This CD box set allows us to relive that legendary Bayreuth Festival year with recordings of Tannhäuser from July 22, Die Walküre from July 25, Lohengrin from August 4, and Parsifal from August 5, 1954. For the rapidly expanding loyal audience of "New Bayreuth, " which had been establishing itself with remarkable speed since 1951, the year 1954 brought some unexpected surprises. A singer named Theo Adam, previously known only for minor roles, stepped in to replace the towering bass legends Ludwig Weber and Josef Greindl as Fasolt and King Heinrich. Meanwhile, a choir member named Franz Crass was promoted to the role of the Fourth Nobleman in Lohengrin, unaware that just five years later, he would alternate as King Heinrich alongside his already more established young colleague. Equally surprising was Greindl's debut as Gurnemanz in Bayreuth, filling in for Ludwig Weber.

In June 2026, Metier proudly presents composer Michael Ellison's ground-breaking set of Three Transcultural Operas: Mevlana (Say I am you), Deniz Kustu (The Sea Crossed Fisherman), and bozlak opera Binbogalar Efsanesi (Legend of a Thousand Bulls), all performed with the Hezarfen Ensemble, the leading Turkish contemporary music ensemble co-founded by Michael Ellison. Ellison spent ten years working in Istanbul and has imbued these operas with an unprecedented level of integration of Turkish culture, music, and traditional instruments, seamlessly blending them with contemporary music in a unique and personal idiom. Ellison's is a music of singing melody, colour, and contrast, evocative atmosphere, and emotional breadth and has been described as "beautifully crafted, robust, and absorbing" by the American Record Guide. A new, 2026 High Resolution edition of Mevlana (originally released in 2014 on Metier) joins the newly recorded performances of Deniz Kustu and Binbogalar Efsanesi to bring together a first complete triptych of operas. Alongside the audio recordings, Metier will release the complete digital video productions of Deniz Kustu and Binbogalar Efsanesi operas recorded at the Istanbul Music Festival. Mevlana (Say I am You) was the first opera to include Turkish instruments and vocal styles, blended here with Western operatic tradition and based on the poetry of Rumi, the historic mystic. This hypnotic work dramatically traces the story of the transformation of Jelaluddin Rumi (Mevlâna) from ordinary scholar to ecstatic mystic at the hands of wandering dervish Shams-i Tabriz and features the dynamic vocal ensemble VocaalLAB Nederland with the Hezarfen Ensemble. Ellison's second and third operas are compelling tales that resonate with the global challenges of today, both adapted from novels by Yasar Kemal and directed for stage by Simon Jones. Powerful and dramatic, Deniz Kustu (The Sea Crossed Fisherman) tells the tragic tale of village-loner Selim and orphaned street-child Zeynel, integrating traditional Turkish instruments, contemporary elements, and Western opera singers. It's shocking events and environmental repercussions reflect our own current concerns. The opera also celebrates Istanbul, it's seas and marine life, contrasting the real and fantastical seascape of the Bosphorus with the dizzying, teeming metropolis of Istanbul and one small fishing village. "The Sea-Crossed Fisherman is an arresting picture of Istanbul, from it's glittering dawns to it's seething underbelly, and Kemal's... lyrical prose is a good fit for the American composer Michael Ellison... " -James Imam, Opera Magazine. Powerful and moving, Binbogalar Efsanesi (Legend of a Thousand Bulls) is based on the masterpiece novel by Yasar Kemal about the decline and disappearance of the last nomads in Turkey, as their millennia-old pastoral way of life is destroyed. The culmination of an 8-year European Research Council project, "Beyond East and West," Binbogalar Efsanesi is a unique work, sung in Turkish and integrates the dramatic, virtuoso style of traditional bozlak Anatolian folk music voices with contemporary language. Hale Tetik, of Andante Magazine, wrote: "The love, sorrow, grief, and rebellion, emanating from the voice of bozlak singer Fatma Aydogan, were engraved in our hearts." Michael Ellison has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras and festivals across Europe and the US, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Variances, Radio France, Grenoble Festival, New York Youth Symphony, Siemens Foundation, amongst many others. He was principal investigator on the European Research Council project Beyond East and West: Developing and Documenting an Evolving Transcultural Musical Practice (2015-2023) and the PI of the AHRC-Istanbul Development Agency supported project Transtraditional Istanbul. He teaches composition at the University of Bristol, England.

