Favourites, Gifts for... Opera Lovers

The Norwegian lyric-dramatic soprano's second album on Decca opens with Leonore's great monologue 'Abscheulicher!' from Fidelio, which brought the house down when Davidsen sang the role at Covent Garden last spring. It's followed by the same composer's 'Ah, perfido!', arias from Cavalleria rusticana, Medea, La forza del destino and Otello, and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder.

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Winner of the Voice & Ensemble category at last month's Gramophone Awards (and hailed in the magazine as 'surely the finest Verdi recital – from any voice type – to have appeared for several years, if not a decade'), the French baritone's long-overdue first solo album features arias from operas including La forza del destino, Nabucco, Otello, La traviata, Don Carlo/s (Rodrigo's death-scene is given here in both the French and Italian versions) and Falstaff.

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After plans for a live concert-performance were derailed by the pandemic, this Fidelio was recorded under socially-distanced conditions in the studio last summer; the cast also includes Christina Landshamer as Marzelline, Cornel Frey as Jaquino, and Günther Groissböck as Don Fernando. Reviewing the set in July, The Sunday Times observed that 'Janowski is a swift, vital Beethovenian, and the Dresden Opera Chorus sings with breathtaking beauty in the Act I finale'.

Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC

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Following her Alpha Classics debut with Arianna last year, the American mezzo turns to another Classical figure who’s played a key role in her career to date: Nero, whom she’s portrayed to great acclaim in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Handel’s Agrippina. The programme includes world premiere recordings of Alessandro Scarlatti’s La morte di Nerone and Bartolomeo Monari’s La Poppea, plus Handel’s cantata Agrippina condotta a morire.

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The American singer tears up the rule-book by mixing tenor and baritone repertoire on his first solo project for Erato, with snapshots of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Idomeneo and Count Almaviva, Wagner’s Lohengrin (sung in French), Donizetti’s and Leoncavallo’s Tonios, and Verdi’s Conte di Luna; the recording was named Recording of the Month in the Awards issue of Gramophone, with reviewer Mark Pullinger declaring that 'Spyres really is a tenor – and a baritone, it seems – who has the operatic world at his feet'.

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The mezzo celebrates her Franco-Spanish roots with a programme of arias from Carmen, La vida breve, Don Quichotte, La Périchole and L’heure Espagnole, plus songs by Falla, Guridi Bidaola, Mompou, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and Ravel. Guest artists include Thibaut Garcia and Stanislas de Barbeyrac.

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Praised in The Sunday Times for Gens’s ‘clarity of diction and histrionic eloquence’, the soprano’s programme of French baroque music includes scenes from Lully’s Amadis, Alceste, Atys, Proserpine and Le triomphe de l'amour, Desmarets’s Circée and La Diane de Fontainebleau, Collasse’s Achille et Polyxène and Thétis et Pélée, and Charpentier’s Médée.

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The Russian soprano’s first solo recording in five years features arias from Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, Verdi’s Aida and Don Carlo, Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and Wagner’s Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde.

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Set in sixteenth-century India, Donizetti’s 1829 opera about religious intolerance and fanaticism was greeted with a certain amount of bafflement at its premiere in Naples, and never gained a foothold in the repertoire (though the composer recycled some of its material in operas including Anna Bolena and Le duc d’Albe). This recording uses a new critical edition which restores the stratospheric writing for Idamore, a role created by the superstar high tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini.

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

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Premiered in Paris in 1926, Messager’s comédie musicale is set in Trouville and tells the story of unscrupulous American tycoon William Stevenson and his unhappy wife Ketty, a retired music-hall star who falls in love with the young Frenchman whom her husband is trying to swindle; all is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction when the previously teetotal Stevenson undergoes a champagne-fuelled epiphany in the casino and realises that his affections conveniently lie elsewhere.

