Driving intensity, rhythmic flair, and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti's early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips. Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti. Together, Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica would go on to make a celebrated cycle of Haydn symphonies for Decca in the early 1970s. But these early recordings already demonstrate what a potent artistic combination they were, as forerunners both to that monument of gramophone history, and to the modern-day Budapest Festival Orchestra. As reviewers at the time remarked, the strings play with a particular unanimity and attack which sounds uniquely 'Hungarian'.

A booklet essay by the music historian David Patmore tells the story of the Philharmonia Hungarica and their debut on record. All six Mercury albums were recorded at sessions in June 1958, held in the Vienna Konzerthaus: a spacious but analytical acoustic, well suited to the label's trademark high-impact sound. The repertoire played to the strengths of both label and musicians: mostly Hungarian music from the last half century, vividly colored and coursing with rhythmic energy.

There is an early taste of the ensemble's feeling for Haydn, in the 'Surprise' and 'Drum Roll' Symphonies. Doráti's established reputation as a masterful conductor of ballet brings a sweeping sense of line to a collection of Viennese waltzes. The ace in the pack of the Mercury/Philharmonia Hungarica albums was Respighi's suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, which soon became a demonstration disc for audiophiles worldwide. Never previously collected together, this Mercury legacy is complemented by the two albums which the Philharmonia Hungarica and Doráti recorded for Philips. The ensemble's first-ever recording, made in October 1957, appeared on the Fontana imprint, coupling Bartók's Divertimento with Leo Weiner's Hungarian Dances. From 1974, the second Philips album returns to Bartók, with gripping interpretations of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite.

Having made revolutionary changes, during the 1830s and 40s, in both piano performance and composition, Liszt was hardly less innovative in his relationship with the orchestra. He is generally credited with having created the genre of the symphonic poem.

Long out of print, Deryck Cooke's invaluable 'Introduction to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen' reappears on CD, with it's original LP couplings of Siegfried Idyll and Kinderkatechismus. Almost as soon as it reached completion with the release of Die Walk�re in 1966, the Decca Ring cycle conducted by Sir Georg Solti was recognized as the greatest achievement in the history of recorded sound. Three years later, the cycle was issued complete for the first time, and it came with a significant appendix: a three-LP introduction to the music-drama, written and narrated by Deryck Cooke. An English writer on music, Cooke had come to international attention through his completion of Mahler's sketches for the Tenth Symphony. He was a friend of the Decca Ring's producer, John Culshaw, who invited him to make this introduction. No academic, but a broadcaster on the BBC's Third Programme and a pioneer in what might be called popular musicology, Cooke presumed no prior knowledge on the part of his listeners, only a willingness to immerse themselves in the world of the Ring and in it's universal themes of love, power, self-knowledge and tragedy. Outlining the musical leitmotifs which underpin the drama of the Ring, and the part they play in moving it ever onwards, Cooke drew for illustration on excerpts from the complete Decca recording. In addition, Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic recorded many excerpts especially for this introduction - played slower or extended or without voices, to aid comprehension. (Some of these excerpts may have been recorded during rehearsals for various orchestral sections.) Countless listeners have since had their understanding of the Ring immeasurably enhanced by engaging with Cooke's introduction. In complement to Decca's recent remastering of the original recording, Eloquence now reissues Cooke's introduction on CD, presented just as it was in the original box. Unlike previous digital-era issues, this set also includes the recordings of the Siegfried Idyll, led by the Vienna Philharmonic violinist Walter Weller, and the charming Katechismus which Wagner composed as another birthday present for his wife Cosima. All six LP sides fit on two generously filled CDs, and the booklet includes full details of the track points as well as newly inscribed musical examples, to help listeners navigate their way around the narrative. Much more than a period-piece, this set remains the ideal introduction to Wagner's Ring, with much to teach both newcomers and experienced listeners to a perennially challenging and rewarding work of theatrical genius.