Ture Rangstrom's The Bridal Crown has proven to be one of the most durable Swedish operas, and has been performed in abundance in many different productions across the country. Located in Dalarna in the latter half of the 19th century, it is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story with two young lovers - Mats and Kersti - from families in enmity with each other. The drama itself cries out for music and there is even some melodies created by playwright August Strindberg himself. But then, it was released as an opera by the composer Rangstrom who created, as it would turn out, an eternally young music drama.

Dark Fall is an opera about love and longing in old age. The story centres on Ellen, a married woman who is showing the first signs of Alzheimer's disease. Despite these symptoms, or perhaps because of them, she falls in love with Owen, an old friend who visits Ellen and her husband. Dark Fall questions notions about love and partnership in old age: When are we too ill or too old to be allowed to fall in love again? to start a new life with a new partner and be able to leave someone else? when are we too limited in our autonomy to freely decide our lives? Together with Dark Spring (UA Mannheim 2020), Dark Fall is conceived as the second part of a theatrical Diptych of Desire. The pieces can be performed either separately or together as a double feature.

The Walhall Eternity label is for the first time releasing in it's entirety the legendary 1959 Covent Garden Ring cycle of Richard Wagner conducted by Franz Konwitschny, performances that feature the finest Wagnerian voices of the 1950's, including Wolfgang Windgassen, Hans Hotter, Astrid Varnay, Ramon Vinay, Amy Shuard (student of Eva Turner and Covent Garden regular), Gottlob Frick and more. Franz Konwitschny's gripping interpretations lie comfortably between those of Fürtwängler's commanding heights supremacy and Solti's fire and spontaneity. Re-mastered 24bit/96kHz.

Ivan Repusic, who made his debut as Principal Conductor of the Munchner Rundfunkorchester in the autumn of 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi's "Luisa Miller", now presents a further and lesser-known masterpiece by the famous Italian opera composer. The concert performance of Verdi's early stage work "I due Foscari" was recorded on November 25, 2018 at the Munich Prinzregententheater. Outstanding performers provide an authentic atmosphere and vocal magnificence, and no less a person than the multiple-award-winning Italian baritone Leo Nucci was successfully engaged for the role of the Doge of Venice. This highlight of the Munich music scene from late last year is now available from BR-KLASSIK as a double album. Verdi's early masterpiece "I due Foscari" was the first of the operas he wrote for the Teatro Argentina in Rome. He had already worked on the material (Lord Byron's drama "The Two Foscari"), and, after a first subject had been rejected by the Roman censors, Verdi returned to it and had the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave. Although the opera's premiere on November 3, 1844 was only moderately successful and Verdi would even distance himself from it later on, the work was still frequently performed up to the 1870s. It was rediscovered during the early 1950s and has since become a fixed part of the international opera repertoire. The concert performance (sung in the Italian original) in Munich's Prinzregententheater received great acclaim from audience and critics alike, again justifying the Munchner Rundfunkorchester's strategy of successfully reviving underrated music-theatrical works by means of standard-setting performances. Ivan Repusic conducts a genuine theatrical Verdi here: vital, robust, fiery and extremely lively.

Fuoco di gioia -at the beginning of Verdi's "Otello", the compatriots of the victorious protagonist cheer his triumphant return to his home port with a vocal "fire of joy". The opera quote is also the title of this new album recently recorded by the Bavarian Radio Chorus, together with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester under it's chief conductor Ivan Repušic. The opera chorus from "Otello" begins this selection of famous choruses and instrumental pieces from stage works of Italian belcanto (Verdi), Italian verismo (Leoncavallo, Puccini, Mascagni), Russian opera (Borodin, Glinka, Tchaikovsky), and the romantic operas of Richard Wagner. These very recent recordings from January, February and July 2019 contain well-known and enjoyable melodies that are perfect for singing along to (secretly or otherwise)!

