Home > Music > Opera & Vocal > Divas

The "Essential" Purcell? Well, you could get a bunch of critics to argue about that for a few days, but in the meantime, here is a sampler of highlights from the King's Consort's three admirable Purcell series: the Complete Odes and Welcome Songs, Complete Anthems and Services, and Complete Secular...

Wynton Marsalis may not have an easily recognizable or even particularly handsome tone, but this erstwhile jazz trumpeter is an amazing virtuoso with a fine sense of classical style. If you've never owned/heard any of his classical CDs, and you love (mostly baroque) trumpet music, this compilation--...

Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro...

Faure:Requiem...

This celebrated 1964 recording of Lohengrin with Rudolf Kempe and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra still stands the test of time: it's a terrifically exciting performance. Kempe is a superb draftsman, and he keeps the orchestra lively, exuberant, but never strident. Pride of place must be given to t...

Beethoven - Missa Solemnis · Mozart - Coronation Mass / Karajan...

Amor--Opera's Great Love Songs...

Beethoven: 9 Symphonies - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique / Gardiner...

This Rigoletto has been around for so long it might be easy to take it for granted or skip it for a newer set. Don't! It features all three principals in superb voice, as well as pacing from Maestro Bonynge that is much heavier on drama than most of us expect from him. Sutherland may sound a bit m...

World music meets the classics in these impressionistic tone poems based on the folksongs of the Auvergne, which Canteloube spent his life researching and orchestrating. In the ballads, Dawn Upshaw sounds like a nymph swaying in sacred pools; the earthy nature of the material captures the fuller-bod...