The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra breathed new life into the orchestral pops repertoire, told new stories and brought in new audiences when it was revived under the conductor John Mauceri in the 1990s. At the centrepiece of this collection are all of the original HBO albums released by Philips from 1991-1996. From Gershwin to Ligeti, The Firebird to Edward Scissorhands, The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra breathed new life into the orchestral 'pops' repertoire, told new stories and brought in new audiences when it was revived under the conductor John Mauceri in 1990. From the start, they played to capacity audiences at the Hollywood Bowl, where the Los Angeles Philharmonic had been giving concerts since 1922. Now reformed as a separate ensemble - 'the world's greatest pick-up band', auditioned by Mauceri and his colleagues from freelancers across the West Coast - the new Hollywood Bowl Orchestra played a huge repertoire of classical, contemporary, film and Broadway, and recorded the highlights for Philips. The mastermind behind their artistic success and uniquely diverse repertoire was Mauceri, a prot�g� of Leonard Bernstein, who had long worked with equal success in opera, the symphony and musical theatre. Mauceri made the connections that link Holst and Ravel to John Williams and Hans Zimmer, the Korngold and Schoenberg of Vienna to their later identities in California. He showed in sound as well as word how 'Golden Age' Hollywood film scores developed from the world of European late-Romanticism and modernism. Mauceri and his colleagues dug deep into studio libraries to unearth the best, the most original and complete scores available for pieces such as The King and I and familiar 'standards' often heard in much later orchestrations. They worked with great singers from all backgrounds, including (featured in this set) Julia Andrews, Patti LuPone and Sylvia McNair. Each individual HBO album was curated by Mauceri to tell a familiar story - love scenes, nightmares, waltzes, the space age, the passing of a day - from an unexpected angle. The box also includes Mauceri's Decca albums of My Fair Lady, starring Kiri Te Kanawa and Jeremy Irons, and 'Schoenberg in Hollywood' (part of the label's Entartete Musik series). A booklet essay by Peter Quantrill traces the genesis of the revived Hollywood Bowl Orchestra through Mauceri's reflections. Costa Pilavachi, who masterminded many of these recordings for Philips offers his own personal insights. Whichever side of the musical tracks you're from, 'The Sound of Hollywood' will take you on new journeys, to unfamiliar destinations.

The most comprehensive collection ever issued of the recorded art of Herman Krebbers (1923-2018) featuring the great Dutch violinist as concerto soloist, chamber musician and concert master and issued to mark the centenary of his birth. An original jackets collection of a much-loved musician, with an introduction by Bernard Haitink, written shortly before his death. For many years, the concerto recordings made by Herman Krebbers were staples of the Philips LP catalogue. The critical praise and popularity awarded to them was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Krebbers never pursued the path of an international soloist. Instead, he put his family first and chose the vocation of as an orchestral concertmaster, firstly with the Hague Philharmonic under Willem van Otterloo. With them he made his first recordings in the early 1950s, of Bach and Beethoven and Vieuxtemps. Around this time, Philips also recorded Krebbers in duo-violin repertoire with his fellow student and lifelong friend Theo Olof. The albums of Bart�k Duos and the Double Concertos by Bach and Henk Badings are among several recordings in the collection receiving their first international appearance on CD in this collection, which also includes recordings of the Bruch and Dvor�k concertos made in 1973, on the occasion of Krebbers's 40th anniversary as a soloist. In 1962 Krebbers became leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, and went on to make celebrated second recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, as well as the taxing peaks of the 'concertmaster' repertoire, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. The box also includes the Benedictus from Beethoven's Missa solemnis, with it's long and sublime solo-violin part, in two Concertgebouw recordings made in the 70s with Eugen Jochum and Leonard Bernstein, as well as 'Erbarme dich' from Bach's Matth�us-Passion also with Jochum. Krebbers brought to these parts a soloistic finesse and temperament which was central to the success of the interpretations as a whole. Krebbers's parallel career as a chamber musician is represented by a Philips collection of Mozart, including the Oboe Quartet with Heinz Holliger. Further rarities in the set include a second, Swiss-made Bach 'Double' Concerto with Arthur Grumiaux, and a Dutch radio recording of Brahms's Double Concerto with the Concertgebouw's longstanding principal cellist, Tibor de Machula. More than 40 years on from Krebbers's premature retirement after a boating accident, the aristocratic poise and golden warmth of tone to his playing retains it's appeal. This comprehensive tribute features a survey of the violinist's career, and valuable behind-the-scenes insights into many of these recordings, by the Dutch writer Niek Nelissen.

