C Major
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The UNESCO Beethoven Symphony No. 9
Erin Wall (soprano), Annika Schlicht (mezzo-soprano), Attilio Glaser (tenor), René Pape (bass)
Members of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, World Orchestra for Peace & Würth Philharmonike, Donald Runnicles
Appeals for peace and unity in Europe may ring hollow soon enough but the performance itself bears repetition, unfailingly lucid and rhythmically sprung in the Toscanini mould…The sound-mixing... —
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Special offer. Puccini: Tosca
Sonya Yoncheva (soprano), Vittorio Grigolo (tenor), Roman Burdenko (baritone), Carlo Bosi, Giorgi Manoshvili, Hugo de Ana, Francesco Ivan Ciampa, Chorus of the Arena di Verona, Orchestra of the Arena di Verona
In all respects, she is a sensation in this role: truly one of the great Toscas of our time, and the DVD surely deserves a place in the Puccini fan’s collection on that count alone...The production... —
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Special offer. Rossini: La donna del lago
Salome Jicia (Elena), Juan Diego Flórez (Giacomo V), Varduhi Abrahamyan (Malcolm), Michael Spyres (Rodrigo), Marko Mimica (Douglas)
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Michele Mariotti, Damiano Michieletto
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Minkus: Don Quixote
Natalia Osipova, Leonid Sarafanov, Riccardo Massimi, Matthew Endicott, Giuseppe Conte
Teatro alla Scala, Alexander Titov
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Herbert von Karajan: Maestro for the Screen
A film by Georg Wübbolt
Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan
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Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de Perles
Patrizia Ciofi (Leila), Dmitry Korchak (Nadir), Dario Solari (Zurga), Roberto Tagliavini (Nourabad)
Orchestra, Coro e Corpo di Ballo del Teatro di San Carlo, Gabriele Ferro
[Ciofi's] clear, incisive soprano catches Bizet's floating line and liquid coloratura with fluent ease, and she seems a touch mature only in close-up - alongside the youthful Dmitry Korchak,... —
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Special offer. Mozart: Così fan tutte, K588
Anett Fritsch (Fiordiligi), Paola Gardina (Dorabella), Kerstin Avemo (Despina), Juan Francisco Gatell (Ferrando), Andreas Wolf (Guglielmo), William Shimell (Don Alfonso)
Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real de Madrid, Sylvain Cambreling
No lover of radical productions myself, I found it fascinating. You will, too, provided you forget that Cosi is an opera buffa: this is serious stuff...Within the limits of Haneke's very particular... —
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Karajan and Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin (violin)
Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Herbert von Karajan
an electrifying performance by a rejuvenated Berlin Philharmonic at the peak of its powers; it is also a visually stunning record of a masterclass in virtuoso conducting...[The bonus-feature]... —
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Special offer. Verdi: Falstaff
Ambrogio Maestri (Falstaff), Luca Salsi (Ford), Antonio Gandia (Fenton), Svetla Vassileva (Alice Ford), Romina Tomasoni (Mistress Quickly), Daniela Pini (Meg Page), Barbara Bargnesi (Nannetta)
Teatro Regio di Parma, Andrea Battistoni
Medcalf's Falstaff...makes use of Ambrogio Maestri's Falstaff (terrific diction)...Svetla Vassileva's Alice (as glamorous as she is witty) or Romina Tomasoni's amusingly British Quickly. —
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