Your basket is empty

Categories:
Narrow my search:

Results 1 to 20 out of a total of 5104
From
HI-RES$24.71
CD$19.77

Verdi: Nabucco (Live)

Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini

Opera - Released March 20, 2020 | Dynamic

Hi-Res Booklet
From
HI-RES$27.98
CD$22.58

Gesualdo: Madrigali, Libri quinto & sesto

Les Arts Florissants

Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released March 10, 2023 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month
The madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo were new territory for Les Arts Florissants, a group that specializes mostly in French Baroque opera, but the cycle, which concludes with this double album featuring the composer's tortured fifth and sixth books, has been consistently strong and has brought many new insights; the album reached the top levels of classical sales charts in early 2023. Gesualdo and his style have been used in narratives that don't necessarily fit the actual music. For Stravinsky and his contemporaries, the dissonance-loving Gesualdo was a proto-modernist, but Les Arts Florissants leader (and tenor voice) Paul Agnew points out that the trends in his music were also present in that of other composers of the Mannerist late 16th century. It is conventional to connect the experiments in Gesualdo's music to the facts of his life: he caught his wife and her lover in flagrante, murdered them both, beat the rap at trial, and spent the rest of his life in seclusion. Agnew doesn't buy this connection, either, and his interpretations avoid the emotional extremes present in other performances. At the most intense moments, he may steer the singers just a bit toward spoken inflections, but mostly his dissonant harmonies are precise and cutting. The sound is a bit swallowed up in the Philharmonie de Paris, but the laconic statements of Gesualdo's chosen texts are clear. A fine conclusion to a cycle of music by a composer who warranted a fresh look. © James Manheim /TiVo
From
CD$19.77

Verdi: Don Carlos

Luigi Roni

Opera - Released January 1, 1979 | Orfeo

From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99

Monteverdi: Il quarto libro de madrigali

Collegium Vocale Gent

Classical - Released May 6, 2022 | Phi

Hi-Res Booklet
After dedicating many years of his life to the highly-revered music of Claudio Monteverdi, Philippe Herreweghe now offers us his version of the Fourth Book of Madrigals—one of the most innovative and representative works by this genius Italian composer. Sprinkled with audacious harmonics and intense expressiveness that closely mimics the mannerisms of painters and sculptors of the time, this volume clearly announces the culmination of the “seconda pratica” (a new modern way of thinking about music that marked the beginning of the Baroque period).Monteverdi devoted many years to the creation of this Fourth Book which brings the 16th century to a close with great originality of form and a wide variety of styles (a real testament to the spectacular musical evolution that took place over such a small time frame). The use of dissonance is evident from the very first madrigal, Ah dolent partita, with the use of minor seconds plunging the listener into the bottomless abyss of amorous distress.A great lover of Italy and its art, Philippe Herreweghe and the excellent singers of the Collegium Vocale Gent give real vitality to these madrigals. They subtly shape the contrasts, achieving a striking chiaroscuro that emphasises the exaggerated asceticism contained within these 20 sublime pieces. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
HI-RES$18.09
CD$15.69

Leontyne Price - Verdi and Puccini Arias

Leontyne Price

Classical - Released January 13, 2015 | RCA Red Seal

Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$14.49
CD$10.49

Rameau: Pygmalion & Les Fêtes de Polymnie

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released September 1, 2017 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Jazz
Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion’s despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18th century dances. Like Ovid’s Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau’s greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet. © Aparté
From
HI-RES$19.89
CD$17.19

Verdi

Ludovic Tezier

Classical - Released February 5, 2021 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or / Arte
It was time for Ludovic Tézier to finally provide his admirers with a recital. His performances as a Verdian baritone are impressive: Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Falstaff, Giorgio Germont (La Traviata), Posa (Don Carlo), Le Conte De Luna (Il Trovatore), Renato (Un ballo in maschera), Iago (Otello). And almost all of these are reprised in this solo album. To this impressive list of stage roles, Tézier brings the welcome addition of arias from Ernani, Macbeth and Nabucco all accompanied by Frédéric Chaslin at the head of the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. It was in 1998 in Tel Aviv that the French baritone played his first Verdian role. He was thirty years old when he was Ford in a production of Falstaff. "There is an absolutely fascinating energy in Verdi, both for the audience and for the singers", he admits. "His roles are usually very challenging, but his music acts at the same time as a fountain of youth. Verdi is brimming with vitality, which is what allowed me to return to the stage just two days after my father's death". Now with a fully-matured voice, Ludovic Tézier is in demand all over the world for his Verdi roles. He is one of the best performers of Verdi's work, standing alongside the late Piero Cappuccilli who remains his great role model. This record offers timely confirmation of his stature. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
HI-RES$25.29
CD$21.89

