Cinderella 2000

With only four full-length albums and a couple of live records to their name, it's hard to view this 2006 two-disc Cinderella set as being essential, especially as the thorough Rocked, Wired & Bluesed: The Greatest Hits was released early the preceding year. Nevertheless, the two-disc Gold contains almost everything a Cinderella fan could want or possibly need. Almost. For some reason, the group decided to opt for live renditions of two of its most well-known recordings - "Gypsy Road" and "Somebody Save Me" - over the original versions. This flaw aside, Cinderella comb through their other releases to present this 30-song collection of their other hits, including the power ballad "Don't Know What You Got ('Til It's Gone)," the hard-driving "Shake Me," and the MTV favorite "Nobody's Fool."

This lavish box set assembles all of the Fish-era singles released by Marillion, the undisputed leaders of the neo-prog movement. Clearly the stuff of manic collectors' dreams, this will far exceed both the interest and budget of casual listeners; but for those keen to possess a truly special heirloom to commemorate their heroes, this will fit that description quite nicely.

Extended Versions is a live album by American hard rock band Cinderella. It was recorded on July 21, 2005 at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut and released in 2006 by Sony BMG. The album was re-issued in 2009 by Frontiers Records in Europe and Japan under the title Live at the Mohegan Sun, with bonus tracks and a different cover. Gary Corbett was previously a touring keyboard player for Kiss and Paul Stanley.

After successful albums that effectively followed contemporary hard rock trends, Cinderella reached back into the Stones and Aerosmith songbooks and created a sneering, raunchy hard rock album that was artistically their finest moment, even if it didn't reach the same commercial heights as its predecessors. But the sales figures don't matter (it only sold a million copies); Heartbreak Station shows that Cinderella has more genuine rock & roll grit than most of the metal bands of the late '80s.

Long Cold Winter is a transition album for Cinderella, mixing pop-metal tunes with better hooks than those on Night Songs with a newfound penchant for gritty blues-rock à la the Stones or Aerosmith. The ballads - the grandiose "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" and the excellent, lower-key "Coming Home" - are what made the album Cinderella's most commercially successful, but the effective combination of pop hooks and tough, swaggering rock & roll on songs like "Gypsy Road" and "Fallin' Apart at the Seams" prevents the album from becoming simply a vehicle for hit singles and keeps it interesting. Not all of the songs are memorable, but most of them are.

Sumptuous and tender-hearted, voluptuous and exquisitely beautiful, Theodore Kuchar and the Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra's 1994 recording of the three suites from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella could only be improved if there were more of it. And the only way there could be more of it would be if Kuchar and the U.S.S.O. had recorded the whole ballet. But not only are the excerpts extremely well played and supremely persuasively interpreted, they each make sense in context of the suites so that each suite forms a compelling whole rather than a collection of concert hall favorites.

The fairy tale story of Cinderella has always inspired the great theater composers. Rossini's delightful 'La Cenerentola' is an operatic staple while Prokofiev's 'Cinderella' is a fixture on the ballet stage. After the 1940 premiere of 'Romeo and Juliet,' Prokofiev was immediately commissioned to write another ballet for the Kirov. Work on 'Cinderella' was set aside during some of the darkest days of the Second World War but Prokofiev returned to the work and completed it in 1944.