DONIZETTI: ANNA BOLENA

The third limited edition volume of Boult's complete Decca recordings features Boult the insightful accompanist and inspired Russian interpreter, featuring many long-unavailable and newly remastered Decca recordings. After twenty years as the BBC's director of music, Sir Adrian Boult was unceremoniously 'retired' by the corporation in 1950. Still in the prime of his career, Boult continued to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra as it's chief conductor, but meanwhile began to make commercial recordings for English labels such as Decca and Nixa, enabling American audiences in particular to hear a conductor previously confined by and large to his own shores, and in top-of-the-range studio engineering. While Decca capitalized on Boult's reputation as a master of English and choral repertoire, with a pioneering Vaughan Williams symphony cycle, mono and stereo versions of Messiah and much else made available in the two companion boxes on Decca Eloquence, the label also took advantage of his easy relations with many of the great instrumental soloists of the day. At the BBC Proms and elsewhere, he had made music with the likes of Alfredo Campoli, Mischa Elman and Sir Clifford Curzon for decades, and there is a special familiarity and ease of communication about their concerto recordings together. Boult also partnered exciting younger virtuosos such as the pianists Peter Katin and Friedrich Gulda, always attentive and dynamic in partnership. The new box brings together both mono and stereo-era versions of Dohn�nyi's once-popular Nursery Variations and Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody in which Boult strikes up an intuitive rapport with Julius Katchen. Boult's very versatility told against him: sometimes viewed then and now as a good all-rounder, he loses nothing to the competition for authentically Russian fire and balletic grace in symphonies by Tchaikovsky (the Third - appearing her in stereo for the first time) and Rachmaninoff (the Second and Third, repatriated from RCA to Decca). Prokofiev suites are infused with wit and pungent orchestral color. And whichever orchestra he was conducting, Boult elicited the best from them with collegial authority - even the very French-sounding winds of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. This 'original covers' box restores the recordings to their LP couplings and features a new essay on Boult by Nigel Simeone.

A Limited Edition, Original Jackets collection showcasing the artistry of the magnificent American soprano, Kathleen Battle. Kathleen Battle enraptured opera audiences of the 1980s and 1990s. Here was a lyric soprano combining unsurpassable beauty of tone with a keen musical intelligence, a way with words and a communicative warmth that drew listeners to Strauss and spirituals alike. She has the easy phrasing of a great jazz singer combined with the breath, breadth and precise projection of a trained voice. James Levine coached her at the Metropolitan Opera, and when he accompanied her at the 1984 Salzburg Festival and DG recorded the recital as Battle's debut solo album, nothing less than a phenomenon was launched. She had been admired as a gifted singer since the age of eight, and a 1985 article in Time magazine declared that she was 'the greatest lyric coloratura soprano in the world'. Her performances at the Met of Susanna, Despina, Pamina and other lyric roles in the great Mozart operas, conducted by Levine, established her as one of the world's leading interpreters of this repertoire. Recorded near the end of her DG association, Battle and Levine recorded arias from those roles for an album which became a radiantly beautiful souvenir of an era when they formed an artistic team as celebrated and accomplished in their way as Schwarzkopf and Karajan or Nilsson and Solti. However, Battle had already recorded for several labels, and this Eloquence box uniquely brings together selected albums she made for Angel (the US branch of EMI - those which have repatriated to Universal Music Group) with the DG recitals. They include an imaginatively programmed guitar recital with Christopher Parkening and excerpts from a Messiah led by Sir Andrew Davis in Toronto. These Handel arias feature on a new compilation within the album, 'Kathleen Battle sings Sacred Music', which also features excerpts from her appearances in Levine's DG recordings of The Creation by Haydn and the C minor Mass by Mozart, as well as Poulenc's Gloria and the 'Pie Jesu' from Faur�'s Requiem. Two further albums showcase excerpts from more complete albums: one of Handel and Mozart arias, including the celebrated Semele recording with John Nelson, and another of operatic and concert arias, including a staggering 'Grossm�chtige Prinzessin' (Ariadne, with Levine) and the touching songs from the Ozawa recording of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Featuring a new essay on the soprano and the background to her meteoric career by David Patrick Stearns, the set will be an essential acquisition for all lovers of lyric soprano artistry.