Available Formats: CD + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

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Featuring three of Warner/Erato's star singers plus distinguished guests, this recording of Mozart's early opera was made in Paris last autumn; Spyres has sung the title-role regularly on stage over the past few years, with What's On Stage's Mark Valencia asserting that he 'confirmed his pre-eminence as the leading fireworks tenor of today' in the late Graham Vick's Covent Garden staging in 2017.

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

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Filmed at Covent Garden in 2017, this strongly-cast revival of David McVicar's popular 2003 production was praised in Opera Today for Williams's 'appealing guilelessness' as the lovelorn birdcatcher and Devieilhe's 'absolutely secure and clean-toned' Queen, whilst BachTrack applauded Swiss tenor Peter's 'supple phrasing and easy top notes' as Tamino and Jones's 'well-paced reading of Mozart’s score'.

Also available on Blu-ray.

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Filmed in Munich in November 2019, this production of Korngold’s 1920 opera (the house’s first staging of the work in over half a century) received five stars in The Times, with Neil Fisher describing it as ‘brilliantly conceived and audaciously well-performed’ and praising Petrenko’s ‘imaginatively detailed conducting, shorn of easy sentiment’, whilst BachTrack observed that ‘the pacing and the sheer generosity of the music-making were both impressive and emotionally satiating’.

Also available on Blu-ray.

Available Format: 2 DVD Videos

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German baritone Michael Volle takes on a rare comic role with his debut as the ‘fat knight’ in this contemporary staging from Berlin, filmed at the newly-reopened Unter den Linden in spring 2018, with BachTrack observing that ‘his comic timing [is] often excellent and his charisma gets him a long way’; the Financial Times praised Alfredo Daza’s ‘resonant baritone and biting bourgeois affectations’ as the jealousy-wracked Ford, and Barbara Frittoli’s ‘luscious, floating tones’ as his wife Alice.

Also available on Blu-ray.

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Filmed in an empty Theater an der Wien last December and streamed in April, Robert Carsen’s 2014 production (which is set in the world of high fashion and depicts Jupiter as the late Karl Lagerfeld) was described as ‘a candy-coloured baroque dream’ by Salzburger Nachrichten and ‘a must-see – and not only for fashion-freaks!’ by Bühne.

Also available on Blu-ray.

Available Format: 2 DVD Videos

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This all-star Ariodante was the highlight of the 2017 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, with the Chicago Tribune declaring that ‘a winning cast and Loy's inventive staging made this 282-year-old opera feel fresh and modern’, and Der Standard pronouncing that ‘Cecilia Bartoli is a league of her own!’ in her gender-fluid portrayal of the title-character.

Also available on Blu-ray.

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Filmed in Zurich last December (with a live audience of just fifty people and the orchestra placed in a rehearsal-room a kilometre away!), this new production featured Gerhaher’s role-debut as Verdi’s tormented Doge and was broadcast live on TV; the release was DVD/Blu-ray of the Month in October's Gramophone, whilst BBC Music Magazine opined that the German baritone 'bring[s] all the nuance to the text that we would expect from a master of the Lieder genre'.

Also available on Blu-ray.

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This 15-disc set brings together all of the recordings which the African-American contralto made for RCA Victor between 1924 and 1966, restored from the original analog masters using 24 bit / 96 kHz technology; much of the material here is new to CD, and nine recordings are released for the first time in any format. Repertoire includes spirituals, Christmas carols, and lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss and Mahler.

Available Format: 15 CDs

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Nine complete operas, recorded live on the 'Green Hill' between 2008 and 2014: Der fliegende Holländer with Samuel Youn in the title-role, Lohengrin starring Klaus Florian Vogt and Annette Dasch, Tristan und Isolde with Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin, Die Meistersinger with Franz Hawlata and Michael Volle, Tannhäuser with Torsten Kerl and Camilla Nylund, and the Ring Cycle with Linda Watson, Stephen Gould, Albert Dohmen, and Andrew Shore.

