Recorded at London's Hackney Empire on November 2019, this set features 12 tracks. Blu-ray is 5.1DTS HD Master Audio and stereo. This live release includes recordings of material from the English Electric, Folklore, Grimspound and Grand Tour studio albums. Empire was filmed by Tim Sidwell and audio mixed by BBT's sound engineer Rob Aubrey.
Diana Damrau’s primacy as an interpreter of Violetta Valéry in La traviata can be inferred from the names of theatres where she has performed Verdi’s most popular opera: the Metropolitan, New York; La Scala, Milan; London’s Royal Opera House; the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Zurich Opera. Paris’s Opéra Bastille joined that list of leading houses in June 2014, when the German soprano appeared in a new production by the film director Benoît Jacquot. Conducted by Francesco Ivan Ciampa, it is presented on this DVD release from Warner Classics, which joins a DVD of Verdi’s Rigoletto, with Damrau as Gilda, recorded in Dresden and released in 2010, and the recent CD release of the soprano’s spine-tingling interpretation of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, recorded live in Munich.
Tenor superstar Juan Diego Flórez adds the role of Prince Ramiro in Rossini’s sparkling comedy La Cenerentola to his rapidly growing catalog of performances on Decca. In Joan Font’s strikingly colorful, toy-town staging, he is joined by one of today’s great Cinderellas, the American mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato. The two have wowed audiences with their virtuoso performances in the Metropolitan Opera’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia which was broadcast live in HD to movie theaters and on PBS.
On August 21, 1976, Lynyrd Skynyrd took the stage at Knebworth Park in England as part of a daylong festival. With Ronnie Van Zant on vocals and the Rossington/Collins/Gaines triple guitar attack, Lynyrd Skynyrd delivered an electric performance in front of a crowd estimated between 150,000 and 200,000, which has gone down as one of the band's greatest performances.