monumental’ in the first paragraph of this review and that’s exactly what it is: monumental, solemn and grandiose. When I bought the present recording on four LPs almost forty years ago I only knew Moldau and The Bartered Bride. Since I knew nothing about the work – and was silly enough to start listening without reading the very extensive introductory notes in the booklet, far more comprehensive than the short essay in the CD inlay – the fanfare that opens the overture had me sit up and once the surprise was over I wallowed in the monumental flood of glorious music that streamed out of my loudspeakers. Fanfares, processions and powerful choruses are recurrent in the work, brass instruments naturally dominate much of the proceedings and Wagnerian Leitmotifs are part of the parcel. There is even a beautiful quartet of harvesters in the second act; they seem to be Smetana’s equivalent of Wagner’s Rhine Maidens.

Grand and majestic the music often is, but it is also permeated with warmth and surging melodies. The long prelude to act III is noble and memorable. And there are some hard-hitting dramatic scenes as well. For the Czech people this work has a special significance, not least through Smetana’s ambition to create declamation that emanates from the Czech language. In that respect he is a fore-runner of Janácek.

Recorded more than forty years ago the sound is still much more than acceptable and the singing and playing of the forces from the Prague National Theatre is totally idiomatic. The lack of libretto is however a drawback and even though there is a rather detailed synopsis in the booklet I was glad that I had access to the original book from the LP set.

Monumental music needs monumental solo voices as well and by and large the singers on this recording meet that requirement. Most crucial is the title role and Nadežda Kniplová is admirable throughout. Hers is a grand dramatic soprano, very expansive and with the thrilling ringing top notes needed to ride the orchestra without problems. But she also sings with great restraint and feeling for the more intimate nuances. The recording sessions were spread over seven days and I suppose Ms Kniplová was able to record her part in smaller doses. In the theatre this role must be a tremendous challenge, not least to have to sing the six concluding pictures after so long and strenuous an evening. But even if she was able to record smaller portions in the studio this is a glorious achievement.

As Krasava, Milada Šubrtová is splendid, more lyrical than Libuše but still with glorious ring, and Vera Soukupová’s rounded contralto makes her an excellent Radmila.

The male singers are more of a mixed bag. Karel Berman’s sonorous and dark bass is imposing throughout and Zdenek Kroupa, lighter and brighter, is intensely dramatic, but not free from strain. This is even more of a nuisance in the case of Ivo Zidek. Basically he has a fine tenor voice but he seems several numbers too small for this role and has to push for volume – the result is far from successful. Václav Bednár, a lyric baritone, sings rather beautifully, but not without some strain and unsteadiness. Jindrich Jindrák is worn and wobbly, though dramatically he is well inside the role.

As for alternative recordings there are, or have been, at least three others. Alois Klima conducted Prague Radio forces back in 1949 with the legendary Beno Blachut as Stahlav. Zdenek Kosler, like Krombholc with Prague National Theatre, set down his version in 1983, Gabriela Benackova singing the title role (1983) and in 1995 Oliver Dohnanyi, with the same forces and Eva Urbanova as the best known soloist, recorded it once again. I haven’t heard any of the rival versions but having known the present version for so long I can honestly say that it is easy to overlook the deficiencies and enjoy the work at large and the many fine contributions from many of the singers, in particular Nadežda Kniplová. In this new incarnation, at an affordable price and squeezed onto only two CDs, it is competitive. But what has the cover picture of a modern teenage girl have to do with mythology from the eighth century?

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

This performance, recorded on November 14, 1955, was part of the four-week festival that took place at the Vienna State Opera celebrating its reopening after having been destroyed near the end of World War II. Meistersinger had long been a Viennese favorite and was performed 65 times between 1949 and 1955 at the interim Theater an der Wien. It enjoyed luxury casting and great conductors: Clemens Krauss, Rudolf Moralt, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, Rudolf Kempe, and Fritz Busch. For the return to the State Opera, director Karl Böhm invited the Hungarian-born Fritz Reiner, a perfectionist who in the previous 20 years had gained a reputation as one of America's finest conductors. Rehearsals, it was said, were grueling; but judging from this recording it was worth the work.

You can tell much about the entire performance from Reiner's Prelude. It is precise, grand, and detailed, with frisky, playful chattering in the upper strings underpinned by a more muscular approach in the lower strings. But it never becomes aggressive or reckless enough to smash into the opening scene; it grows into it naturally. (Where else can such a complex expression end but in prayer?) Throughout the opera we're treated to spirited tempos and playing from the Vienna Philharmonic that Reiner slows down to good effect: The Fliedermonolog is relaxed and as soft as cotton; the prelude to Act 3 wafts in the air gradually and wistfully; the quintet is a moment frozen in time and is presented with great breadth. We can feel what each character is feeling, even if a couple of them don't have the breath to express it.

Beckmesser's false "prize" song is slow to start, and so is the unease and eventual laughter of the assembled crowd. And the real "Prize Song" is accompanied lyrically, with sweep up to the high points, after which Sachs' speech about German art comes as a powerful missive. What the Viennese of 1955 thought of it, with its nasty recent memories, is anyone's guess, but the opera ends with true joy erupting, and much of it has to do with Reiner's ability to balance light and heavy, upper joy with lower gravity--a great reading.

