Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera Long Nights Of Summer The Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera Anthology

Rosa Ponselle - The Columbia Acoustic Recordings (1992) {2CD Set Pearl GEMM CDS 9964 rec 1918-1923}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 444 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 377 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 24 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1918-23, 1992 Pearl / Pavilion Records | GEMM CDS 9964
Classical / Vocal / Opera / Historical

Those early Ponselle records have unique qualities. She was at the age of the characters she was portraying, in her impulsiveness (incredibly controlled by technique and taste) singing every note and emotion with the freshness of youth in life's spring. This with the most glorious voice that ever came from any woman's throat in the Italian repertory, with a precocious sense of line, style, and emotional honesty…

The audio companion to David Toop's excellent book advances the case he made, that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering. A double-disc set, Ocean of Sound impresses not only with its incredible diversity of musical styles, but with how easily these artists work next to each other. The second disc includes consecutive contributions by Paul Schütze, the Velvet Undergound, Holger Czukay of Can, The Beach Boys, African Headcharge and Sun Ra. Besides illustrating Toop's point beautifully, the album is an excellent addition to the collection of any wide-ranging ambient fan.

The fourth studio album from the Ventures, 1961's Colorful Ventures was the first in a long line of releases the band built around album title themes. Here the theme is colors, and so listeners get such songs as "Blue Moon," "Yellow Jacket," "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," and so on. Conceptual themes aside, the album featured more of the group's recognizable instrumental rock & roll, surf rock, and country twang.

Christoph Willibald Gluck has a place in the history books for a few big hits and for the idea of reforming the ornate style of opera seria serious opera in the 18th century, replacing it with a more natural ideal of melody. This reputation has rested on a very few pieces, and both bibliographic control and recorded explorations of Gluck's music are perhaps more sparse than for any other major composer.

Poulenc’s remarkable comic opera ‘The Breasts of Tiresias’ was written during the darkest days of the German occupation of France. The premiere, at the Opera Comique was a great success, and given this was in 1947, it must have provided a much needed tonic for the war weary Parisians.

Richard Wagner called Die Walküre the “first evening” of the Ring of the Nibelung; he called Das Rheingold the prologue or Vorabend. Musically and dramatically, we are introduced to a radically new and different world when the opening bars of Die Walküre resound. A fully developed orchestral palette of Leitmotivs paints a wild storm scene, and the curtain rises on a modest dwelling: a fully human scene that has nothing to do with the gods, dwarves and nymphs of Das Rheingold. At the same time, however, the way Die Walküre portrays radical beginnings reveals some telling reminiscences of the unfolding of Das Rheingold. Die Walküre is exciting and deeply feeling drama.

This Blu-ray derive from the world premiere performances, at the Dutch National Opera in 2016, of Only the Sound Remains, a Japanese-inspired double bill by Kaija Saariaho. Her first opera, L’Amour de loin, has captivated audiences around the world, and she composed Only the Sound Remains with the ethereal tones of Philippe Jaroussky in mind. Appropriately, the French countertenor plays two supernatural characters, an angel and a ghost. The fisherman and priest who encounter them are both sung by baritone Davone Tines, while the production is the work of the celebrated director Peter Sellars.