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Joan Sutherland is not usually considered a Puccini singer, and in fact she sang the role of Turandot only in the recording studio. But for that assignment she had exactly what was needed: a voice that seemed to have no upper limits and a personality that concealed vulnerability under an air of icy ...

Little can be added to what's been written about this landmark recording, except that Walter Legge's 1953 mono production yields nothing to modern Tosca recordings for vivacity and theatrical impact--especially Maria Callas's. The miraculous Victor de Sabata conjures up a vibrant, inspiring orchestr...

Modern storage media (CD/DVD) offer both high fidelity and great reliability in the playback of music. Yet only a bit more than a generation ago, the possibilities inherent in the long-playing record inspired John Culshaw, a young producer for Decca, to attempt the most ambitious recording project e...

This is the biggest piece of music ever performed with any regularity. Anyone who avoids Schoenberg because his name is synonymous with that nasty, atonal stuff need have no fear. This is a ripe, Romantic score with big tunes and cinematic orchestration. The story is simple: King Waldemar of Gur...

Though Puccini's trilogy of one-act operas, Il Trittico, is hard to love in its totality, Suor Angelica shows the composer retreating from melodramatic verismo into a more lyrical expression, as befits this story of a nun driven to suicide when told her child is dead. Though this cast isn't ideal...

Vivaldi wasn't the only composer to write a Four Seasons. Haydn's version is an oratorio--essentially an opera without staging--in which three archetypal peasants sing of the joys and travails of country life throughout the year. Coming after the sublime subject of The Creation, Haydn had qualms ab...

Vivaldi - Concertos / New London Consort, Pickett ~ AAM, Hogwood...

Kiri Te Kanawa - German Opera Arias...

After years of being one of the foremost singers of light lyrics, Kathleen Battle, searching for challenging new musical expression, tackles the dramatic Mozart repertory. Blessed with one of our generation's prettiest soubrette voices, Battle breezes through the technical challenges of the Coun...

Early in her career, Leontyne Price formed an artistic liaison with Samuel Barber that resulted in his composing the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra for her. The disastrous premiere of that opera prevented Price from making a complete recording--a tragic loss in my opinion. She did record excerp...