Limited Edition � Original Jackets Collection. A tour de force of thrilling orchestral playing and brilliant audio engineering, Antal Dor�ti's mono recordings are collected for the first time. Newly remastered, this collection comprehensively documents a golden era in American classical recording and most of these vividly characterized recordings appear on CD for the first time. The Hungarian conductor Antal Dor�ti joined the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra as it's music director in 1949, and immediately began making it into one of the orchestral powerhouses of the post-war United States. Mercury began recording the ensemble in 1952 and continued to do so until his departure in 1960. Dor�ti's 51 albums (24 mono, 27 stereo) are a testament to what he achieved with the orchestra during his eleven years there. They reveal a musical personality centered on dynamism, intensity, and an exceptional ability to persuasively articulate rhythms. Eloquence presents the most complete ever reissue of the Dor�ti/Minneapolis legacy in two 'original jackets' boxes, faithfully representing the contents of the albums as they were first issued. New remastering made or supervised by Thomas Fine, son of Mercury's long-time chief engineer and producer, as well as original remastering for CD by Wilma Cozart Fine, bring this legacy to life as never before. Thomas Fine contributes a 'sessionography' to each box detailing the technical facets of the Mercury Living Presence recordings, and Dennis D. Rooney is the author of authoritative booklet notes surveying the history of the partnership on record as well as his personal memoirs of the period. The mono box begins with a blistering Firebird Suite of Stravinsky and ends with a contemporary Hungarian pairing of unrivalled idiomatic flair, brilliance (Kod�ly's Peacock Variations) and lurid, controlled violence (Bart�k's Miraculous Mandarin). Further highlights include the three Tchaikovsky ballets, in versions that quickly became gramophone classics and 'library choices' and stayed that way for decades. Particularly noteworthy is the first CD release of Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty recordings requested time and again for reissue. Dor�ti's feeling for dance is further underlined by more landmark Ballets Russes scores - Sacre, Petrouchka, Daphnis - and Viennese waltzes. The legendary 1812 Overture recording is reissued with the original 'Making Of' commentary by Deems Taylor. Taylor also narrates versions of Britten's Young Person's Guide and the Nutcracker Suite. Even rarer are the three musical stories originally released on Mercury's subsidiary 'Wing' label and narrated affectionately by Jerry Terheyden. 'Sonic spectacular' scores by Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi and Richard Strauss leap from the speakers in Mercury's Living Presence sound, remarkably vivid even in mono. Dor�ti's firm sense of rhythm and form gives strong contours to symphonies from Mozart to Copland. The last two albums on the set are devoted to the two LPs Dor�ti recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As sequels to the Eloquence boxes dedicated to Kubel�k in Chicago and Paray in Detroit, these Dor�ti collections comprehensively document a golden era in American classical recording.

Limited Edition 10CD box set. The Lindsay String Quartet's award-winning and first Beethoven cycle (1979-83), originally recorded for ASV: risk-taking musicianship at the highest level. 'We had spent more time on rehearsing and trying to understand Beethoven than any other composer: he was a God to us,' writes cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith. Through the course of their 40-year career, the Lindsay String Quartet was synonymous above all with the string quartets of Beethoven. They began playing together in 1966 while still students at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six years later, Ronald Birks took the second violin chair to join leader Peter Cropper, violist Roger Bigley and cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith. As the quartet in residence at the universities of Sheffield and Manchester, they began to scale the monuments of the repertoire, and they developed a collective identity - 'the Lindsays' sound' - which became much better known once they started to record the quartets of Beethoven for the Enigma label in the late 1970s. Opp 74 and then the six Op 18 quartets were released as analogue LPs before the Lindsays moved to the ASV label and recorded the rest of the cycle with new digital technology. Instantly recognisable even now and quite distinct from the ensembles of note who came before and after them, the Lindsays always sounded like a quartet of four discrete and entirely individual personalities. They soon became celebrated for a fierce, even ferocious commitment to both the notes on the page (taking Beethoven's repeat marks seriously when it was still unfashionable to do so) and to the sometimes rough, often tough and yet elevated spirit of music that still sets a benchmark for both ensembles and listeners. The Lindsays left nothing in the rehearsal studio, even when the red light was on. Already in this first cycle, the Lindsays take chances, stress the forward-looking nature of Beethoven's writing, and put interpretation ahead of finesse. When the late quartets were released together, they won the 1984 Gramophone Chamber Award. The ensemble re-recorded the entire cycle for ASV in the 1990s: the Lindsays sound remained the same while the interpretations evolved over the decades, becoming not objectively better but different. Parts of the first cycle such as Op. 131 go to greater extremes of tempo and dynamic in search of Beethoven's elusive truth: the opening fugue almost hangs in mid-air. Yet there is no shortage of fire in the belly of the C minor Op. 18 No. 4 or grace and wit in the 'Razumovsky' scherzos. This landmark set in Beethoven interpretation is reissued by Eloquence with a new booklet essay by Tully Potter, exploring the place of the Lindsays within the context of the great string quartets.

