A true Callas cornucopia, this 70-CD set gathers together everything Maria Callas ever recorded in the studio. That's 26 complete operas (four of which are studio repeats), plus the complete studio recitals made during the legendary soprano's recording career, which lasted from 1949-69. The bonus CD-ROM contains libretti and translations in English, French and German, plus a Callas photo library, while remastered treats include Callas's first recital recording, originally made for the Fonit-Cetra label and featuring arias by Wagner and Bellini. – Barnes & Noble
Recommended: not so much for the performance or even the work as for the experience. And even that is not necessarily something you will want to repeat very often. The point is that it may be now or never. Robert le diable, received triumphantly in Paris at its premiere in 1831, took centre- stage in the opera houses of Europe for two or three decades: a pantechnicon of an opera I was about to call it, and then thought to see what the dictionary had to say, finding there ‘the name of a bazaar of all kinds of artistic work’ – and the date 1830!
Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys draws on the same Breton myth of a submerged city as Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie. A great success at its 1888 premiere at Paris’s Opéra Comique, it even reached the Metropolitan Opera, New York, but its current rarity on the world’s stages makes this classic 1957 recording still more treasurable. The performers’ Gallic credentials are impeccable, even though both Rita Gorr and André Cluytens were natives of Flanders. Like soprano Janine Micheau and tenor Henri Legay, Cluytens enjoyed close links to the Opéra Comique, spending six years as its music director.