Gift Guides, Gifts for... Opera-Lovers

This performance of Meyerbeer's 1848 grand opera about a sixteenth-century innkeeper who is radicalised by Anabaptists and proclaims himself King of New Jerusalem was recorded in concert at last year's Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Reviewing the live performance, Opera Magazine declared that 'the achievement of Elder and everyone else here deserves wider currency and it would be tragic if a recording was not forthcoming'.

Available Formats: 3 SACDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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This live recording was made during Kirill Serebrennikov's new production in Vienna in April 2021, and captures Latvian mezzo Elina Garanča's debut as Kundry (her first complete Wagner role). Although Serebrennikov's contemporary staging polarised critical opinion, the performances themselves were warmly received, with BachTrack's Mark Valencia observing that 'On a purely musical level this is a luminous Parsifal at the Wiener Staatsoper, fabulously cast from the A-list and conducted superbly by a proven Wagnerian'.

Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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Twenty years after singing Cleopatra on Minkowski's landmark recording of Giulio Cesare (also with Les Musiciens du Louvre), Czech mezzo Kožená joins forces with the French conductor to take on another of Handel's enchantresses. This studio recording was made in Bordeaux last February, shortly before a concert-performance in Barcelona: Broadway World described Kožená's anti-heroine as 'all round marvelous to listen to', whilst opining that Morley 'gave the evening's absolutely most enchanting performance' as her sister Morgana.

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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Using a new critical edition by Roger Parker, this studio recording incorporates many of Bellini's original ideas (including 'Casta diva' in G major rather than the usual F) - but Rebeka's multi-faceted, white-hot Norma is reason enough to invest in this new set. If you're after a recording of this opera that finds the sweet spot between old-school grandeur and the stripped-back approach which Cecilia Bartoli and Giovanni Antonini gave us a decade ago, this is your answer.

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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Recorded live at the Barbican last January, this performance of Janáček's 1921 opera was described as 'a tremendous evening' by The Guardian, who praised the 'veracity and immediacy' which Majeski brought to the title-role as well as Dalayman's 'steely high notes and vicious declamation' as her mother-in-law. The set was Gramophone's Recording of the Month in March, whilst the Sunday Times declared that 'Rattle is absolutely on fire, drawing from his singers and players musicianship of incredible subtlety and force'.

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

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A year on from their award-winning recording of the original uncut score of Oklahoma!, Wilson and Sinfonia of London continue their Rodgers & Hammerstein series with the duo's second musical, premiered in 1945: Wilson describes Carousel as 'Rodgers & Hammerstein's greatest achievement...a score with operatic aspirations and dimensions'. Gramophone opined that 'it’s the stylistic rightness of the band sound that made Oklahoma! and now this so special', whilst The Guardian judged the cast 'first-rate'.

Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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Based on Stephen Daldry's 2002 film and the original novel by Michael Cunningham (which in turn takes inspiration from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway), The Hours was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022 and charts a single day in the lives of three women: Virginia Woolf, literary editor Clarissa Vaughan, and housewife & mother Laura Brown. The work was described as 'a stunning triumph' by Variety, whilst The Telegraph's Nicholas Kenyon declared that 'Joyce DiDonato has surely done nothing finer than her tortured Virginia Woolf'.

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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The son of two opera-singers (mezzo Diana Montague and tenor David Rendall), this young baritone has won particular acclaim as Mozart's Papageno (who makes an appearance here) and Debussy's Pelléas. His debut solo recording includes arias from Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, Gounod's Faust & Roméo et Juliette, Korngold's Die tote Stadt, Britten's Billy Budd and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel, plus Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen'. An Editor's Choice in the November edition of Gramophone, and BBC Music Magazine's Opera Choice for December.