Several long-deleted albums reissued in this comprehensive survey of Andrei Gavrilov's DG career: superbly engineered recordings of a pianist in the great Russian tradition. For three years in the early 1990s, Andrei Gavrilov belonged to the Deutsche Grammophon stable of artists, alongside his contemporaries Krystian Zimerman and Ivo Pogorelich. Like them he had technique to burn and a searching approach to repertoire which in the hands of other pianists has often become an exhibition of facility. During that period he made nine albums, both revisiting classics of his repertoire and taking on new challenges. He also joined his Decca colleague Vladimir Ashkenazy for a Stravinsky disc which had critics purring over the dynamism and finesse of The Rite of Spring in it's two-piano arrangement. To begin with, the Impromptus of Schubert took some listeners aback with their restraint and simplicity of phrasing. His response to Chopin (Ballades and Second Sonata), Ravel (Gaspard de la nuit) and Prokofiev (sonatas and Romeo and Juliet) proved to be even fuller and deeper than in the 1980s recordings which had launched his international recording career after a spectacular triumph at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1974. Gavrilov paid homage to his countryman Emil Gilels with a sublime selection from Grieg's Lyric Pieces, returned to the French Suites of Bach and set down a highly individual version of the Goldberg Variations, all graced with the sophistication of touch and color at the piano which set him apart even from the most talented of his Russian contemporaries. Inspired by his friendship with Sviatoslav Richter, he even took on the piano parts for a selection of Britten choral works, in a Viennese-made recording. This original covers box features new essays on the pianist and his career by Peter Quantrill and Peter Czornyj, Gavrilov's producer at Deutsche Grammophon.

LIMITED EDITION. A unique collection of L'Oiseau-Lyre, Argo, Decca and Philips albums in original covers, showcasing both the genius of Handel and the musicianship of the classic ASMF/Marriner pairing at it's most stylish. Even while a member of the London Symphony Orchestra in the early 1950s, Neville Marriner had made recordings for L'Oiseau-Lyre as a violinist in the Jacobean Ensemble. Accordingly, he took a tape of a concerto grosso to the label's legendary owner, Louise Hanson-Dyer. The artists on it were his new ensemble, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. This modest demonstration tape ultimately led to more than 500 recordings, and the success of the Academy with Marriner as the world's most recorded partnership. Handel was an integral part of the Academy's work firstly for L'Oiseau-Lyre, then for Argo, finally for the Dutch label Philips. (Marriner and the Academy also recorded music by Handel for EMI.) Without including later duplicate versions, this box compiles for the first time all the ASMF/Marriner albums made for the Decca family of labels as well as Philips between 1961 and 1997, amounting to a comprehensive survey of the composer's orchestral music, ornamented with Acis and Galatea, Messiah, Jephtha and the Coronation Anthems. Critics from the outset praised not just the energy of the Academy and Marriner in Handel's Concerti grossi, but also their Polish, at a time when period-instrument versions were technically unreliable. Soloists such as the oboist Roger Lord emerged naturally from an ensemble of soloists in the first place. A succession of keyboard players pays testament to the determination of Marriner to find a degree of authenticity in 18th-century music that worked practically for him and his colleagues. First of all his friend Thurston Dart, who researched the sources for much of the music played here, and the mercurial choir director and harpsichordist George Malcolm. In a later generation came Andrew Davis and Christopher Hogwood, the organist on the Argo Messiah which was recorded using his edition. All the vocal works are cast from strength, including Elly Ameling and Philip Langridge in Messiah, Jill Gomez and Robert Tear in Acis and Galatea, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Emma Kirkby in Jephtha. Tear is also heard in a lesser-known 1969 album of German and English arias. From 1997, Dmitri Hvorostovsky is heard in Handel excerpts from his 'Arie antiche' album, testifying to the durability of a marriage between ensemble, conductor and composer which survived tumultuous artistic change. Further highlights include the classic Fireworks/Water Music pairing from 1971, ballet music from Ariodante and Alcina (also Argo), the Concerti a due cori from 1979 and the digital-era Philips album of Coronation Anthems, as well as a curiosity: two choruses from Messiah recorded in the studio as a promotional item for the forthcoming recording on Philips of the complete oratorio from Dublin. Handel was their home territory, as Peter Quantrill illustrates in a booklet essay discussing the history of the Academy and Marriner with Handel's music. Philip Stuart, author of Marriner and the Academy: A Record Partnership, contributes a 'sessionography'.

