This 10CD box covers the entire range of the repertoire with which Boris Christoff took the world by storm; from his first opera role in La Boheme over the important Verdi roles and his devilish portrayal of Mephisto to the major roles in Russian operas; Christoff took part in no less than 600 performances of Boris Godunov.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt, HWV 17), commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio.
This 10CD box covers the entire range of the repertoire with which Boris Christoff took the world by storm; from his first opera role in La Boheme over the important Verdi roles and his devilish portrayal of Mephisto to the major roles in Russian operas; Christoff took part in no less than 600 performances of Boris Godunov.
This release comes as quite a surprise. Although John Lucas in his 1993 biography of Sir Reginald Goodall refers in a footnote to the existence of a BBC radio recording of the performance of Boris Godunov given at the Royal Opera Covent Garden on 10 June 1961 under Goodall’s baton, he does not list it in his discography of the conductor’s work in the same volume. It was in the event — with the exception of a single performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel — the last conducting engagement undertaken by Goodall at Covent Garden for ten years. When he next appeared in the pit at the Royal Opera to conduct Parsifal – a BBC recording of one of those performances has already emerged on CD – he had already established his reputation as a Wagnerian. But he had always enjoyed critical approval for his interpretation of Boris, and the appearance of another opera in the sparse representation of Goodall on disc is to be wholeheartedly welcomed.
Volume 2 of EMI's comprehensive Herbert von Karajan centenary edition gathers virtually all of the conductor's operatic and vocal output for the label in one place, taking up 71 CDs (Disc 72 contains complete librettos in the form of PDF files). I use the word "virtually" because the package omits four posthumously issued archival items taped live during the 1957-60 Salzburg Festivals (Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Brahms' German Requiem, Bruckner's Te Deum, and Verdi's Requiem). Otherwise, it's all here.
Borodin’s splendid epic of Old Russia was recorded in Paris in 1966 with the forces of Sofia National Opera, conducted by Polish-born Jerzy Semkow, a protégé of the legendary Russian maestro Yevgeny Mravinsky. The great Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff, a master of vocal characterisation, takes two roles: Prince Igor’s wicked brother-in-law Prince Galitsky and the surprisingly benign Khan Konchak, who famously commands his people, the Polovtsy, to dance for his noble Russian prisoner of war.
Finally Dutch conductor Eduard van Beinum is receiving attention he so richly deserves with many of his superb performances appearing on CD. Philips has issued most of his commercial recordings for that label, available mostly in Holland. Dutton Laboratories, LYS and Japanese Decca also have issued a number of recordings (with many yet unissued—see our Features article on Van Beinum). Now we have this set of live concert performances dating from 1935 through 1958. The earliest are from 78 rpm acetates some of which were not in very good condition. Some, not all, have surface disturbances even the most precise digital processing cannot eliminate. However, for the collector this is relatively insignificant considering these remarkable performances.