Verdi : La Forza del Destino (Remastered)

Thomas Schippers

Classical - Released January 1, 1965 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$13.99
CD$11.19

Monteverdi: Il terzo libro de madrigali

Rinaldo Alessandrini

Opera - Released October 30, 2020 | naïve classique

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
No one knows better than Rinaldo Alessandrini that Monteverdi's madrigals – to which he has dedicated a major part of his work and recordings over the past thirty years – were above all texts where the music was the servant, and not the mistress. This form of a cappella vocal polyphony, responding sensitively to the inflections of a highly expressive poetry, was born in the full flowering of Renaissance humanism and developed in the 17th century by composers such as Monteverdi, Marenzio and Gesualdo, before being supplanted by the opera. As the Italian maestro explains, in the Third Book of Madrigals, "we can already see how carefully the twenty-fiveyear-old Monteverdi chooses poetry, e.g. by Guarini and Tasso, which is capable of 'responding to the needs of the drama, of truth, humanity and emotionality, culminating at the end of his life in the lustrous triumph of his final works". This is the fifth collection of madrigals Rinaldo Alessandrini has recorded with Concerto Italiano, and it is the cornerstone of his quest for an intimate understanding of Monteverdi's repertoire – and all the music that came after it. These madrigals have "the power to allow the performers to read the human passions, perceive them empathetically, and restore them in the very finest dress" (Esteban Hernández Castelló). Their analytical yet sensitive approach leads to a precise intonation, a direct transmission of naked emotions, and the restoration of details we can only glimpse behind the words, revealing in all its beauty what lies hidden in the music: mirror images of the soul. © naive classique
From
HI-RES$28.09
CD$24.09

Verdi: Macbeth

Luciano Pavarotti

Classical - Released January 1, 1993 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

Hi-Res Booklet
From
CD$26.59

Puccini: La Bohème

Sir Georg Solti

Classical - Released November 2, 2009 | RCA Red Seal

From
CD$12.45

Carlo Gesualdo : Madrigals, Book 5 (Livre 5)

La Venexiana

Classical - Released January 1, 2005 | Glossa

From
HI-RES$59.32
CD$47.46

Verdi: Nabucco

Parma Teatro Regio Orchestra

Classical - Released November 19, 2013 | C Major

Hi-Res Booklet
From
CD$15.79

Appunti di un lungo viaggio

Gino Paoli

Pop - Released April 19, 2019 | WM Italy

From
CD$12.45

Verdi: Arias

Sondra Radvanovsky

Classical - Released April 27, 2010 | Delos

From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99

Gesualdo: Dolcissima mia vita. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro quinto (1611)

Collegium Vocale Gent

Classical - Released September 24, 2021 | Phi

Hi-Res Booklet
Philippe Herreweghe continues his exploration of the extraordinary music of Carlo Gesualdo with this recording of the twenty madrigals from the Libro Quinto (Book V), one of the composer's last publications, at the time of his darkest period when he was racked by remorse and questions about the afterlife.There is a great diversity in this penultimate book, between the terribly dark Mercè grido full of cries and tears, and the joyful pursuit of love in Correte, amanti, o prova. This mixture of lightness and dizzying harmonic boldness is explained through the inclusion of madrigals from different periods in this book. They are written for very erudite texts mixing mind games and metaphysics. "O miracle of love, ah, strange fate, let life not be life, and death not be death" can be heard in the second piece of this Cinquième livre: a text that sounds rather odd, after Gesualdo's double murder of his adulterous wife and her lover.   These feelings, sometimes light-hearted, sometimes gloomy, are perfectly performed by Philippe Herreweghe and the excellent voices of the Collegium Vocale Gent. The harmonic complexity never disturbs an interpretation that paints a narrative populated by contradictory affects. Gesualdo's chromatic experiments did not escape Stravinsky, who orchestrated two madrigals from this Livre V (numbers 14 and 17) in his Monumentum pro Gesualdo first performed in San Marco in Venice in 1960, a late work by the Russian composer, which may have contributed to the renewed interest in this singular Italian composer. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
CD$30.09

Verdi: Rigoletto

Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra

Classical - Released January 1, 1980 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

From
CD$11.49

Monteverdi: Il terzo libro de madrigali

The Consort of Musicke

Classical - Released May 11, 1993 | Warner Classics

From
CD$47.46

Carlo Gesualdo : Madrigaux (Livres V et VI)

Delitae Musicae

Classical - Released May 7, 2013 | Naxos

Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason