The farewell performance of Dame Nellie Melba, world-famous prima donna of her day, on the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she had sung hundreds of times over an unprecedented span of 40 years, remains a justly famous occasion, of which recorded extracts have been reissued previously. What makes the present release […]

‘Queen Victoria loved music for music’s sake and singing appealed especially to her. It was a joy, a necessity to her to hear music every day and to keep in contact with the musicians of her time. Artists met with the most charming and graceful reception and the Queen always entertained herself for a long […]

It is difficult to dissociate the pure, warm tones of Renata Tebaldi’s voice from her usual operatic repertoire – the heroines of the Italian lyric stage of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which, thanks to her exceptional vocal and dramatic endowment, she interpreted so superbly. That these unforgettable portrayals were not just the product […]