Solti at Covent Garden
Georg Solti
Label
Decca
Catalogue No.
4808957
Barcode
00028948089574
Format
1-CD
About

Beginning in 1961, Georg Solti enjoyed a ten-year tenure as Music Director of London’s Covent Garden Opera Company where he raised performance standards while giving British singers more prominence than ever before. These changes were not lost on Buckingham Palace and in 1968, Covent Garden earned the right to be renamed ‘The Royal Opera’. With its orchestra, Solti made some of his – and posterity’s – most thrilling recordings, cherished by music-lovers and audiophiles the world over. The 1960 recording of the ballet music from ‘Faust’ was issued first as a 45rpm disc and later as a coupling to the Offenbach-Rosenthal, ‘Gaîte Parisienne’, surely the very definition of the fabled ‘Decca Sound’ (it appears on Decca Eloquence 480 6589). The pieces by Verdi, Rossini, Offenbach and Ponchielli were originally issued by RCA in 1959 (in England) and 1960 (in the USA) and in the 1970s on Decca when the recordings repatriated to them.

TRACK LISTING / ARTISTS

CHARLES-FRANÇOIS GOUNOD
Faust: Ballet Music

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK
Orfeo ed Euridice:
Dance of the Furies
Dance of the blessed spirits

GIUSEPPE VERDI
La traviata:
Prelude to Act I
Prelude to Act III

GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
L’italiana in Algeri: Overture
Semiramide: Overture

JACQUES OFFENBACH
Les Contes d’Hoffmann: Entr’acte (Barcarolle)

AMILCARE PONCHIELLI
La Gioconda: Dance of the Hours

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Georg Solti

Recording information

Recording Producers: Ray Minshull (Gounod, Gluck); James Walker (Verdi, Rossini, Offenbach, Ponchielli)
Balance Engineers: Gordon Parry, Alan Reeve (Gounod); Gordon Parry, James Lock, Alec Rosner (Gluck); Kenneth Wilkinson (Verdi, Rossini, Offenbach, Ponchielli)
Recording Locations: Kingsway Hall, London, UK, 18–21 June 1958 (Verdi, Rossini, Offenbach, Ponchielli), 28 January 1960 (Gounod), June & July 1969 (Gluck)

Reviews

‘given a straight, crisp, neat performance [Dance of the Hours] … delicious oboe playing [in L’italiana in Algeri]’ Gramophone

‘all the playing on this disc is quite outstandingly good, and the same can be said of the recording quality’ (Faust) Gramophone

‘[Solti’s] orchestra give a virtuoso performance and their bravura is certainly infection, even if sometimes a little breathless. The reverberant sound is both brilliant and sumptuous’ Penguin Guide