operas

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Libretto: Joseph Sonnleithner & Friedrich Treitschke after Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Opera in two acts

“The moral force of Beethoven’s spirit sweeps aside merely practical or theatrical objections; and it is much the same with Klemperer’s reading…what we have from Dr. Klemperer is more than good: it is inspired.”

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Libretto: Carlo Pepoli

Opera in three acts

“I can hardly think of any music in all Callas’s recorded repertory I would rather hear her interpret than ‘Qui la voce’, ‘Oh, vieni al tempio’ from the Wedding Scene, or ‘Son vergin vezzosa’. Nobody who admires her art can be without this historic set.”

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Libretto: Felice Romani

Opera in two acts

“That the phrasing, the pronunciation, the weight and shape and meaning of the music, are peerlessly conceived can go without saying. The conducting is spacious, unhurried, elevated and eloquent. The Scala playing is superlative, and the recording is excellent.”

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Libretto: Henri Meilhac & Ludovic Halévy

Opera in four acts

“The recording is dazzling down to tiny details. More and more and at each crucial patch I felt that among living conductors Prêtre is the one who instinctively gets Carmen right. To agree so strongly about the tempi chosen and to feel in sympathy with the degree of elegance and snap applied gives the feeling of watching haute école horsemanship: something animal and physical.”

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Libretto: Montagu Slater after the poem of George Crabbe

Opera in three acts

“This is an inspired performance in a superbly lifelike recording. Haitink uncovers the raw nerve-ends of the music, its astonishing and ongoing vigour shading into violence, while giving full measure to its lyrical poetry.”

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Libretto: Myfanwy Piper after the story by Henry James

Opera in two acts

“The Governess is unerringly portrayed by Joan Rodgers, and Ian Bostridge’s other-worldly, insinuating Quint is eerily magnetic. Over all presides Daniel Harding, piercing the heart of the piece in a reading that catches all the score’s inner tension, reveals all its instrumental acuity and brings out the best in his cast.”

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Libretto: Maurice Maeterlinck

Opera in five acts

“A distinctive and unforgettable experience … the opera has never moved me so much either on record or in the theatre. Karajan’s intellect and sensitivity is seen here completely at the service of finding out the heart of the music. The recording will surely survive as one of the classics of the gramophone.”

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Libretto: Salvatore Cammarano after Walter Scott. French adaptation by Alphonse Royer & Gustave Vaëz. Critical edition Ricordi, 2000.

Opera in three acts. French version of 1839 supervised by the composer.

“Natalie Dessay phrases ‘À toi ma vie’ (‘Alfin son tua’) with real feeling… Roberto Alagna is a fine Edgard.”

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Libretto: Jules Barbier & Michel Carré after Goethe

Opera in five acts

“Richard Leech as the eponymous hero sings his part with the fresh, eager tone, the easy legato, the sense of French style that it has so badly been wanting all these years. Studer’s Marguerite is sung with her customary attributes of innate musicality, firm tone and expressive phrasing. Van Dam is a resolute, implacable Devil … Plasson and his team restore the work to something near its idiomatic best.”

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Libretto: Michel Carré after Frédéric Mistral

Opera in five acts

“A colourful and committed performance in which rhythms are well sprung. When for moments of uplift Gounod turns to the more sugary style with which rather unfairly he came so much to be associated, Plasson’s directness avoids sentimentality without underplaying what Gounod intended … Mirella Freni was a self-evident choice for the recording.”

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Das Land des Lächelns - Libretto: Ludwig Herzer & Fritz Löhner - Operetta in three acts
Die lustige Witwe - Victor Léon & Leo Stein after Henri Meilhac - Operetta in three acts

“To praise the performance, the recording, the production of the opera, as they deserve would soon exhaust the limited stock of laudatory adjectives in our language. Otto Ackermann conducts with complete understanding, and notable sympathy for the singers, and the Philharmonia Orchestra play like angels for him. Each of them sounds like a magnum of champagne!”

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Libretto: Henri Cain, after Le Lorrain

Comedie héroïque in five acts

“Massenet's Don Quichotte marks the ripe maturity of his art…Van Dam has sung beautifully throughout…Berganza as Dulcinée has the appropriate maturity of tone…while chorus and orchestra both do good work under an able conductor.”

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Libretto: Henri Meilhac & Philippe Gille

Opéra Comique in five acts and six tableaux

“Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna have the advantage of both possessing instantly recognisable voices. The surrounding cast is fine, and this is the best-recorded of the modern sets.”

