2023

The fame and legacy of Maria Callas are nearly unsurpassed in the modern history of opera. Her fame has transcended the usual boundaries of classical music, and she has been the inspiration for several movies as well as the successful Broadway play "Master Class." Her extensive catalogue of recordings remains among the most coveted and controversial for both her fans and detractors.

Mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza's career always had something of a Spanish flavor to it, even though she excelled in Mozart and Rossini roles and other elements of the traditional repertory. She consistently championed Spanish music, from zarzuela to the songs of Granados and Falla. She also sang the title role of Carmen frequently, bringing her own unique sense of the character to both stage and recordings. A musician of unusual breadth and ability, Berganza was an accomplished pianist and organist and even studied conducting and composition. Her voice, which had an impressive upper extension, managed to cross boundaries as well: in 1960, she was offered the role of Violetta – a mainstay of the soprano repertory – in Verdi's La traviata at La Scala in Milan.

erbert von Karajan was the most renowned conductor to emerge from Europe in the post-World War II era – and through fortuitous timing throughout his career, and in spite of controversy that dogged his early years, he was the most recorded conductor of the 20th century, and is likely to remain one of the most visible (and biggest-selling) conductors well into the 21st century. Born in Salzburg and descended from a family of Greek origin with deep roots in Austria – including scholars and physicians in Vienna and Salzburg – he was a music prodigy, playing the piano at three and playing his first recital a year later.

The orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater is one of the best symphony orchestras in the world. The glorious traditions of‘ its conductor‘ s school were founded by Nikolai Golovanov, Samuil Samosud, Ariy Pazovsky, Alexander Melik-Pashajev, Juri Fajer, Vassili Nebolsin, Boris Khaikin, Eugeni Svetlanov, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Mark Ermler, Alexander Lazarev.

The complete collection of their singles from across 35 years of the duo's acclaimed career. The 3CD+2BR format includes all Pet Shop Boys' hits starting with their debut single 'West End girls' and continuing through such iconic tracks as 'Love Comes Quickly', 'It's a Sin', 'Always on My Mind', 'Being Boring', 'Suburbia', 'Opportunities', 'What Have I Done to Deserve This?', 'Rent' and 'Heart'. The Blu-Ray includes the complete video collection of the singles.

Germaine Thyssens-Valentin was a classical pianist of Franco-Dutch parentage, noted for her performances of French music. She studied under Gabriel Fauré at the Paris Conservatoire, and in the 1950s, after a long absence from performing while she raised a family of five children, she recorded a series of discs of Fauré's music that have been reissued on compact disc to considerable acclaim.

Although he took up the baton mainly for practical reasons and originally hoped to focus on composing, Wilhelm Furtwängler is remembered as one of the 20th century's most important, most argued-about conductors. The quasi-Brucknerian music he wrote is now of merely passing interest; Furtwängler was a truly personal, original artist only on the podium. He approached performing as a way of re-composing someone else's work, reconstituting it with a strong infusion of the performer's own ideas and personality. At their worst, Furtwängler's performances could sound mannered, full of sudden, seemingly unmotivated tempo shifts.

Among the major opera stars of the 20th century, soprano Joan Sutherland excelled in bel canto roles and later in dramatic coloratura singing. Her voice was legendary for its agility, accuracy, and brilliant upper register. Sutherland was born on November 7, 1926, in Sydney. Her parents were from Scotland. Sutherland's mother was a mezzo-soprano and gave her singing lessons all through her childhood and adolescence. At 18, she began voice lessons in Sydney with John and Aida Dickens, who directed her into the soprano range (she began as a mezzo like her mother).

German conductor Otto Klemperer attended the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt-am-Main, studied violin and piano at the Klindworth-Scharwenka and Stern Conservatories in Berlin, and composition with the German composer Pfitzner. He made his début in Berlin in 1905, where he conducted fifty performances of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, not a work that would now be identified with Klemperer's serious and profoundly personal approach to music. Shortly afterwards, he visited Gustav Mahler in Vienna and impressed the composer by playing a scherzo from a Mahler symphony by memory at the piano.