‘I am an EU singer’, Hermann Prey always said about himself. However, by that he did not mean so much his citizenship of a European Union country as the fact that he felt at home in the fields of ‘E’ and ‘U’, i.e. in ‘serious’ and entertainment music alike. For Prey, this distinction never existed, but only the issue of the quality of music, and he found this not only in opera and Lied, but also in operetta, the musical and the well-made hit. For forty-six years Prey convinced audiences; this five-disc collection reveals his fascinatingly wide-ranging repertoire and interpretative skill.

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Shakespeare provided lifelong inspiration for the towering operatic genius that was Giuseppe Verdi, but just three of the Bard’s plays ever emerged fully-fledged from the composer’s pen. This trio of landmark productions, featuring a veritable constellation of singers, conductors and directors, are united here under the banner of Verdi’s Shakepeare Operas: Macbeth, which lifted the young composer out of his hard-working ‘galley years’, propelling him to international fame and universal acclaim, and Otello and Falstaff, his final two crowning operatic achievements. Simon Keenlyside and Liudmyla Monastyrska are imposing as the Thane and his Lady in Phyllida Lloyd’s sumptuous production of The Scottish Play for The Royal Opera, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, while José Cura interprets the Moor in a profound, intense staging by Willy Decker at Barcelona’s Liceu. By the end of his dramatic opera career, Verdi claimed he had ‘earned at last the right to laugh a little’, and Richard Jones’s Glyndebourne Festival production of Falstaff radiates humour, tinged with bitterness and wisdom and brought to life by an international ensemble cast with Christopher Purves in the title role under the inspiring baton of Vladimir Jurowski.

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan (Otello), Japanese (Macbeth)

Running time: 170 Minutes (Macbeth), 23 Minutes (Bonus), 151 Minutes (Otello), 136 Minutes (Falstaff)

Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

This incredible box set presents the best of Russian opera. Included in the set are Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Recorded in renowned opera houses such as Teatro Regio, Torino, and De Nederlandse Opera, these performances are not to be missed.

Also available on Blu-ray

Featuring some of the earliest operas in existence, this box set features Baroque Opera Classics. The set contains Handel’s Deidamia, Cavalli’s La Didone, and Ercole Amante,Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria, Rameau’s Zoroastre, and Scarlatti’s Dove e Amore e Gelosia. These recordings from De Nederlandse Opera, Le Theatre de Caen, Pergolesi Spring Festival, Jesi, Ancona, and DNO are not to be missed.

When Sony Classicals new complete Brahms cycle with Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic was first released, the Baltimore Sun reviewer referred to a marriage of passion performances fine enough to recommend to any listener who wants his Brahms in a single collection. The Symphony No. 1 receives a heroic, turbulent performance in which Mehta and the fine orchestra of which he was long ago appointed music-director-for-life keep raising the thermostat until in the final movement they all but blow the roof off. The Symphony No. 2, which receives a similarly passionate performance, may be even better. Nos. 3 and 4, the reviewer goes on to say, are also beautiful. This major new reissue also contains the Haydn Variations and Tragic Overture.