Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

Her nickname "La Superba" can be comprehended by any non-Spanish speaker, and the passion of this Spanish soprano translates into every language. Her talent for shifting from power to delicacy is on display all across these 2 CDs as she performs pieces from Verdi's La Traviata and Rigoletto ; Puccini's La Boheme ; Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde ; Verdi's Requiem Mass (CD debut), and more!

If today no one questions the greatness of Mozart, the most famous composer in Europe at the end of the 18th century was probably Antonio Salieri. For many years court composer of the Austrian Emperor, Salieri wrote an enormous amount of music, some of the best of which remains that composed for the theatre. Les Danaïdes was premièred at Paris’s Opéra on 26th April 1784 and met with a triumphant success. The present recording, qualitatively very high also from a technical point of view, dates from 1983 and features an extraordinary Montserrat Caballé in great vocal form. Gianluigi Gelmetti conducts the renowned RAI Orchestra.

In 1967 and 1969, en route to becoming the leading soprano of the 1970s, Montserrat Caballé recorded a trio of "rarity" discs for RCA, each concentrating on a single composer--Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi--and focused on relatively little-known scenes and arias from similarly obscure operas. Thanks in part to Caballé's stage performances and recordings, the bel canto revival has rescued many of those works from the shadows, but they have not been better sung than by the great Spanish soprano, possessor of perhaps the most beautiful soprano voice of the 20th century. She's at her best here, singing with the fire that sometimes seemed to elude her, flaunting her ravishing pianissimos, and never breaking a sweat or taking an untoward breath as she tosses off difficult coloratura passages with ease.


The Rossini set dips into five operas and the "Inflammatus" from his Stabat mater. Donizetti is represented by four operas, but entire scenes are offered, putting the arias in proper context. Seven scenes and/or arias from Verdi's early operas are here, blending touches of those two past masters with harbingers of his own evolving style. Singling out highlights would be folly in a tightly filled double-disc set, but you know from the very first notes of "Tanti affetti" from Rossini's La donna del lago, which begins Disc 1, that you're in for a feast of great singing. Orchestras and conductors are idiomatic. The sonics, once deemed excellent, are only a bit dimmed by time. RCA provides full texts and English translations, a welcome departure from the usual big-label reluctance to accommodate consumers. This is a must for any lover of great singing. [1/28/2005]
--Dan Davis, ClassicsToday.com