Available Format: 30 CDs

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Celebrating the centenary of the Italian tenor’s birth, this anthology includes complete recordings of L’elisir d’amore (with Hilde Gueden and Fernando Corena), Tosca (with Leontyne Price and Giuseppe Taddei), La Gioconda (with Zinka Milanov and Leonard Warren) and La forza del destino (with Milanov and Giorgio Tozzi), scenes from Boito’s Mefistofele, and albums of Neapolitan songs and French and Italian opera arias.

Available Format: 14 CDs

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This comprehensive retrospective of the extraordinary French coloratura soprano’s career comprises seven recital discs (taking in Handel, Mozart, Strauss and a variety of French and Italian repertoire), plus twelve complete operas on CD and twelve on DVD; DVD performances include Pelléas et Mélisande, La Fille du régiment, Orphée aux enfers, La traviata, Giulio Cesare, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Available Format: 33 CDs + 19 DVD Videos

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Five acclaimed productions filmed in Milan between 2015 and 2017: Aida (with Kristin Lewis, Fabio Sartori and Anita Rachvelishvili), I Due Foscari (with Plácido Domingo and Francesco Meli), Le nozze di Figaro (with Golda Schulz, Diana Damrau, Markus Werba, Carlos Álvarez and Marianne Crebassa), Die Zauberflöte (with Fatma Said and Martin Piskorski), and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (with Lenneke Ruiten, Mauro Peter and Sabine Devieilhe).

Also available on Blu-ray.

Available Format: 8 DVD Videos

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More than any other of Wagner's works, Parsifal expresses a depth of feeling in music for which we do not have words. Now available in paperback, this short but penetrating book is an insightful and moving exploration of Wagner's last opera, which shows how Wagner achieved and executed his most profound work, explaining the story, its musical ideas, and their coming together into a sublime whole, giving us the musical equivalent of forgiveness and closure.

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Although precipitated by the trauma and shame that followed her abandonment by Aristotle Onassis and the rapid deterioration of her voice, Maria Callas's mid-life disintegration reflects deep psychological vulnerabilities. This book uses cutting-edge advances in research on developmental psychology and narcissism to shed light on Callas's puzzling personal deterioration during the last nine years of her life.

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This book surveys the opera's fascinating performance history, mapping out the myriad changes that have affected the work since its premiere, exploring many of the personalities responsible for those alterations, and taking into account the range of reactions that these changes have prompted. It closes with a consideration of operatic consumerism from the nineteenth century to the present, exploring the ways that one can now experience The Barber of Seville in all its recorded and commodified glory.

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What were the forces that brought Carmen to the operatic stage? This book explores how Andalusian stereotypes, such as gypsy spectacle, banditry and the fiestas of the bullfight, contributed to the success of Bizet's opera. The original staging is used to examine both places and characters, in particular realities and mythologies about gypsies in the nineteenth century. It concludes with the ways in which the opera first reached the stage, both in terms of its scenography and how it was sung, played and acted.

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Whether we're listening for the first time or revisiting the arias that first stole our hearts, Avidly Reads Opera welcomes readers and listeners to a community full of friendship, passion, critique, and beautiful music. It is a love letter to the music and those who love it, filled with stories of the history of opera and its audiences. With a singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism, it is an homage to the marvelous, sensational world of opera.

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Wagner constantly strove to produce manuscripts of a high calligraphic standard. More so than in his other scores, the autograph score of Tristan und Isolde also shows traces of his working process. This edition also includes the autograph concert ending of the Vorspiel as well as three pages that Wagner rejected and later used for sketches. Ulrich Konrad, the renowned musicologist, describes the genesis and performance history of the work in his comprehensive commentary. He also details the physical appearance and condition of the autograph as well as giving an insight into the musical language of Wagner.

Available Format: Sheet Music

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Seven Mozart operas are collected in this boxed set from Bärenreiter: Idomeneo, The Marriage of Figaro, and La clemenza di Tito appear for the first time in Bärenreiter study scores; while Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and The Magic Flute round off the canon. Each volume contains a preface in German with information on the genesis, sources, and performance history of the opera concerned.

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