Classical Music

A grand collection of the most popular operetta arias featuring the best of opera singers.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Hans Hopf as Siegfried, Gottlob Frick as Hagen, and Birgit Nilsson as Brunnhilde. Gotterdammerung is the fourth of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Otto Wiener as Wotan, Grace Hoffmann as Fricka, Gottlieb Frick as Hundig, Fritz Uhl as Siegmund, and Astrid Varnay as Brunnhilde. Die Walkure is the second of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Otto Wiener as Wotan, Grace Hoffmann as Fricka, and Gerhard Stolze as Loge. Das Rheingold is the first of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Verdi: Rigoletto (Recorded 1952) [Live]

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Puccini: Manon Lescaut (Recorded 1952-1956)

J.S. Bach: St. John Passion

PONCHIELLI: Gioconda (La)

In 1874 Tchaikovsky composed an opera, Vakula the Smith, that like many of his operatic works, failed with the public. Years later in 1885, Tchaikovsky resurrected the work, refashioned it, and renamed it Cherevichki, which translates as The Little Shoes. The plot still centers around Vakula, who is in love with the beautiful Oksana, who has him so wrapped around her little finger that she drives him to thoughts of suicide with her indifferent posturing. Oksana informs Vakula he can again win her love only by securing the slippers worn by the Czarina herself, a task Vakula accomplishes with the aid of the captured and subdued devil. Vakula returns triumphant, and Oksana, true to form, declines the slippers, stating that Vakula's love is treasure enough for her. (Gee, thanks a lot, babe!) Yes, of course there are more characters and subplots involved, but you get the gist of the story.

For this tale Tchaikovsky provided his characteristic melodic, passionate, dramatic music, including quite a few tuneful arias. Actually, a lot of it sounds like Swan Lake, and while there may not be passages of haunting despair of the type found in Eugene Onegin (with its Pathétique pre-echoes), there are plenty of emotionally intense moments, especially from Vakula, sung with tremendous feeling by Valerij Popov. Ekaterina Morosova combines the sweet and the tart with a beautiful voice to bring the facile Oksana to life, while her father, Cub, gets a warmly gruff portrayal by Vladimir Ognovenko.

As in Onegin, Act 3 features a seemingly obligatory extended solo for bass, the character in this case being His Serene Highness, sung in a dull but appropriately ceremonial manner by Grigory Osipov. Gennady Rozhdestvensky again proves his long-held Tchaikovsky credentials, reveling in the score's balletic passages and dramatic climaxes, all the while getting the Orchestra of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari to sound like Russian orchestras of old. The live recording balances the voices (including the excellent chorus) and orchestra very well, bringing the drama right into the theater. The included applause reveals a strangely tepid audience response after each act, except at the very end.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

CANTICO DELLE CREATURE

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MEYERBEER: Robert le diable

STRAUSS, R.: Daphne

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Verdi: Overtures & Preludes

Classical Music

Magnificently conducted by Krips, with a cast that could hardly be better, headed by Rysanek's impassioned, soaring Mlada and Spiess's virile, heroic yet sensitive Dalibor.

Dalibor is magnificently conducted by Krips who, with the VPO on best form, catches the full lyricism of Smetana's freedom-seeking opera. His cast could hardly be better, headed by Rysanek's impassioned, soaring Mlada and Spiess's virile, heroic yet sensitive Dalibor (oh, how we could do with a tenor of this thrilling calibre today!). Spiess surpasses even the legendary Blachut in the role. Imagine my chagrin then when the edition used heinously omits the hero's Act 3 song of freedom, one of the great passages in the work. Rysanek's younger sister Lotte, sounding uncannily like Leonie, makes much of little as Jitka. Waechter is splendid as the tortured king. The performance is in German, but no matter: this is an exciting set, in spite of the cuts.

-- Gramophone [2/1999]

Composed for Venice in 1837, just a year-and-a-half after the fantastic success of Lucia di Lammermoor, Pia de' Tolomei "pleased altogether", in the composer's words. He revised it a couple of times thereafter and it was shown at various theaters as distant as Malta until 1855, after which it disappeared. It takes place in 13th-century Siena: Pia is married to Nello; his cousin Ghino loves her but she refuses his advances. Ghino angrily accuses Pia of adultery with an unknown man, who turns out to be Pia's brother, Rodrigo, and Nello imprisons her. Ghino eventually feels remorse and confesses his deception, but not soon enough to save Pia from being poisoned by Nello.

One of the formal weaknesses of the opera is that Rodrigo is a mezzo-soprano role, and that type of travesty never quite works; but even elsewhere, the fact that Pia is so passive, added to generally formulaic writing, keeps the opera from being a winner. Still, there are some fine Donizettian tunes and scenes, and it's worth hearing.

This live performance finds a remarkably committed cast struggling uphill against Donizetti's lack of true inspiration, but the singers turn out a satisfying experience in the end. The star is Patrizia Ciofi as Pia. She delivers a specific, focused reading, beautifully sung and filled with as much textual and tonal nuance as the score allows. Her voice has gained body in the middle and the top still gleams. Ghino is sung by tenor Dario Schmunck, and he exhibits a fine, ringing tenor and good Donizettian style; his opening aria and cabaletta and the second half of his duet with Nello are exciting, vigorous parts of the score, and he tears into them well. Baritone Andrew Schroeder has a nice snarl as Nello, but aside from the cabaletta to his duet with Ghino he has pretty ordinary music. Rodrigo is given similarly uninteresting music, and Laura Polverelli sings it well enough. The chorus sings with as much involvement as the cast, which is saying a great deal, and the orchestra plays with verve under Paolo Arrivabeni. Recommended for Donizetti completists.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Italian/English libretto included.

The greatest of the late 19th century Italian opera composers, Verdi's works featured realistic storylines and political issues of the day. Here are selections from over a dozen operas (La Traviata, Aida, Otello, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Nabucco, Un Ballo in Maschera, Falstaff, La Forza del Destino) and from his solemn Requiem Mass. Dramatic and inspiring!

"The Metamorphoses of Dionysus", Mikis Theodorakis’s first opera, from 1985 — it was followed in 1990 by "Medea", in 1993 by "Elektra", in 1996 by "Antigone", and in 2001 by "Lysistrata" — is based on a free variation and an individual reading of Greek history. It is at once a parable of the excesses and suggestive effects of power, but also of the relationship between art and politics. It centers around the suicide of the civil servant and poet Kostas Karyotakis, whose poems Theodorakis set for the opera. The libretto, by Theodorakis himself, incorporates various texts by Karyotakis and two fragments from the poem "The Good People" by Kostas Varnalis (1884–1974). The opera begins and ends with the suicide of the poet Kostas Karyotakis, whose poems are presented as arias in the opera, running through the entire work. They are framed with texts by Theodorakis, producing a collage of verses of poetry and his own texts, of melodic and grotesque passages, that becomes the opera’s essential structuring feature: the contrast between the arias, the set “tragic” poems by Karyotakis, and the musical farces, the music to Theodorakis’s “sarcastic” texts.