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Mozart : Così fan tutte, K. 588 (Live)

Wolfgang Sawallisch

Opera - Released February 16, 2018 | Orfeo

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Mozart: Così fan tutte

René Jacobs

Classical - Released February 26, 1999 | harmonia mundi

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Parry: Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Blest Pair of Sirens

London Mozart Players

Choral Music (Choirs) - Released September 8, 2023 | Chandos

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month
Hubert Parry's Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, from 1880, here receives its world-recorded premiere. Perhaps recording companies thought there wouldn't be much of a market for a heavy 19th century choral work with, it must be said, a ponderous text by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Prometheus was a play intended to be read, not performed, just to give an idea). How wrong they were. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, and it is altogether enjoyable. At the time, Parry was under the spell of Wagner, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet. That influence certainly shows up in Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, with its basically declamatory text, partly through-composed music, wind-and-brass-heavy orchestration, and splashes of chromaticism. Yet what is remarkable is that the music does not come off as an imitation of Wagner at all. Rather, it uses elements of his style to match a specific kind of English literary text. The work gradually disappeared, but it would be surprising if Elgar, whom it clearly prefigures, did not know it well. The performances here are luminous, with William Vann using the lighter-than-expected London Mozart Players to create transparent textures against which he can set the substantial voices of Sarah Fox, Sarah Connolly, and other soloists. Parry did write some shorter pieces that remain in the repertory; one of these, Blest Pair of Sirens, is included here as a finale. However, the Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound are the main news here, and this performance, showing how this kind of thing should be done, may generate a new life for the work. © James Manheim /TiVo
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Verdi: Rigoletto

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Opera - Released November 10, 2017 | Delos

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Nashville is rough on the living, but she really speaks well of the dead, says a country song, and opera is the same way. Recordings by the late Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky have soared on the charts since his untimely death. Along with the superb song album Russia Cast Adrift, this one makes a suitable memorial. Hvorostovsky was never a typical Italian opera baritone, and that was what made his performances of Rigoletto over the years so well loved; they stood apart from the crowd. This version was made in Kaunas, Lithuania (in the Philharmonic Hall -- it is not a live recording), in 2016, after the baritone's diagnosis with brain cancer. Cognoscenti may grouse that at certain junctures Hvorostovsky's voice has less power than formerly (which, at his age, would have been true even without his illness), but the essential qualities that made him a great Rigoletto are on full display here. Where Western baritones sing, Hvorostovsky growls, rasps, and snarls, and the role of the exquisitely bitter jester has rarely come alive as it does here. The rest of the cast is decidedly not as strong; soprano Nadine Sierra can't decide whether Gilda should be a wounded innocent or something more substantial, and her pitches are often less than stable. Yet this is how it should be. With a star of Hvorostovsky's magnitude, the focus should be on the star, and that is where it resides. Clean accompaniment by the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra that effectively stays out of his way is another plus. An essential for Hvorostovsky lovers. © TiVo
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Maurice Yvain: Yes!

Les Frivolités Parisiennes

Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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Psyché

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Mozart: Così fan tutte (Highlights)

Teodor Currentzis

Classical - Released October 9, 2015 | Sony Classical

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You may have heard about the radical Mozart performances coming out of the provincial city of Perm, Russia, led by conductor Teodor Currentzis. He's in the middle of a cycle of Mozart's operas with libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte, with a sure-to-be-explosive Don Giovanni yet to come as of late 2015. This single-album set of excerpts from Currentzis' reading of Così fan tutte has sold well out of the blocks, perhaps to listeners curious to hear what the fuss is about, but unwilling to invest in an entire box set. With only snatches of recitative and transition, you miss the outrageous continuo group of fortepiano, lute, cello/gamba, and, yes, hurdy-gurdy. That's a major omission, but all the other aspects of the full opera, and of Currentzis' gleeful disregard for convention, are amply represented. Consider the garish tempo contrasts, with the blistering overture pushed right up to the boundary of playability, while soon after that in Act One the trio "Soave sia il vento" is glacial. That number is one of the many places where it's apparent that soprano Simone Kermes, as Fiordiligi, is perhaps Currentzis' ideal collaborator, able to cope with extravagant musical demands, to deliver fresh characterizations, and generally to enter into the spirit of the thing and make you believe that maybe, just maybe, everybody will be performing Mozart this way in 30 years. In general the characterizations are strong and appealing; Currentzis may be a wild man, but he does not unduly draw attention to himself. And the work of his hand-built Musicaeterna, his historical-instruments group in Perm, is sharp as a tack here: it's an ensemble that can react to all of this conductor's demands. You may get a shock from this, but it's a good kind of shock, and the excerpt album can be generally recommended.© TiVo
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Mozart: Così fan tutte, K. 588 (Live)

Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper

Opera - Released January 17, 2007 | Orfeo

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Mozart Concertante

Aleksandra Kurzak

Opera - Released October 22, 2021 | Aparté

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The Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak needs no introduction. After having dazzled the opera stage and the discographic world both in duets and solo, she has devoted the whole of her new recording to Mozart. From The Magic Flute to Zaide, Mitridate and La Clemenza di Tito, the soprano embraces with equal talent the most famous arias of the master of Salzburg… and the verve of her concert presence. Far from limiting herself to just the lyrical attractiveness, she reveals its depth and brilliance by exploring the richness of the dialogue between voice and instruments: the brilliant musicians of the Morphing Chamber Orchestra of Vienna and Aleksandra Kurzak answer to each other, imitate and seek out each other. With them the arias of Mozart become the setting for a theatrical performance that is intimate, droll, and incredibly lively, in which the instruments have their own role to play in the unfolding drama. As an echo to this is added the Sinfonia concertante, for violin, viola and orchestra, one of the composer’s masterpieces in the genre, featuring the international soloists Yuuki Wong and Tomasz Wabnic. © Aparté
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Donizetti: Dalinda

Orchester der Berliner Operngruppe

Opera - Released March 15, 2024 | Oehms Classics

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Mozart: En harmonie

Zefiro

Classical - Released March 11, 2014 | Arcana

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Beatrice di Tenda

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Classical - Released January 1, 1993 | Brilliant Classics

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David & Jonathas

Gaétan Jarry

Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris

Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria

Emiliano Gonzalez Toro

Classical - Released September 22, 2023 | Gemelli Factory

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or - 4F de Télérama
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Vivaldi : Il Giustino

Ottavio Dantone

Full Operas - Released November 16, 2018 | naïve classique

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Gramophone Editor's Choice - Choc de Classica
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Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro

René Jacobs

Opera - Released January 1, 2004 | harmonia mundi

Distinctions Gramophone Record of the Year
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Jean-Baptiste Lully : Amadis

Christophe Rousset

Opera - Released September 22, 2014 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Diamant d'Opéra - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
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Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro, K.492

Luca Pisaroni

Classical - Released July 1, 2016 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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This Marriage of Figaro is perhaps the most exciting to happen for quite some time. The maestro in charge is Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who directs the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and a star-studded roster of singers specially selected for the occasion. The idea for this recording came out of the numerous modern reinterpretations of the piece, coupled with the aim to recreate the sounds of the past. As such, when you listen to the piece, it's at once powerfully modern yet "obvious". The recitativos are conceived musically rather than theatrically (surely a plus on an audio recording!) while the recording itself took place at a concert in Baden-Baden in 2015, which helps the performance move along tremendously and flow between each piece. A real gem. 
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Dreams (Gounod, Donizetti, Bellini)

Pretty Yende

Opera Extracts - Released October 27, 2017 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica
Soprano Pretty Yende made a big splash with her debut album, A Journey, which musically reenacted her path from small-town South Africa to Europe's major operatic stages. On that album she had both star quality and rough spots, and it was a matter of some interest to learn whether she was just a novelty or a major new voice. As it happens, Yende's second album, Dreams, does not answer the question. There is still the fact that Yende is one of those performers who just transmit; even in the chilly language of digital ones and zeroes, she has charisma. And in Italian bel canto repertoire she's clearly progressing. In both the more ornate Donizetti excerpts from Lucia di Lammermoor (sample "Ohimè! Sorge il tremendo fantasma" to hear Yende's control in quiet passages in the stratosphere) and in the more melodic Bellini, Yende delivers very fetching sounds. In the French music the news is not so good; Yende can't live up to the striking opening gesture in "Ah! je veux vivire" from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, and her voice shows strain here. Still, most of the music sounds great, and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano "Giuseppe Verdi" under Giacomo Sagripanti has an ideally subdued way of accompanying her. The indications are at this point that the way to deal with Yende is to play to her considerable strengths. Just before this album's release, Yende pulled out of a Rome production of Fra Diavolo for unspecified artistic reasons. One hopes that vocal problems were not involved.© TiVo