Opera

First performance arranged at the prestigious Bolshoi, where it shared a double bill with Tchaikovsky's Iolanta (at his insistence). The composition was highly esteemed by the examiners' board which included Taneyev and Arensky. Rachmaninov got the...

Financial Times' Disc of the Year; New York Times' CDs of the Year/ "Performance: * Recording: * 'Beuron, probably today's finest lyric tenor, gives the performance an essential idiomatic core in his narration... [Tenebrae are] dramatically alert and...

Featuring a front-line cast (Rysanek, Frick, Suthaus, Hotter, Nilsson, etc...) that sends Wagner aficionados into states of reverie at the prospect of listening once again to the authoritative, superlative singing casts one could assemble in the 1950's,...

Favourite German Opera Choruses Carl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826) Der Freisch?tz: Was gleicht wohl auf Erden (Huntsmen's Chorus) Act III; Otto NICOLAI (1810-1849) Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor): O s?sser Mond (Moon Chorus)...

Established as one of Virgin Classics bestselling artists, Philippe Jaroussky, who has been described as the Apollo of countertenors by Germany s Die Zeit, stands out among his many talented contemporaries as much for the sopranolike beauty of his tone...

End of the opera. 12 November 1918 (on the day of the declaration of the German-Austrian Republic and the union with the German Reich!). This sentence was written by Schreker at the close of the manuscript full score. The call for the dissolution of the...

EMI France and Michel Plasson have created many recordings of major works of French composers, some never recorded before. Many have since received the highest distinctions worldwide. In May 1984, Michel Plasson conducted 16 performances of Aida at the...

EMI Classics introduces 10 timeless operas into the series including Wagner s complete Ring Cycle: Das Rhiengold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung, as well as Verdi s La Traviata, and Bellinis Norma. Operas greatest conductors, including Antonio...

Ekaterina Siurina celebrates the song-writing talents of four great composers better known for their operas in a recital of flirtatious, passionate and grief-stricken lovers plighting their troths in Naples, Florence, Venice and elsewhere. Presenting the...

Debussy's music combines late 19th century Romanticism with a soundscape that has been called an audible version of an Impressionist painting. This 2-CD set includes his most frequently performed and recorded works, including Prelude to the Afternoon of...

Davis... magnificently crowns his whole career as a Berlioz interpreter, generally outshining even his pioneer version of 30 years earlier... Petra Lang is superb, firm, rich and intense, investing every phrase with emotional power, instantly...

Das Fuerstenkind (The Prince's Child) has always been an "insider's tip" in Leh+?r's oeuvre, and the composer himself regarded this robbers' tale from Greece premiered in 1909 as one of his best works. It was also his problem child because it never...