Live recording from the work’s world premieres on 11 and 12 December 2008.

This is not the first case of a premiere performance of a work by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) decades after his death. On 11 December 2008 the sold-out Rudolfinum in Prague heard for the first time a work which ranks among Martinu’s most significant and which the composer himself highly esteemed. Martinu originally composed the opera Juliette in Czech. However, so as to ensure appropriate publicity for the work, he wanted – already armed with a French libretto – to place extracts from the most relevant scenes on French radio. Yet Three Fragments from the Opera Juliette (The Key to Dreams) was not broadcast on the radio and had to wait some 70 years for its first performance. This was entrusted to the safe hands of that most competent of conductors Sir Charles Mackerras, who has devoted a great part of his life to discovering Czech music and promoting it on world stages. Thanks to Martinu’s dreamily beautiful music and the remarkable engagement of all the interpreters, the conductor’s December leave-taking of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was transformed into a joint triumph. After experiencing Magdalena Kožená in the role of Juliette, it is hard to imagine another star singer in her place. The Australian tenor Steve Davislim, who performed in the role of Michel, was a splendid partner to Magdalena Kožená in the lyrical and dramatic position. On this CD, Three Fragments is supplemented by the orchestral suite from the same opera, which sensitively treats the music of all three Acts and corresponds with the “dreamy logic” of the original.

REVIEWS

"I don’t think I’ve ever heard a performance of any part of this score that captures its sheer beauty and fantasy so well." -- International Record Review, June 2009

"Mackerras directs a wonderful performance and while Kožená sings the title-role beautifully she is in excellent company. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra play superbly throughout, not least in the sensible coupling of Zbyn?k Vost?ák’s expert arrangement of three of Julietta’s orchestral episodes. I cannot recommend this scintillating disc highly enough."-- Gramophone, June 2009

"Magdalena Kožená is magnificent as the volatile Julietta and is excellently matched by Steve Davislim’s Michel. Davislim is also terrific in the opera’s almost unbearably poignant finale. Along with three orchestral excerpts, including the opera’s prelude, these fragments provide a fitting tribute to Mackerras’s profound understanding of Martin?’s musical character." -- BBC Music Magazine, June 2009

"The sure hand of Charles Mackerras, a master of exceptionally high calling, succeeds in drawing out all the wealth of the score, letting the music shine with its most beautiful colors as he wields a world-class ensemble, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The bright, at times seemingly transparent mezzosoprano of Magdalena Kožená proves to be ideal for the role of Julietta, a girl losing her memory, a being from another world, sensuous and yet ungraspable. Davislim proves to be an ideal partner for her."-- Das Opernglas, June 2009

"Sir Charles Mackerras can scarcely be equalled for the way he lives this music, for the way it breathes and blooms under his direction. Thanks to the crystal-clear luminosity of the Czech Philharmonic’s finely detailed sound and the extraordinarily sensitive performances of world-class singers Magdalena Kožená and Steve Davislim, Mackerras has succeeded in fully revealing the suggestive quality of the music, carrying listeners away to a world of dreamlike surrealism. In the hands of Mackerras, a Martin? expert, the score becomes a magical tome." -- Fono Forum, July 2009

The Walhall Eternity label is for the first time releasing in it's entirety the legendary 1959 Covent Garden Ring cycle of Richard Wagner conducted by Franz Konwitschny, performances that feature the finest Wagnerian voices of the 1950's, including Wolfgang Windgassen, Hans Hotter, Astrid Varnay, Ramon Vinay, Amy Shuard (student of Eva Turner and Covent Garden regular), Gottlob Frick and more. Franz Konwitschny's gripping interpretations lie comfortably between those of Fürtwängler's commanding heights supremacy and Solti's fire and spontaneity. Re-mastered 24bit/96kHz.