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV

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The Bashkortostan-born mezzo's debut solo album includes excerpts from her signature-role of Carmen (which she has recently sung at the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden), plus arias from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and La cenerentola, Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Massenet's Werther; the final track is the Bashkir folk-song 'Nightingale'. The recording was an Editor's Choice in the September edition of Gramophone, with reviewer Tim Ashley observing that 'she has a superb voice, no question - warm and even in tone, admirably agile, with a full, effortless top, and a tangy lower register'.

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Mozart occupies a central place in the repertoire of the South African soprano, who made an unforgettable Glyndebourne debut as Countess Almaviva in 2016 (The Guardian remarked that it was 'hard to imagine finer soprano singing'), and received rave reviews for her Fiordiligi at Covent Garden this summer. Her programme here includes the sextet from Così fan tutte, the quartet from Don Giovanni and the final scene of Le nozze di Figaro as well as solo scenes and arias from all three operas.

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Released to coincide with Spyres's Wagner debut in March (he has since sung Siegmund at Bayreuth), the American baritenor's programme sets excerpts from Die Feen, Rienzi and Lohengrin in context by preceding them with arias from operas by composers who inspired Wagner - including 'Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!' from Beethoven's Fidelio, 'Champs paternels' from Méhul's Joseph, 'Suona funerea' from Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto, 'Der Strom wälzt ruhig seine dunklen Wogen' from Spontini's Agnes von Hohenstaufen, and 'Spectacle affreux' from Auber's La muette de Portici.

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To mark the centenary of Puccini's death, Kaufmann is joined by six leading sopranos on this collection of love-scenes from his operas: Pretty Yende in La bohème, Anna Netrebko in Manon Lescaut, Sonya Yoncheva in Tosca, Malin Byström in La fanciulla del West, Asmik Grigorian in Il tabarro (her 'haunted' Giorgetta was deemed the stand-out performance on the album by The New York Times), and Maria Agresta in Madama Butterfly.

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Filmed in Munich last December, Kosky's production of 'The Revenge of the Bat' was described by BachTrack as 'a hit anchored somewhere between burlesque and vaudeville', with reviewer Zenaida des Aubris also praising Jurowski's 'stringent attention to the waltz's intoxicating effects at work throughout the opera' and Katharina Konradi's 'dazzling vocal technique, beautiful phrasing and cheeky stage presence' as the quick-witted chamber-maid Adele.

Also available on DVD.

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Filmed at Covent Garden in March, this revival of Leiser & Caurier's 2003 production received five stars in The Times, with reviewer Neil Fisher observing that Grigorian 'builds the pathos to almost unbearable heights' in her 'cliché-free portrayal of Butterfly'; The Stage's George Hall was similarly enthusiastic, describing the Lithuanian soprano's performance as 'one of the most finely realised interpretations of this relentlessly demanding role that one could ever hope to witness.'

Also available on DVD.

Available Format: Blu-ray

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Kušej's dark, mafia-influenced take on the 'mad day' of Figaro's wedding is light on comedy and heavy on sex and violence: with the Financial Times describing it as 'brutal but brilliant', whereas BachTrack felt that it 'left a nasty taste in the mouth'. The musical elements won near-unanimous praise, with The Opera Critic applauding the 'superlative playing' of the Wiener Philharmoniker under Pichon, and Frankfurter Rundschau declaring that 'one will rarely, if ever, hear Le nozze di Figaro so well balanced on stage, with such a homogeneous ensemble of such class'.

Also available on DVD.

Available Format: Blu-ray

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For those who prefer their Mozart a little more traditional (but still fresh as a daisy), this 2023 staging from Versailles might just fit the bill - with insightful direction by Marshall Pynkoski and sumptuous period costumes by Christian Lacroix, it was Gramophone's DVD of the Month in October and received five stars in Opera Now thanks to the 'thrillingly done' supernatural effects and 'the vocal power of the cast as a whole'.