Paul Schöffler, the possessor of a voice that never sounded young, is tonally a bit dry here but nonetheless does not present Sachs as an old man; he is vital and sure of himself. Sachs is a man who prods fate a bit, just because he can, and Schöffler sings with the assurance and potency and shading of a man of wisdom, his voice gaining in strength as the opera progresses. And his pianissimo singing is always handsome, never resorting to falsetto. His is the best Sachs on CD, bettering his own performance under Knappertsbusch on Decca.

Hans Beirer's Walther is neither as sweet and ardorous as Sandor Konya's nor as simply gorgeous as Domingo's (for Jochum on DG), and in fact he sounds indisposed. But his indisposition is only vocal, and while I realize how odd that sounds, his beautiful phrasing and shading, sincerity, vigor, and musicianship make up for a lack of grand tone and some dry singing. It's a performance impossible to dislike.

I was put off by Irmgard Seefried's Eva at first--her second act is too cutesy and pert--but she grows into the part and is lovely in the third act despite lacking anything like a trill. Gottlob Frick's Pogner is important. His address to the Masters in Act 1 has real authority and he's warm and tender with Eva in the second act. Erich Kunz sings all of Beckmesser's notes (save the silly falsetto high-A that ends his monolog in Sachs' shop) and has remarkable "face"; while we don't exactly feel sorry for him at the end, he clearly is not entirely mockable either. The David of Murray Dickie also is almost visible, and he sings with an impetuous young man's certainty, his high-Bs ringing out easily and pointedly. Rosette Anday's Magdalene is stodgy and hectoring; Eberhard Waechter's Nachtigall is mellifluous; and the other Mastersingers bark just a bit too much.

The sound is Austrian Radio mono from 1955 but sounds 10 years younger--grand and able to cope with the big climaxes, clear in the ensembles, clean in quiet moments. Aside from the Kubelik version (various labels, including Myto, Calig, Arts) with Thomas Stewart, Konya, and Gundula Janowitz, and possibly Solti's second recording (Decca) with Ben Heppner, Karita Mattila, and (small-scale but impressive) José van Dam, this set goes to the top of the list.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

It is as though Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire were not on show because no one could be bothered to clean it, or as though Wordsworth’s The Prelude had been allowed to go out of print. How can it have taken so long for this great and magical opera to appear on CD?

So many of the expressions of our age have frowned in their contemplation of it, or have turned away to cultivate arcane, private gardens. But here was Tippett in 1955 expressing joy, boundless optimism and faith in beauty and humanity; doing so, moreover, with such richness of imagery that even those who loved it at first hearing were a bit taken aback by its overwhelming abundance.

As so often with his pieces, it took a while to sink in, and for players and singers to get their fingers and their vocal chords around those springing rhythms and sinewy lines. The moment at which that happened was the moment of this recording and the performances that preceded it. Remedios and Carlyle are not simply managing those exuberant hocketings above the stave in their final duet; you would swear that they were enjoying them, and as they do so the image of love as a consuming flame is vividly projected. Burrows and the adorable Harwood are audibly moved by how much tenderness and innocence there is in their music, and they make a real and most touching couple. Herincx is wonderfully suave and bossy as King Fisher; Watts not only survives her forays into the bass-baritone register but makes an awesomely Sibylline figure of Sosostris. And Davis, raptly in love with this score and communicating that to his singers and players so effectively that one is never aware of them gritting their teeth and counting beats as though their lives depended on it, reveals again and again the opera’s magical sonorities. It is a superb performance: after it one can hardly read those early reviews (“incomprehensible libretto”, “too much counterpoint”, “half an hour too long”) without laughing. The recording, too, communicates a real sense of live performance.

A masterpiece, in short, and one that can be listened to again and again without exhausting its exuberant generosity.

Michael Oliver, GRAMOPHONE (1/1996) Review of original CD release

Jean-Marie Leclair, a pure product of the 18th century, was at the crossroads of styles, cultivating a virtuosic art combining melodies à la française and Italian virtuosity stemming from Corelli and Vivaldi. He was 49 when he undertook his first (and only) lyric tragedy: Scylla et Glaucus. A veritable masterpiece, revealing the obvious influence of Rameau, Scylla et Glaucus left a strong mark on French opera. First performed at the Académie Royale de Musique in 1746, this opera, which had a run of 17 performances and enjoyed great success, was only rediscovered in the 1980s (by John Eliot Gardiner in Lyon).

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. • We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops. • In the labyrinth of sentiments, sorcerer Isménor’s magic wand confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. • With Tancrède, André Campra (1660-1744) established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.

"The Woman without a Shadow" by Richard Strauss was just the ticket for Music Director Sebastian Weigle at the Frankfurt Opera, so it is quite appropriate to make available this opera on CD. Strauss specialist Weigle has brought together excellent singers and musicians for the stage debut, including Terje Stensvold in this 2014 Frankfurt Opera series. - Oehmas, (Translated from German text.)