Sparkling accounts of famous French overtures, rare and familiar, all recorded in 1960 and part of the Eloquence magnum opus, the ‘Decca Ansermet Legacy’.

The stunning ‘Covent Garden Anniversary Album’ released complete for the first time on CD, coupled with Solti’s firecracker accounts of Overtures and Preludes. Soloists include a range of 1960s Covent Garden stalwarts, – Carlyle, Sutherland, Veasey, Minton, Shuard, Collier, Gobbi, Evans, Pears and Ward; and conductors – Downes, Bonynge, Walton and Goodall. Nearly 160 minutes […]

Christmas Eve 1974 was a nightmare for the inhabitants of Darwin (in Australia’s Northern Territory) when it was destroyed by a violent cyclone. A Darwin Appeal Fund was launched and a month later, on 25 January 1975, Richard Bonynge conducted a fund-raising concert at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The idea was that of […]

In October 1880, at the age of 61, having poured out his high-spirited talent into over a hundred works for the stage, Offenbach lay exhausted on his deathbed. A strange figure wearing dark glasses and a floppy white cravat knocked at the door. It was Léonce, the comedian who had made such a big hit […]