Orchestral & Symphonic

Building on the success of Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni's commedia lirica L'amico Fritz was given seven encores and thirty-five curtain calls at it's premiere in Rome in 1891. Considered by critics to be one of Mascagni's best operas, the story...

Giuseppe Verdi was well on the way towards renown and prosperity when he took up the story of Violetta, a famed courtesan whose intensely romantic and colorful but tragically brief life marked the emergence of realism into Italian opera. Verdi and...

?Having been granted unprecedented authority by Louis XIV, the Sun King, no one could stage operas in France without Jean-Baptiste Lully's permission. By 1686, however, Lully's authority was waning and his long-standing librettist deserted him to write...

Nicola Porpora was a composer who helped to turn Italian opera into the most successful and spectacular genre in Europe. One of the few luminaries of the 'Neapolitan School' to actually be born in Naples, Porpora wrote L'Angelica, a serenade for six...

Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos is one of the early 20th century's most peculiar operatic works. It's narrative derives from the famous myth of Ariadne, who is abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos and eventually falls in love with the god...

?La Perricholi - in reality, Micaela Villegas - was Lima's leading theatrical l lady in the 1770s when Peru was a Spanish colony. Her life was fictionalised in a one-act play by Prosper M?rim?e and a libretto was fashioned on which Offenbach created his...

Treading a tightrope between death, life and intense romance in the opulent world of 19th-century Habsburg royalty, Elisabeth tells the story of the beautiful Empress of Austria, from her wedding, to her tragic assassination by the hand of the Italian...

A new production by Opera de Lille

The Mariinsky label presents a stunning reading of Strauss' most Wagnerian of operas, Die Frau ohne Schatten. Filmed in the historic Mariinsky Theatre in 2011 and conducted by maestro Valery Gergiev, it stars Russian tenor Avgust Amonov as the Emperor,...

Prokofiev: Kotko Blu-Ray

Finn Mortensen Symphony Op 5 Blu-Ray

Daniel Barenboim plays and conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin live from the Klavier-Festival Ruhr.