Opera Now March April 2000

Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television.

EU-only eight disc (seven CDs+DVD) box set from the former Pink Floydian. Contains all of his solo studio work to date plus his live album In The Flesh. Features: The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking (1984), Radio Kaos (1987) Amused To Death (1992), In The Flesh (two CDs/2000) and Ca Ira (two CDs/2005). Also includes the live In The Flesh DVD recorded June 27th, 2000 at the Rose Garden Arena in Portland, Oregon. Roger Waters was a primary creative force in Pink Floyd from 1965 to 1983.

Chandos are delighted to present the first complete recording of the masque The Crown of India, performed here by Clare Shearer and Gerald Finley, with the BBC Philharmonic and Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Completed by Anthony Payne in 2008 the work conveys all the pomp and pageantry with which Elgar is associated. The work is presented on 2 CDs. Disc 1 includes the entire masque with narration, whilst Disc 2 contains only the music and Marches. The set is sold at the price of one full price CD.

Dragonland is a power metal band from Sweden. The group is most notable for basing their first two and fifth albums upon the self-produced The Dragonland Chronicles fantasy saga and for the original symphonic/electronic parts by Elias Holmlid…

Frank Herbert (1920-86) was born in Tacoma, Washington and worked as a reporter and later editor of a number of West Coast newspapers before becoming a full-time writer. His first sf story was published in 1952 but he achieved fame more than ten years later with the publication in Analog of Dune World and The Prophet of Dune that were amalgamated in the novel Dune in 1965.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский) 7 May 1840 [O.S. 25 April] – 6 November 1893 [O.S. 25 October]) was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, seven symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.

Born into a middle-class family, Tchaikovsky's education prepared him for a career as a civil servant, despite the musical precocity he had demonstrated. Against the wishes of his family he chose to pursue a musical career, and in 1862 entered the St Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1865. This formal, Western-oriented training set him apart, musically, from the contemporary nationalistic movement embodied by the group of young Russian composers known as "The Five", with whom Tchaikovsky sustained a mixed professional relationship throughout his career.

As his style developed, Tchaikovsky wrote music across a range of genres, including symphony, opera, ballet, instrumental, chamber and song. Although he enjoyed many popular successes, he was never emotionally secure, and his life was punctuated by personal crises and periods of depression. Contributory factors were his suppressed homosexuality and fear of exposure, his disastrous marriage, and the sudden collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck. Amid private turmoil Tchaikovsky's public reputation grew; he was honored by the Tsar, awarded a lifetime pension and lauded in the concert halls of the world. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some attribute it to suicide.

Although enduringly popular with concert audiences across the world, Tchaikovsky has at times been judged harshly by critics, musicians and composers. However, his reputation as a significant composer is now generally regarded as secure. In the early and mid-20th century, Western critics dismissed his music as vulgar and lacking in elevated thought, but this disdain has largely dissipated.