Available Format: Blu-ray + DVD Video

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Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival last year, this Parsifal was praised in The New York Times for Schager's 'tirelessly passionate and convincingly boyish' hero and Heras-Casado's 'vibrant, even-keeled and well-paced' approach to the score; although distinctly unimpressed with the augmented reality production, the Financial Times described the Spanish conductor as 'the good shepherd, clearly on top of Bayreuth’s famously tricky acoustic challenges in his debut performance there'.

Available Format: 2 Blu-rays

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Filmed at Covent Garden in spring 2022, this Richard Jones production of Saint-Saëns's Old Testament opera was remarkable chiefly for the house-debut of Seokjong Baek, who had only recently transitioned from baritone to tenor and replaced an injured Nicky Spence at a month's notice: The Stage declared that 'his thrilling vocalism confirms that a new tenor star is born', whilst The Arts Desk noted that his voice was 'wielded with technical perfection from stentorian battlecries to tenderest soft singing'.

Also available on DVD.

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This anthology of the French tenor's complete opera recordings on Warner Classics includes the five-act French version of Verdi's Don Carlos (with Karita Mattila, Waltraud Meier, Thomas Hampson and José van Dam), Puccini's Il trittico, Tosca and La rondine (all conducted by Antonio Pappano and starring Alagna's then-wife Angela Gheorghiu), Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Massenet's Werther, Manon and La Navarraise, and Donizetti's Lucie de Lammermoor (with Natalie Dessay in the title-role and Ludovic Tézier as Henri).

Available Format: 33 CDs

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Issued to mark the Year of Czech Music and the bicentenary of Smetana's birth, these recordings of his eight completed operas (plus the Twelfth Night-inspired fragment Viola) were made in Prague and Brno between 1960 and 1983. Zdeněk Košler conducts The Bartered Bride, The Secret and Libuše, František Jílek The Two Widows, Zdeněk Chalabala The Devil's Wall, František Vajnar The Kiss, Jaroslav Krombholc Dalibor, and Jan Hus Tichý The Brandenburgers in Bohemia.

Available Format: 17 CDs

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This collection of the Australian coloratura soprano's complete recitals and oratorio recordings for Decca features her very first studio recording (Bliss’s A Song of Welcome, from 1954), with other rarities including an all-Wagner disc, a recently-discovered set of French songs, and four recordings with Richard Bonynge from 1958 which appear on Decca for the first time. The set also includes celebrated albums such as The Art of the Prima Donna, a 1959 operatic recital from Paris with Nello Santi, and Live from Lincoln Center (with Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti), plus the Verdi Requiem with Sir Georg Solti and two recordings of Handel's Messiah (conducted by Boult and Bonynge).

Available Format: 37 CDs

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Released to mark the New Zealand soprano's 80th birthday, this set presents her complete recital albums for Decca and Philips, supplemented with excerpts from the large number of sacred music and opera recordings which she made for these labels and for Deutsche Grammophon. Highlights include Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder with Sir Georg Solti, Mozart concert arias with György Fischer and Jeffrey Tate, and a recital of Liszt, Ravel and Obradors with Roger Vignoles.

Available Format: 23 CDs

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Der Ring des Nibelungen is one of the most epic and compelling stories of the nineteenth century. But the story of how Wagner created the work is one full of intrigue, triumphs, and controversy. This book combines cultural history and biography to offer an insightful introduction to The Ring and its mythology, telling the story of how and why this extraordinary masterpiece came into being, why it takes the form it does, why it fascinates and obsesses so many and horrifies others, and why it matters.

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One of the late twentieth century’s most celebrated and influential public intellectuals, Edward W. Said was also a critic of astonishing range. This book presents his insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas, originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997. In close readings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras, and how they might speak to the present.

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This book looks at two remarkable yet neglected operas - Janáček’s Osud and The Excursions of Mr Brouček. It describes their difficult compositional process using a wealth of sources revealing the composer’s inspirations, the themes he considered for operas, his often fraught dealings with writers, the encounters with music which opened Janáček’s eyes, and also his coming to terms with the loss of his beloved daughter, Olga.

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