Hans Christian Andersen, the film, was produced in the spring of 1952 and released on 25 November in New York, with general release following in December that year. It was one of the top ten grossing films of the year, but was not well received in Andersen's hometown of Odense, when it was released in Denmark in September 1953. It was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Color Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Color), Best Costume Design (Color), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Walter Scharf), Best Song ('Thumbelina'), and Best Sound Recording. Decca (US) recorded the soundtrack in August that year and the songs were originally released as a series of four 78rpm singles, with two songs per disc, a 45rpm album, and a ten-inch LP. Danny Kaye took the lead, and when the album was reissued (on Decca and MCA) on a twelve-inch LP, four further tracks were added: Tubby the Tuba as well as it's less-well-known sequel, Tubby the Tuba at the Circus, and two additional songs written by Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine. Now, for the first time on a Universal Music label, the original tapes have been retrieved from the archive and newly remastered for release on Eloquence.

Dame Joan Sutherland's personal selection of her favorite recordings, with her own liner notes. Tributes from Moffatt Oxenbould and Fiona Janes, previously unpublished photographs, a series of costume designs for her key operatic roles, and illustrations of all the original jackets from which the selection was made. Plus her recipe for Christmas Pudding, all issued to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her passing. With barely a shadow of permissible exaggeration, 'The Voice of the Century' was Decca's title for a 1977 compilation of arias from the defining roles sung by Dame Joan Sutherland. On her death in 2010, Opera magazine acclaimed her still as 'one of the voices of the century' who almost single-handedly - with the support of her husband and mentor, Richard Bonynge - restored the bel canto repertoire to the opera house. Now, a decade on, Eloquence releases Sutherland's personal selection of her own favorite recordings, from a Decca catalogue studded with award-winning albums. What makes this particular collection unique, and an essential acquisition for all who treasure their memories of the supreme successor to Melba, is Dame Joan's introductions to each item. Choosing them, she could look back over a career spanning more than 40 years, from her career-launching competition win in Sydney in 1949 singing 'Ritorna vincitor' to her first Alcina in 1957 - at St. Pancras Town Hall, of all places, and her famous Royal Opera Lucia in 1959 that floored the critics. However, Dame Joan's selection does not include such vocal blockbusters - though with the Queen of Night's 'O zittre nicht' there is a nod to her unheralded Royal Opera debut in 1952 as the First Lady in Die Zauberfl�te. Rather than her fearless negotiation of their Mad Scenes, she chose passages of moving recovery from Norma and La sonnambula, and in doing so generously acknowledges her partnership of warm mutual understanding with Marilyn Horne. Nevertheless, there is plenty of her pinpoint coloratura to be enjoyed, from Massenet's Esclarmonde - along with Norma, her favourite opera - to Graun's Montezuma and Gli�re's Concerto: 'such a relief not to have to remember the words'. Sutherland took particular pride in her revival of rarities such as Leoni's L'Oracolo, but her choice of favorites concludes in lighter vein with songs by Arditi, Hahn and Kreisler which beguiled as well as dazzled her recital audiences: 'Trifles, perhaps, but I enjoyed singing them'. She recalls living next to and working with No�l Coward - 'I think he was quite pleased with me!' - and finally pays tribute to her musical education in Sydney with 'Love will find a way' from The Maid of the Mountains. All in all, it's a unique journey through Dame Joan's life and career, enhanced by several tributes from her colleagues, previously unpublished photographs and rarely seen costume designs for 'La Stupenda' in many of her signature roles.

A landmark in Baroque opera recordings, newly remastered. This 'royal entertainment in music' was fashioned by Cavalli to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini for performance in Venice in 1644, two years after L'incoronazione di Poppaea saw the light of day. Through the course of Ormindo we follow the adventures of two pairs of lovers as they betray, deceive and flee from each other before the inevitable happy ending. A death scene in prison for the eponymous prince and his sweetheart Erisbe is marked by a grave pathos that sounds down the centuries - at least since Raymond Leppard exhumed the score from total obscurity. Conducting Ormindo at the 1967 Glyndebourne Festival, Leppard spearheaded the modern revival of Cavalli's fortunes. Critics noted the conductor's significant revisions and rearrangements, but they were almost unanimous in their gratitude at hearing and seeing on stage the work of a pioneering opera composer for the first time, and in performances that did full justice to both music and drama. Leppard and Glyndebourne assembled a sumptuous continuo section and cast well-schooled for the time in the ornate language of seventeenth-century Venetian opera. The popular and critical success of Ormindo at Glyndebourne gave rise to a sequel, with Leppard's similarly imaginative realization of Calisto, which has also been reissued by Eloquence (482 9382). L'Ormindo has long been unavailable and the package includes Raymond Leppard's original note and a synopsis.