A priceless collection of Hans Knappertsbusch’s opera recordings made for Universal Music labels, including the legendary live Parsifal performances of both 1951 and 1962, the Vienna studio Die Meistersinger of 1950-51, the Munich Fidelio of 1961, as well as operatic excerpts and highlights. For singers such as Birgit Nilsson, Jon Vickers, George London and Hans […]
Gathered together for the first time on Universal Music labels, including several first CD releases on Decca, is the orchestral legacy of an inimitable genius of the podium: Hans Knappertsbusch. Even in his own lifetime, Hans Knappertsbusch divided opinion, between listeners affronted by technical slips caused by his notorious aversion to rehearsal and those who […]
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 […]
Newly remastered and gathered under one roof for the first time, the Decca recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Bruckner: a legendary combination. For record collectors in the 1950s and 60s, the names of Bruckner and Knappertsbusch (‘Kna’) were practically synonymous. At a time when the composer’s symphonies were routinely compared to Gothic cathedrals, the rough […]
This recording of ‘Die Meistersinger’ was one of the first operas released on LP by Decca in January 1952. Act II was recorded in 1950 and released separately; a year later came Acts I and III. It was also the first complete studio recording of the opera to be released on LP and came early […]
In 1958, work started on the great ‘Ring’ project with Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic at the helm of a crop of outstanding singers. For the first complete recording of Wagner’s tetralogy and for the first opera, ‘Das Rheingold’, Flagstad was engaged to sing a role she had never performed before, that of Fricka. Producer […]
The third volume of The Flagstad Recitals couples music by Wagner and Mahler. Flagstad’s LP of Wagner scenes recorded with Hans Knappertsbusch is complemented by the ‘Todesverkündigung’ from Act II of ‘Die Walküre’ with Sir Georg Solti as well as the ‘Immolation Scene’ from ‘Götterdämmerung’ from a Norwegian broadcast performance conducted by Øivin Fjeldstad. Also […]
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 […]
After a spell of recording with Decca, the legendary Wagnerian conductor Hans Knappertsbusch recorded for Westminster, and among his best recordings for this label is this 1961 recording of Fidelio, boasting a cast of great singers at the Austrian and German opera houses, including the much-loved Sena Jurinac.
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 […]
‘It’s Wagner’s opera: let’s present him and not ourselves!’ This remark by Hans Knappertsbusch to Hans Hotter as the singer was about go on stage as Gurnemanz at Bayreuth in 1964, was characteristic of the conductor’s attitude. Singers’ egos, directors’ concepts and designers’ flights of fancy had no place in the Knappertsbusch vision of Wagner’s […]
George London was born in Montreal, Canada; when he was fifteen the family moved to the United States. His original surname was Burnstein (he also used Burnson for a time) and his forebears were from Širvintos in Lithuania. He began his singing studies in Los Angeles and by the 1940s was touring with a trio […]
