It has been a while since major studios gave up recording operas in studio due to a lack of investment and profitability. But the world-renowned reputation of Jonas Kaufmann has incited Sony Classical to record and produce this new version of Verdi’s Othello in studio in the “traditional style”. The work was produced over twelve days of session recording in the generous acoustics of the splendid Parco della Musica built in Rome by the architect Renzo Piano. It is no exaggeration when we say that this is a truly astounding version of Verdi’s masterpiece that stands shoulder to shoulder with the legendary versions of the flamboyant Toscanini (1947), the winning trio Vickers-Rysanek-Gobbi of Serafin (1960) and also the electrifying live performance of Carlos Kleiber (1976). There are of course many others of diverse merit but none so utterly satisfying.Jonas Kaufmann has waited patiently before taking on the compelling title role, singing previously as Cassio in Chicago before playing Otello in London in 2017 under the passionate direction of Antonio Pappano (interpretation available on DVD). Here, the same conductor is at helm of the supercharged and on great form, Orchestre de l’Académie Sainte-Cécile in Rome. Alongside his strong, moving, impulsive and ultimately fragile depiction of Otello, Jonas Kaufmann is joined by Federica Lombardi’s sublime Desdemona and Carlos Álvarez’s solid take on the sordid, treacherous and conniving Iago. Liparit Avetisyan and Carlo Bossi, who play Cassio and Rodrigo respectively, provide this ensemble with a perfect harmony. The sound recording provides a great presence to this vocal and instrumental delight and does justice to the aggression and violent colouring of Verdi’s final drama as the composer proves more than ever to be a match for Shakespeare. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré’s Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell’s Sleep, Adam, sleep with its references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms’s Salamander, Wolf’s Die Bekehrte or Ravel’s Air du Feu. In Das Paradies und die Peri, Schumann conjures up the image of Syria’s rose-covered plains. Bernstein also transports us to the desert with Silhouette.. John Milton’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Paradise Lost was the inspiration for Charles Ives and Benjamin Britten, also featured in this very rich programme that constitutes an invitation to travel and reflection. © Alpha Classics

Though Antonio Sanchez is best known as a jazz drummer, composer, and producer, those roles merely hint at the depths of his creative vision. In 2017, Sanchez released the solo Bad Hombre. Titled after a racially derogatory remark made by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, the set offered intense sociopolitical critique. It was fueled by an individually developed approach to electronica while exploring various ways to play, record, and produce drums. The set earned a Grammy nomination in 2018. Five years and several releases later, Shift (Bad Hombre, Vol. 2) showcases Sanchez as a drummer and producer, but also as a conceptualist and multi-instrumentalist, in a series of cross-cultural collaborations with a dazzling, star-studded cast. His concept features drums and voices as equals as a grand experiment in texture, yet he also plays guitars, basses, synth, oud, ukulele, and mandolin. The guest list includes his 97-year-old grandfather, Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso, Dave Matthews and Pat Metheny, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Ana Tijoux, Lila Downs, Meshell Ndegeocello, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Silvana Estrada, Becca Stevens, Portugal's Maro, Kimbra, and Croatian-American vocalist Thana Alexa, among others.Shift was mostly recorded remotely during the pandemic. Sanchez took advantage of quarantine to enlist his busy collaborators. As on the first volume, Tarso, his nonagenarian grandfather, bookends the set with spoken word above intensely layered sound collages combining mariachi, processional, and sporting event music. Former boss Pat Metheny and songwriter Dave Matthews participate in a futuristic read of the latter's "Eh Hee" (here retitled "2.0") joining clattering beats, zigzagging synths, samplers, and distortion. Matthews' chanting and singing engage both Sanchez's freaky basslines and Metheny's squalling polytonal guitar. Single "Mi Palabra" weds a slow, rubbery hip-hop beat with Tijoux's silvery, polyrhythmic rapping, as horns, ambient sounds, and synth bass frame her nocturnal delivery. "The Bucket" features Brooklyn-based vocalist/songwriter Becca Stevens, whose ethereal singing contrasts with and accents Sanchez's cascading layers of drums, cymbals, piano, and reverb in what amounts to a cinematic hymn. He plays all instruments but synth on "I Think We're Past That Now," which is played by Ross with lyrics and vocals from Reznor. With additional mixing from Alan Moulder, it sounds like a deeply paranoid, unissued NiN track. "Risa de Mujer," with Downs, has slow, tribal drumming and moody synths that accentuate her entrancing, resonant vocal. "Comet, Come to Me" offers a new take on the title track to Ndegeocello's 14th album, wedding dub basslines, Latin and Caribbean rhythms, and noir-ish funk under her dreamy, poignant vocal. "M-Power," with Rodrigo y Gabriela, stitches progressive and Latin rock, jazz fusion, and neo-classical with Sanchez's jagged electronica and triple-timed beats in a sonic tour de force. Ultimately, there is nothing remotely substandard among these 16 cuts. Material, performances, and production are all inspired, making Shift (Bad Hombre, Vol. 2) one of the most compelling, varied, and virtually unclassifiable releases to emerge thus far in 2022.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Cinq-Mars is an 1877 opera by Charles Gounod, written a dozen years after his last big hit, Roméo et Juliette. It's based on a historical novel by Alfred de Vigny about the Marquis of Cinq-Mars, a nobleman who attempted to rally resistance to Cardinal Richelieu and in 1642 was executed for his pains. The work harks back to the tradition of French grand opera and was never very successful. It fell into a series of numbers at a time when audiences were getting a taste of a different way of doing things, not just from Germany, but from Verdi also. But it does contain numbers that show Gounod's undiminished melodic gift: sample the "Cavatine" of the Princess Marie Gonzaga, the linchpin of the wholly fictitious romantic subplot added by Gounod and his librettists. Marie is sung by Véronique Gens, who leads a cast of uniformly strong singers, and this live performance, with the Munich Radio Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Choir under the direction of Ulf Schirmer, has plenty of energy. The recording is available in a sumptuous hardback package with beautiful classic design; the event may not live up to the presentation, but the idea, as a counterweight to the instant reproducibility of art in the Internet age, is a good one.© TiVo