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Frederica von Stade Sings Mozart & Rossini Arias [Hybrid SACD]...

Joan Sutherland, never noted for dramatic intensity, seemed more at home in roles that appealed to sentimentality rather than the tragic emotions of pity and fear. She still had that appeal and a voice in prime condition when this, her second Sonnambula, was recorded. Her appealing, uncomplicated mu...

Gaetano Donizetti didn't actually set out to compose a cycle based on the tragic histories of the Tudor Queens. The three works gathered here--including his breakthrough opera, Anna Bolena, Roberto Devereux, and the long-neglected Maria Stuarda--were created at various points in his maniacally proli...

Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder; Arabella...

This is an opera seria, the same kind of opera composed by Handel a half-century earlier and many others in the century before him. It was already very old-fashioned when Mozart took it up (on a royal commission, an offer he couldn't refuse), finishing it only a few months before his death. The plot...

Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Songs of a Wayfarer...

Mozart: Coronation Mass K317; Vespers K339 /Kirkby * Robbin * Ainsley * George * Winchester Cathedral Choir * AAM * Hogwood...

Opera's Greatest Drinking Songs...

Giacomo Puccini: Manon Lescaut...

This excellent recording gives Stravinsky's underappreciated Rake's Progress a respectable, if unromantic, rebirth. Tom Rakewell's naïve idiocy is perfectly embodied by Jerry Hadley with crisp diction and arrogant bravado, but he doesn't capture Rakewell's remorse and tender side. Upshaw's Ann True...