Menotti

''Attention, attention! Unknown flying objects from another planet and creatures identified so far only as Globolinks have landed on Planet Earth. All citizens are asked to remain calm. Be on your guard. Stay tuned for further broadcasts. THE GLOBOLINKS ARE HERE!'' A scene from a science fiction movie? It certainly could have been; the admonition is so familiar but, no, this is the opening spoken narrative that follows some evocative night skies, space-sweeping and reminiscent-of- schooldays orchestral music in Menotti's space-age opera for children of all ages, “Help, Help, The Globolinks”. Composed in 1968 and first performed in Hamburg, Menotti's music for “Globolinks” is appealing and accessible and often very amusing.

The profane and the profound, the lurid and the saintly, rub elbows in Menotti's operas. In The Saint of Bleecker Street, religious faith and disbelief are interwoven with drunken outbursts, taunts, and a stabbing. It's as if Puccini's Suor Angelica and Il Tabarro had been crossed with Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. The plot concerns the fragile Annina, a girl revered in New York's Little Italy because of her supposed ability to heal the sick. She hears voices, sees visions, and receives the stigmata as she vicariously relives the Passion of Jesus Christ. Her obsessively devoted brother Michele rejects these phenomena, believing them simply to be mumbo-jumbo imagined or thrust upon her by others.

A major new, native recording of a sparkling operatic double-bill. After Amelia goes to the ball was staged in 1937 at the Metropolitan Opera with acclaim, Gian Carlo Menotti became hot property. Two further radio operas were comparative failures but it was with The Medium that Menotti really hit his stride. A tragedy in two acts for five singers, a dance-mime role and a chamber orchestra of 14 players, Menotti’s opera is both dramatically astute in the Puccini tradition and composed with an acute ear for mood and mystery: the score, often quite dissonant, conveys an eerie, morbid atmosphere. According to the composer, ‘The Medium is actually a play of ideas. It describes the tragedy of a woman caught between two worlds, a world of reality which she cannot wholly comprehend, and a supernatural world in which she cannot believe.’

André Cluytens, though born in Belgium, achieved fame as one of the supreme French conductors of his era, renowned for his refinement and the sheer joy of his music-making. In the mid-20th century he built a substantial, varied and distinguished discography and became the first conductor to record the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Berliner Philharmoniker. This 64-disc set, uniting all his recordings of orchestral, concerto and choral repertoire, embraces the mainstream and the esoteric, and includes numerous items making their debut on CD or retrieved from the archives and released for the very first time.

Box set containing a compilation of works by various composers in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Liszt. As well as the tracks listed it also includes 'Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, 'Pathétique'', 'Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, 'Moonlight'' and 'Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, 'Appassionata'' by Ludwig van Beethoven, 'Preludios, Op. 80' by Joaquin Turina, etc…

Beniamino Gigli was the most popular and successful Italian tenor in the first half of the 20th century. Acclaimed as the second Caruso, he was a great popular favourite both on the operatic stage and the concert platform from his debut in 1914 to his retirement in 1955.
Gigli recorded extensively for HMV (now EMI) and his records were among the company's best sellers for many years.