A Verdi Requiem with a dream line-up of soloists and the forces of La Scala, Milan, directed by one of the greatest maestros of our time. Preceding acclaimed performances at the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals, Barenboim and his magnificent partners recorded this masterpiece around a live performance at La Scala, Milan, in 2012. This marks the first audio recording by Barenboim in his role as La Scala’s Music Director.
Together with the Filarmonica della Scala, Riccardo Chailly explores the iconic film scores of Nino Rota in a new collection, The Fellini Album. Slated for release on June 7 to mark 40 years since Rota’s death in April 1979, the album contains music from classic Federico Fellini films that capture the spirit of Italian cinema in the 1950s and 60s. The Fellini Album includes brand new recordings of music from La Dolce Vita, Amarcord, 8 ½, The Clowns and Il Casanova. The Fellini Album is available to pre-order now and will be released on Decca Classics/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company on June 7.
The Szell/Cleveland Recordings Complete! In the heyday of George Szell s tenure as its chief conductor, declared Gramophone, The Cleveland Orchestra had few if any peers among the world s great orchestras. Coinciding with the orchestra s centenary in 2018, Sony Classical is excited to announce one of the most ambitious reissue projects of recent times, a comprehensive collection of the Clevelanders recordings made under the baton of their iconic fourth music director.
Anne Sofie von Otter is a leading mezzo-soprano known for her versatility in operatic roles, her interesting recital choices, and her willingness to take vocal risks. Her father was a Swedish diplomat whose career took the family to Bonn, London, and back to Stockholm while Anne Sofie was growing up. As a result, she gained fluency in languages. She studied music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her main voice teacher was Vera Rozsa, while Erik Werba and Geoffrey Parsons coached her in lieder interpretation.
Dramatic soprano Frida Leider was regarded by many colleagues, critics, and opera enthusiasts as the finest Wagnerian soprano during the interwar years. She was admired not only for a powerful voice of considerable beauty and flexibility, but also for her artistic integrity and histrionic gifts that compared favorably with those of the finest stage actresses. She had seen Eleanora Duse on stage and had been impressed with the legendary Italian actress' power and economy of gesture. Likewise, the musical comedy star Fritzi Massary proved an enduring icon for her poise and concentration.
Karajan’s Deutsche Grammophon complete recordings is recorded on chronological order. From the “Magic Flute” overture of the 1938 recording used as first recording to the recording of the last in 1989, and the Symphony No.7 of Bruckner. There is no selling separately. It becomes ordering limited production.
This new studio recording of Bellini's Il Pirata in its uncut version includes all the repetitions, original cadenzas and variations written by the singers, as well as the rarely performed finaletto. Prima Classic's aim is to present to the public this masterpiece of composition, beauty, and of incredible technical demands on the soloists, performed by some of the most prominent singers of today. With Javier Camarena, Marina Rebeka, and Franco Vassallo performing the leading roles, this album was recorded at Bellini's homeland, Catania, with the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Massimo Bellini, under the baton of Fabrizio Maria Carminati.
Diana Damrau’s primacy as an interpreter of Violetta Valéry in La traviata can be inferred from the names of theatres where she has performed Verdi’s most popular opera: the Metropolitan, New York; La Scala, Milan; London’s Royal Opera House; the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Zurich Opera. Paris’s Opéra Bastille joined that list of leading houses in June 2014, when the German soprano appeared in a new production by the film director Benoît Jacquot. Conducted by Francesco Ivan Ciampa, it is presented on this DVD release from Warner Classics, which joins a DVD of Verdi’s Rigoletto, with Damrau as Gilda, recorded in Dresden and released in 2010, and the recent CD release of the soprano’s spine-tingling interpretation of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, recorded live in Munich.