Verdi: Aida

Verdi: La forza del destino

Glinka: Zhizn' za tsarya (A Life for the Tsar) (1954)

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Bellini: I puritani (Recorded Live 1961)

Lanza, Yeend & Ormandy at Hollywood Bowl (Recorded Live 1947

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Classical Music

HANSEL & GRETEL

Brahms’s friend Carl Goldmark completed Merlin in 1886, when it was premiered at the Vienna Hofoper. Fairly successful on both sides of the Atlantic before the Great War but hardly heard since, it’s representative of an almost-forgotten genre of 19th-century operas on aspects of the Arthurian mythos. (Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus and Albéniz’s Merlin are other examples).

The libretto by Siegfried Lipiner concentrates on Merlin’s fatal love for the wild child Viviane, which dims the magical powers with which he had served King Arthur, so that he falls victim to the Demon he had previously enslaved.

This spirited revival reveals a beautifully-scored and theatrically quite sure-footed piece fascinatingly poised between Brahms and Wagner: chromatic, Tristan-esque motifs contrast with choral writing more out of Rinaldo and the Triumphlied.

Between these extremes there is a supple, late-Romantic middle-ground where Goldmark’s declamatory vocal writing rises to occasional eloquence, with some noble orchestral passages that seem to anticipate Elgar.

The piece was certainly worth revival, but actual greatness eludes it. Luckily this production is vocally strong, with Robert Künzli as a noble-voiced Merlin, Frank van Hove as the scheming Demon and Anna Gabler a touching Viviane being the clear stars of the show.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

Opera's greatest moments, All the opera you'll ever need! The world's most famous arias and choruses from the greatest operas of all time.

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Strauss: Salome, Op. 54, TrV 215 (Live)

Puccini: La rondine (1961)

Wagner: Die Walküre, WWV 86b (Live)

Donizetti: Anna Bolena

In addition to many non-operatic compositions, he composed in all about a dozen operas, and didn’t lack for success in his lifetime, but today it is Francesca di Rimini almost alone for which Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) is best remembered internationally. This June, 1959 La Scala performance of a work with much to recommend in it has been considered by some in the critical establishment as the best Francesca on record. Conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, the cast is headlined by the dynamic, moving and volatile Magda Olivero – still with us at 104 years old! - in the title role.

Is this March 1958, Lisbon La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi the best on record? Having in your cast, at that time, the role of Alfredo Germont sung by the great and classy tenor Alfredo Kraus surely enhances a recording's prospects toward that nomination. With Maria Callas as Violetta and Mario Sereni as Giorgio Germont, and also including the complete Radio Announcement which is missing on all other releases of this performance, and in excellent sound due to direct master tape transfers, it surely ranks high.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

STANFORD: Requiem / The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan

Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

Available as a recording for the first time ever: the first of Mikis Theodorakis' 3 great ''lyrical tragedies'' (i.e. operas). The composer based his arrangement of the plot on Sophokles' version of the famous ancient tragedy – thus the 'theodorakian' Electra is the protagonist. She is the daughter of King Agamemmnon. After 10 years of battle for Troy the King has just returned to his palace in Mykene – only to be treacherously killed by his faithless wife Klytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos. The murderous couple marries soon after the crime; however, their plans haven't considered Electra, who is craving revenge for her father ... ''Electra'' was composed between 1991 und 1994; its world premiere was held on May 2nd 1995 at the municipial theater of the former 'european capital of culture', Luxemburg. The 3-CD-recording was actualized under direction of Mikis Theodorakis himself with the St.Petersburg State Academic Orchestra & Choir.

With his operas "Electra", "Antigone" and "Medea" about three ancient Greek female figures – which he himself defined as ''lyrical tragedies'' – Theodorakis fulfilled an artistic promise made on August 6th, 1988 following the premiere of his "Zorba" ballet at the Verona Arena, namely to compose three pieces dedicated to the great Italian opera composers Verdi, Puccini and Bellini. ''For the last five years, I have lived with the texts of Euripides and Sophocles and worked on them. Five years which have become the best of my life, because the whole day long – mostly opposite the Acropolis, giving me the feeling that my house was on the foundations of the house of Sophocles, for we know he lived here where I live, in Athens – I could delve deep into the universal harmony I seek,'' he wrote after finishing his ambitious project.

Classical Music

Classical Music