In the 19th century, Paris consolidated its position as the leading city of opera. Composers from Germany (Meyerbeer, Paer and Wagner, who famously had a very unhappy time there) and Italy (Rossini, Verdi, Spontini, Cimarosa and Cherubini) worked there alongside native composers, vying for public favour in the years following the French Revolution.

Opera was performed in Paris’s major theatres (the Opera, Opera-Comique, Theatre- Lyrique and Theatre-Italien) and divided into two varieties – serious works on heroic themes and lighter works based on the lives of ordinary people or events. This divide developed into two fully defined styles: opera comiques and drama lyrique.

The programme of this new recording is shaped around rarities of the French operatic repertoire. Among these are the duet between Adam and Eve from Massenet’s Eve, a fascinating number with remarkable scoring for soprano saxophone, harp, woodwind, horns and cellos, giving the music a profoundly poetic and supremely lyrical quality. Also included is a duet from the second act of Gounod’s Polyeucte, a work that failed to gain widespread popularity due to its combination of opera and oratorio as well as its musical quality.

The title of this disc – Patrie! – is taken from an opera of the same name by the now-forgotten composer Émile Paladilhe. Cast in 5 acts and performed on a huge scale, this tale of the Flemish uprising against Spain was one of the Paris Opera’s most successful works, which continued to be staged until the 1920s, when it rapidly sank into obscurity. Heard on this disc is the supremely intense duet from the first scene of act two.

This recording features further duets by Halévy, Massenet, Gounod and Thomas, shedding light on a number of forgotten gems from French romantic opera.

OTHER INFORMATION:
• New recordings made in 2010.
• Fascinating and rare repertoire, a must-have disc for opera enthusiasts.
• Comprehensive booklet notes.
• Sung texts and biographies available at www.brilliantclassics.com.

Christoph Willibald Gluck is one of the great reformers of opera, departing from the tried and tested genres of opera seria in the 18th century: Metastasio's drama per musica and Rameau's tragédie lyrique. Gluck sought to restore dramatic truth to musical theatre, dispensing with long, virtuosic arias simply written to play to performers' vanity, and providing a greater musical and dramatic coherence to his operas. His focus on clarity, simplicity and the return to nature is perfectly exemplified in his great work, Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of his 'reform' operas. The work owes much to the style of French opera, with its accompanied recitative and simple vocal lines.

This historic recording from 1966 features a young Grace Bumbry, who was recognised at the Kennedy Centre Honours in 2009 as a defining figure in American arts and culture. Also featuring internationally renowned conductor Václav Neumann, the recording is an acclaimed interpretation of one of Gluck's best-loved works.

Other information:
- Includes plot synopsis and liner notes on the composer and work.
- Libretto available on www.brilliantclassics.com.

World Premiere Recording. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is a mastework of 19th Century literature; a parable on the struggle for personal freedom against the conventions of a hostile society, play our in a tragic love story. Contains a libretto by director Colin Graham after the novel by Leo Tolstoy.

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

WAGNER Siegfried • Marek Janowski, cond; Stephen Gould (Siegfried); Christian Elsner (Mime); Tomasz Konieczny (Wanderer); Jochen Schmeckenbecher (Alberich); Matti Salminen (Fafner); Violeta Urmana (Brünnhilde); Anna Larsson (Erda); Sophie Klussman (Woodbird); Berlin RSO • PENTATONE 5186408 (3 SACDs: 227:30) Live: Philharmonie, Berlin 3/1/2013

This set has much to recommend it. In many ways, it is by far the finest installment of the PentaTone series so far, including the non-Ring items, and as such increases the impression that Janowski’s is a Ring that evolves and improves as it goes along (Rheingold got a lukewarm reception from me in Fanfare 37:2; Walküre was better: see Fanfare 37:3). The sound quality is superb in this Siegfried throughout. Perhaps this is shown best at the very beginning, where the timpani roll is just there, but audible. If, as it continues, this opening is not quite as evocative as Furtwänger at La Scala (who is more primordial), it remains an impressive achievement. The evil undercurrent of that roll seems to be mirrored by the descending bassoon figure. Janowski keeps it moving, and his orchestra is astonishingly well disciplined; yet there is space for lyricism, too. Janowski’s achievement is to provide a terrific sense of momentum, while never rushing.

The cast is strong, although inevitably one always finds oneself pining for perfection. (From this stance, it is easy to see Richard Caniell’s point over at Immortal Performances with his “Dream Ring.”) Christian Elsner’s Mime is wonderfully angry, not a caricature at all (Peter Bronder’s Mime, in Barenboim’s Ring at the BBC Proms this year, was lighter, and clipped and wheedling in the more traditional way). The Wotan/Wanderer here is Tomasz Konieczny, as it has been in the previous two installments. Here he seems to come into his own, a completely different take to that of Hotter yet still big enough of voice and interpretatively sound. Ironically, perhaps, for Head God, Konieczny’s Wotan is one of the most human interpretations on the market today. A darker sound would also have emphasized the differences between Wanderer and Alberich in the second act.

But it is the titular hero that carries the work. Gould has a wonderfully lusty voice (a shame he sounds a tad rushed, by Janowski, in the Forging Song). His exchanges with Mime throughout are expertly managed, and the extended Wanderer/Siegfried part of the final act is enlivened by Gould’s splendidly healthy voice, even at this stage.

Each act fits neatly onto a single disc (Janowski is generally not one to linger). Act II begins with a perfect sense of darkness and foreboding, and both Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher) and Wotan are in top form, especially perhaps Schmeckenbecher in his invoking of Fafner. The grumpy (and excellent) Fafner on this occasion is the experienced Matti Salminen. For the final act, perhaps the “Heil dir, Sonne” is only well done by Urmana rather than radiantly done, but the fault really lies with Janowski, who after excelling so much in this reading does not quite step up to the final moments. Ecstasy is not quite achieved. The final act suffers from a loss of momentum around half way through, which contributes to this.

