From Adam to Zandonai, from 1954 to 1996, 20 CDs made up of no less than 28 Decca opera recordings, most of them recorded as highlights albums, many long unavailable, newly remastered and all featuring the greatest singers of their age. In bygone years, before 24/7 streaming, recorded music was less readily available than it […]
‘From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record’ is the first-ever comprehensive survey of the recordings of Australia’s greatest singers – in a unique, new, 4CD set from Decca, complete with biographies of each of the 80 artists, rare photographs, all contained within a 68-page booklet. Why has there been such an extraordinary procession of […]
One of the greatest soprano legends of all time, Nilsson’s 1963 Decca recital with Edward Downes of popular opera arias by Wagner, Weber, Beethoven, et.al. has never been fully issued. Here it is on CD – issued complete for the first time and in the fabled sumptuous Decca sound – coupled with her rare ‘Ah, […]
Georg Solti’s reading of ‘Tristan und Isolde’, is one of the most thrilling experiences of this opera on record, moving from becalmed to frenzied. The prominence of the orchestral playing – and what playing from the Vienna Philharmonic – is explained by producer John Culshaw as being very clearly indicated in the score by Wagner […]
Birgit Nilsson. Richard Wagner. It was an operatic marriage made in heaven that lasted for over twenty years and, thanks to recordings, continues to thrill music lovers around the world. Nilsson sang her first Wagnerian part in Stockholm. It was Senta in Der fliegende Holländer. It was greeted rapturously and throughout her long career it was […]
It is often said that Richard Strauss had a lifelong love affair with the soprano voice, and it is certainly true that many of his finest operatic roles were written with that voice in mind. In addition, the quality of his writing for sopranos regularly shows their instruments off to maximum advantage. Sopranos have genuine […]
Possibly the most thrilling, sexually-charged ‘Walküre’ ever recorded, this CD features the sappy voices of Gré Brouwenstijn and Jon Vickers as Sieglinde and Siegmund coupled with two of the leading Wagnerians of their day – Nilsson and London – as Brünnhilde and Wotan. Also listen out for the wind machine introduced in the Prelude to Act […]
This is a 31-year retrospective (1956–1987) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring fourteen extracts from nine operas with seven great singers. Wagner’s heroines make for some of the most pivotal moments in his operas and this anthology highlights almost every aspect of his women – suspicious and inflexible (Fricka, here taken […]
Looking back at ‘Tristan und Isolde’ twenty years after its composition, Wagner told his wife Cosima: ‘My model was Romeo and Juliet – nothing but duets!’ He was invoking Bellini’s opera,’I Capuleti e i Montecchi’ which he had conducted many times as a young man. Indeed, there had been much in the Italian master’s legacy that […]