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Libretto: Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet & Georges Hartmann after Goethe

Opera in four acts

“Massenet's Werther marks the ripe maturity of his art…Van Dam has sung beautifully throughout…Berganza as Dulcinée has the appropriate maturity of tone…while chorus and orchestra both do good work under an able conductor.”

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Libretto: Lorenzo da Ponte

Opera in two acts

“All the singers are at the peak of their form. Schwarzkopf is most characterful, Alfredo Kraus is even more delicate in ‘Un’ aura amorosa’ than I had remembered, and throughout one has a clear impression of Karl Böhm’s masterly and sympathetic direction. On any count this is one of Walter Legge’s finest Philharmonia sets.”

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arias and ensembles only
Libretto: Emanuel Schikaneder

Opera in two acts

“Not the least extraordinary thing about this wonderful blend of the sublime and the humane is that it draws from all musicians the best of which they are capable … This issue is specially commended to those who are after the mystery and elevation of The Magic Flute.”

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Libretto: Lorenzo da Ponte after Giovanni Bertati

Opera in two acts

“This set … put into the hands of those who have not yet unlocked the paradise of Mozartean opera, is worth … what? A year at a foreign university? I don't believe I exaggerate.”

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Libretto: Lorenzo da Ponte

Opera in four acts

“The casting is admirable; the orchestral playing is of the highest possible quality, and the problems of producing the opera, in a studio performance, have evidently been most carefully considered ... Elisabeth Schwarzkopf makes a truly great lady of the Countess and she is most affecting in her two arias. Irmgard Seefried, a wholly bewitching Susanna, communicates a radiant joy, a moving tenderness, a sense of fun that makes her every utterance a delight.”

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Libretto: Jules Barbier & Michel Carré after E.T.A. Hoffmann

Opera in four acts

“Cluytens has plenty of drive and knows how to relax without letting the sentiment become sloppy. Gedda is an admirable Hoffmann: the tone has both sweetness and power, while his feeling for the character extends beyond Romantic convention to include a sense of the comic-grotesque.”

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Libretto: Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa after Henri Murger: ‘Scènes de la vie de Bohème’

Opera in four acts

“Goose-pimples throughout: magical opera: adorable performance. There is nothing apparently preconceived about it. Instead, it is a responsive, spontaneous performance, that goes along with the music, discovering all sorts of delights on the way.”

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Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa & Luigi Illica

Opera in two acts

“Still feeling the impact of that devastating final chord in the opera, I believe devoutly that Madama Butterfly is the most moving of all works for the stage, that this is the best recording of it, and that it is Callas’s greatest achievement on records. The morning after may bring a hesitation or two, but at present belief seems firm as Butterfly’s own and a good deal more securely grounded.”

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Libretto: Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa

Opera in three acts

“The vocal characterisations have yet to be surpassed for sheer vividness. Di Stefano is at his lyrical best … Gobbi is marvellous throughout. And Callas? She is a mass of contradictions: haughty and vulnerable, uncompromising and uncertain, yet always passionate – in short, the diva’s diva.”

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Libretto: Giuseppe Adami & Renato Simoni after Carlo Gozzi
Last duet and finale of the opera completed by: Franco Alfano

Opera in three acts

“To have Callas, the most flashing-eyed of all sopranos, as Turandot, is – on record at least – the most natural piece of casting … one of the most thrillingly magnetic of all her recorded performances.”

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Libretto: Nahum Tate

Opera in three acts

“Luminosity is key to Emmanuelle Haïm’s highly evocative and atmospheric reading … Susan Graham brings a mesmerising degree of expressive nuance … Haïm uses her instrumentalists, Le Concert d'Astree, to excellent effect.”

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Libretto: Cesare Sterbini after Beaumarchais

Opera in two acts

“This is one Callas set where the prima donna doesn't by any means dominate. Gobbi's quick-witted, fast-speaking Figaro is the pivot of the action, mercurial in fioriture and constantly alive to action and reaction. Who wouldn’t be spellbound by the seductive fresh sounds of the young Alva’s Count? Listen to all three in the Second Act trio, and if you can remember hearing it better done, I'll eat my critical hat.”

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Libretto: Shostakovich & Alexander Preis after Nikolai Leskov

Opera in four acts

“The cast is an impressive one, with a completely convincing performance from Galina Vishnevskaya in the title role. The moments of tenderness are beautifully controlled, and the voice coloured to great effect to convey a whole range of moods.”

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Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Opera in three acts

“It really does triumph over them all, and the triumph is, almost entirely, Schwarzkopf's own. There is never any sense of mere manner: rather her volatility, dignity, and her ability to catch the evanescent life-breath of each word and phrase as it is spun into line sets the pace and spirit of the performance as a whole.”

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Libretto: Hedwig Lachmann after Oscar Wilde

Opera in one act

“This is a reading which no one from now on will be able to ignore, with its overpowering warmth of expression, its sensuous texturing and not least the superb playing of the Vienna Philharmonic.”

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Libretto: Carl Haffner & Richard Genée after Henri Meilhac & Ludovic Halévy

Operetta in three acts

“Karajan’s interpretation is a most stylish, winning one. The cast, too, is splendid, led majestically and ravishingly by Schwarzkopf … Rita Streich is an agile, utterly charming foil. The lesser roles are all well taken, and the effectiveness of the whole production still strikes home.”

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Libretto: Le Rossignol - Stravinsky & S.M. Mitusov Lyric tale in three acts after Hans Christian Andersen
Renard - Igor Stravinsky A burlesque tale in song and dance
Oedipus Rex - Text by Jean Cocteau, translated into Latin by Jean Daniélou Opera-oratorio in two acts after Sophocles

“One great quality of Conlon’s performance is that he emphasises the miniature opera’s straddling of two expressive worlds. … With the arrival of the exceptionally beautiful tenor voice of Vsevolod Grivnov as the Fisherman you strongly suspect that this is the recording The Nightingale has been waiting for. Natalie Dessay is lovely in the title-role.”

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Libretto: Temistocle Solera

Lyric drama in a prologue and three acts

“Verdi's Attila marks the ripe maturity of his art…Van Dam has sung beautifully throughout…Berganza as Dulcinée has the appropriate maturity of tone…while chorus and orchestra both do good work under an able conductor.”

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Libretto: Josephy Méry & Camille du Locle after Friedrich von Schiller

Opera in five acts

“Six interesting and complicated charaters are enmeshed in a web of Church and State where their actions affect not only one another, but the fate of three nations. And on every level Verdi rises to the subject with some of his most powerful and passionate music ... in Giulini’s performance, it becomes a tense, gripping drama in which every episode and every action has its part to play.”

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Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave

Opera in three acts

“The final act is greatness itself, and indeed no part, and hardly any phrase, of Callas’s performance throughout the opera fails to provoke and deserve special comment…a performance of rare depth and beauty.”

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Libretto: Temistocle Solera

Opera in four acts

“Muti once again proves an energetic, almost compulsive Verdian, springing the fierce rhythms of this score with immediate vigour, taking care of the spicy orchestration of this, for its time, very original score, and urging on the Philharmonia Orchestra to its most alert form. Scotto sings with tremendous fire and insight.”

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Libretto: Arrigo Boito after the tragedy by William Shakespeare

Opera in four acts

“This performance of Verdi’s masterpiece is large, bold, and brilliant. The set represents a noble attempt to recreate on records the grandeur, the musical richness, the passions and the subtleties of Verdi’s tragedy. Listening to it was an exhilarating experience.”

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Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave after Victor Hugo

Opera in three acts

“No Rigoletto has surpassed Gobbi in tonal variety, line, projection of character and understanding of what Rigoletto is about; no Gilda has come anywhere near Callas in meaningful phrasing; no conductor matches Serafin in judging tempo and instrumental detail to a nicety. This remains the classic performance of the opera on record, and one that should be on every Verdi collector’s shelf.”

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Libretto: Agostino Piovene
Critical edition: Fabio Biondi
Tragedia per musica
Presentato al Nuovo Teatro dell’Accademia di Verona, Carnevale di 1735

“David Daniels is in typically beautiful voice as Tamerlano, and Vivica Genaux gives a show-stopping display as Irene. Fabio Biondi and his players bring out countless nuances in the score with their usual array of interpretative devices. There could hardly be a better way to bring this opera to life.”

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Libretto: Richard Wagner

“I will refrain from pouring out superlatives over the superb, vivid and colourful playing of the New Philharmonia Orchestra: their precision and attack is a joy from start to finish. This performance is as perfect as we have any right to demand.”

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Libretto: Richard Wagner

Opera in three acts

“Thomas combines ardour and anguish as well as any, and with Fischer-Dieskau a formidable (but never over-emphatic) antagonist, and Gottlob Frick a majestic King Henry, the drama of the opera’s central conflict remains supremely immediate and powerful.”

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Libretto: Richard Wagner

“Domingo gives us a performance of Tristan, carefully studied, heroically sung, sympathetically interpreted, that truly crowns his career as a tenor and recording artist. Even more remarkable is the Isolde of Nina Stemme. Her strong, dark-hued, vibrant tone allied to her meaningful enunciation of the text is something to wonder at. Over all presides the alert and commanding Pappano.”