Despite this, this remains a valuable, involving and rewarding Siegfried that demands to be heard.

FANFARE: Colin Clarke

A most impressive sense of drama and excitement.

So to The Ring! Marek Janowski’s epic Wagner cycle enters the final strait as it begins the great tetralogy that crowned Wagner’s life’s work. Few conductors get to record The Ring twice, but Janowski is privileged to have done so. His first recording was from Dresden in the early 1980s, the third out of only five studio Rings to be recorded. It was blessed by the phenomenal playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden and first rate digital sound captured in the city’s Lukaskirche. However, despite some excellent individual turns, the set was often hobbled by the choice of solo singers, most notably Theo Adam’s desiccated Wotan and the rather overwhelmed Brünnhilde of Jeannine Altmeyer. It is interesting that, almost for the first time in Janowski’s Berlin Wagner cycle, we can now make some informed comparisons. I’m pleased to say that this Rheingold shines up very impressively.

I haven’t always praised Janowski’s approach to Wagner’s dramas - I found his take on Tristan maddening - but this Rheingold finds him at his best. He uses his preference for fast speeds to his advantage to make the drama buzz along from one exciting episode to another, pacing the work by tapping right into the sense of quickfire elation. At times it feels as energetic as a soap opera - a compliment - and the opera’s series of conversations has seldom sounded so energised. The Prelude, for example, has a sense of expectation that can hardly wait to get started, but in spite of the fast speed I never found it rushed. The transitions between scenes seem natural and well judged, and the showpieces are never less than excellent. The descent into Nibelheim is thrilling, threatening to overwhelm the listener at the entrance of the anvils, and you can sense the fragility of the rainbow bridge in a sound that is commanding yet ephemeral. Janowski controls the sound of the orchestra impressively, too: I particularly loved the sound made by the strings during Erda’s scene, menacing with a subtle sense of decay, casting a dusky veil over her warnings.

The orchestra and the clarity of its recording have been two of the principal assets of this series, and so it proves here. They take every opportunity to reveal Wagner’s score in all its astounding, delectable colour, as if holding it up to the light for fresh examination. There are lots of highlights - the trumpet at the first appearance of the gold, the clearly delineated semiquavers on the violins as the water ripples around the rejoicing Rhinemaidens, the delicate flecks of harp as we arrive in Valhalla, the rhythmic, almost comical, swagger of the giants’ theme, the ominous brass depth of the dragon, the stunning trombones of the curse - but we can summarise it by saying that the orchestra do a magnificent job of bringing the colours of Wagner’s score to the surface. Likewise, the Pentatone engineers have captured the whole performance brilliantly, both in stereo and surround.

So what of the singing? Well, I admit this doesn’t get off to a good start, probably due to the limitations of the live concert setting. The opening is not auspicious, with a rather hollery group of Rhinemaidens and an Alberich that, initially at least, struggles with accurate pitching. However, things settle down once everyone has warmed up. The Rhinemaidens’ invocation to the gold is very effective, and Schmeckenbecher manages a thrilling renunciation of love. What is more, by this time a momentum seems to have taken over the scene, so that Alberich’s curse on love launches us headlong into the swirling eddies of the transformation music that transport us, via some daring timing from Janowski, up to the cloudy heights of Valhalla, clearly and atmospherically enunciated from the brass. Elsewhere Schmeckenbecher is fantastic in the Nibelheim scene. His fantasies of world domination are played as the furious rantings of a deranged mind and it’s very effective to listen to. However, he then sounds remarkably pitiable when he pleads for Wotan not to take the Ring from him and he sings a masterclass curse that begins as a resentful whimper but grows into a powerful denunciation.

Tomasz Konieczny is a slightly gritty Wotan. He doesn’t have the grandeur or poetic beauty of, say, Hans Hotter or, more recently, René Pape, but he is undoubtedly dramatic. This feels like a lived-in performance, not a “mere” concert. He is brilliant at depicting the god’s conflicted sense of inner dilemma. Even when he is at his most contented, surveying his new home in the final scene, you can sense the unease that plagues the god, and the sense of entrapment that encircles him in the second and fourth scenes is well worth hearing. Christian Elsner makes a slightly nasal Loge, but I found him very effective. The vocal colour reinforces his role as the outsider among the gods and helps to enrich his character as the slightly disreputable fixer among the immortals. He is delightfully derisive during the passages after Freia’s departure when the gods begin to age and his interaction with Alberich in the Nibelheim scene is a case-study of wheeling and dealing. You can even sense a touch of pity for the despairing Alberich in the fourth scene. Elsewhere among the men, Andreas Conrad makes a surprisingly humane, sympathetic Mime, and the same is true for Günther Groissböck’s Fasolt. Timo Riihonen has enough darkness in his voice to mark out Fafner as the nastier of the two brothers.

The women are also very strong, led by a marvellously imperious Fricka from Iris Vermillion. Ricarda Merbeth does a good job with what limited material she has as Freia, but Maria Radner’s Erda is extremely impressive. She actually manages to sound quite youthful, even affectionate, avoiding any of the elderly warble that sometimes afflicts singers of this role. Her warning of the “dark day” that dawns for the gods is made all the more impressive by the spellbinding playing of the orchestral strings. The trio of Rhinemaidens grow into the first scene and sound good from offstage towards the end.

So the final chunk of Janowski’s Wagner cycle has got off to a good start. I would certainly choose to listen to this Rheingold over his Dresden one, mainly because of the conductor’s more impressive sense of drama and excitement. Now let’s see how the rest of this Ring is going to unfold.

-- Simon Thompson , MusicWeb International