Mozart Kraus

The Royal Opera is a company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968. It brought a long annual season and consistent management to a house that had previously hosted short seasons under a series of impresarios. Since its inception, it has shared the Royal Opera House with the dance company now known as The Royal Ballet.

VA - Selected Classic
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 231 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: SBA Records, EMI # S&V 022 | Country/Year: Russia 2000
Genre: Classical | Style: Various

This CD was a promotional give-away with the audiophile russian magazine "Stereo & Video" in February 2000.

Lucrezia Borgia is not one of Donizetti's masterpieces, but it nonetheless can be enormously stageworthy. Despite a wonderful piece or two for tenor and baritone and the justly famous "Il segreto" for mezzo, most of the burden falls upon the shoulders of the heroine. As in Lucia, if there isn't a great Lucrezia, it's not a great Lucrezia… – Classics Today, Robert Levine

If you want to know the reason behind all the fuss about Maria Callas, buy this CD. Callas's great gift was not purity of tone or emission, reliability, or sheer loveliness; it was, rather, her ability to change her vocal color and style to suit not only particular periods of opera but to get under the skin of the individual characters she portrayed.

Solti's interpretations held more than surface excitement. In conducting Beethoven, for example, he long held that the symphonies should be played with all their repeats to maintain their structural integrity, and he carefully rethought his approach to tempo, rhythm, and balance in those works toward the end of his life. Solti began as a pianist, commencing his studies at age six and making his first public appearance at 12. When he was 13 he enrolled at Budapest's Franz Liszt Academy of Music, studying piano mainly with Dohnányi and, for a very short time, Bartók. He also took composition courses with Kodály.