I haven't stopped to figure out how many operas remain from that box I bought back in November, but I just put this on this recording from 1979 for this morning's listen:
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After hearing this on DVD I could not help getting the CD of the same performance:
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"Music is enought for a whole lifetime--but a lifetime is not enough for music." --Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff
Winter series now over, there's no more cricket until the summer series starts in May (sad face) and I'm back to the world of opera (happy face)...
Verdi: Aida
Anja Harteros (Aida), Jonas Kaufmann (Radamès), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Amneris), Ludovic Tezier (Amonasro), Erwin Schrott (Ramfis), Marco Spotti (Il Re d'Egitto), Paolo Fanale (Un Messaggero), Eleonora Buratto (Sacerdotessa)
Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Roma; Coro dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Roma, Antonio Pappano
2015
now if this had been around at the time we were recommending recordings for Aida in the favourite recordings thread, this would have been my choice, it is magnificent. Superb interpretation with magnificent cast, chorus and orchestra. A wonderful book format with libretto, synopsis, essays and pictures (I like pictures) and an absolute bargain price of GBP 14 at PC, it's a must get for Verdi, JK and Harteros fans amongst others.
I do understand MAuer's point about the sound engineering leading to big changes in volume but to be honest a recording like this deserves to be played on speakers in an otherwise empty house at a volume that can be heard in ancient Egypt...
This is nice but, in my view, doesn't replace either the Muti or the Gardelli.
Essay reference time again. This means Puccini
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"Non sono in vena" Rodolfo summing up P.B's feelings on his dissertation.
José Cura does some of the most nuanced singing I have ever heard from him - he's great in this role. And Olga Borodina, mamma mia, what a force of nature. I reckon Samson could just sit and twiddle his thumbs and let her knock the temple down with her voice.
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Natalie
I needed something to last a trip to the mail sorting office to pick up a parcel plus a trip to the supermarket and this admirably served the purpose. I know when it happens but the gun shot always makes me jump!
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"Every theatre is an insane asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for the incurables."
FRANZ SCHALK, attributed, Losing the Plot in Opera: Myths and Secrets of the World's Great Operas
It's the Curtis recording of Alcina; it get's me every time!
The wife sometimes calls me a hampster, after we once saw a documentary that told us the hampster scares very easily and can die of a heart attack as a consequence!
Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov
Boris Christoff (Boris/Pimen/Varlaam), Nicolai Gedda (Grigory (False Dmitry)), Kim Borg (Rangoni/Tchelkalov), Eugenia Zareska (Marina), Andre Bielecki (Shuisky/Missail), Eugenia Zareska (Fyodor), Ludmilla Lebedeva (Xenia), Lydia Romanova (Hostess), Wassili Pasternak (Simpleton)
Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, Choeurs Russes de Paris, Issay Dobrowen
Studio recording, 1952
Wonderful Christoff
and Gedda
and
well...
all
This is a good recording, but... I just don't really get Schumann. I'm glad the library bought it rather than me!
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Natalie
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