A famous Decca operatic recital, long unavailable, celebrating the thrilling voice and short-lived career of a soprano who set operatic stages alight in the late 1950s. Anita Cerquetti made only two commercial recordings both for Decca under the baton of Gianandrea Gavazzeni. In 1957, she sang the title role in a complete ‘La Gioconda‘ with […]
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 […]
The ‘fresh, beautiful and critically underpraised’ voice (Gramophone) of Pilar Lorengar is celebrated here on an album of operatic arias, originally issued in 1980 by Decca as a portrait of the Spanish soprano who had entranced audiences on both sides of the Atlantic for three decades. ‘Our Pilar’as she was known affectionately at the Deutsche […]
James McCracken (1926–1988) recorded the arias on the first half of this disc in 1969, four years after the duets he recordeed with his wife, mezzo-soprano Sandra Warfield (1921-2009). Both singers were in their prime leon during those years and in the decade following. These performances of distinction offer some of the sappiest and most […]
‘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 […]
Ballet music was very much part of the great operas, sometimes inserted later for a bit of relief from the drama. Together with popular overtures – Rossini’s ‘Thieving Magpie’, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ – this is a collection of some of those best-loved instrumental moments, some of which have even eclipsed the whole opera in popularity.
Gifted with great beauty and a natural stage presence, Hilde Gueden was unfailingly easy on the ear as well as the eye. With her creamy tone and ability to spin the silvery upper-register sonority needed for her Strauss roles, she was a natural successor to Elisabeth Schumann, Lotte Schöne and Adele Kern. Fortunately for posterity, […]
Opera has entrenched itself in popular consciousness thanks to the much publicised concerts of The Three Tenors, outdoor stagings of such operatic blockbusters as ‘Aida’ and ‘Turandot’, opera concerts in the park, not to mention their ready incorporation into television advertisements – be it a British Airways aircraft floating in the clouds to the ‘Lakme’ Flower […]
The first release on CD of favourite soprano arias recorded by Leona Mitchell for Decca with simply ravishing orchestral playing to boot.
Two murders, an attempted rape and a suicide, all packed into about a hundred minutes, makes for spellbinding drama. And this performance of highlights from ‘Tosca’ is just that, in one of Tebaldi’s early recordings for Decca.
This is Renata Tebaldi’s first (and more silvery) recording of ‘Madama Butterfly’ with some very strong singing from the supporting cast.
One of the most touching portrayals of Puccini’s immortal opera, this recording includes all the favourite arias and ensemble pieces.
