Sutherland's singing here is brighter and fresher than her earlier recording, with the lovely aria 'Qui la voce' no longer a wordless melisma…The recording is vivid and atmospheric and one marvels at Bellini's gorgeous melodies…with Sutherland, Bonynge and all on electrifying form.
Luciano Pavarotti was blessed with one of the most individual, unmistakable and beautiful voices there has ever been. This album contains over 3 hours of music and includes all Pavarotti's opera hits - including Nessun Dorma, his signature aria used as the 1990 FIFA World Cup theme tune and the track that made him a household name as well as all his famous popular songs: O sole mio, Caruso, Santa Lucia, Volare and many more. Other highlights include great duet collaborations with superstar friends Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, Bono, Eric Clapton,Sting and Lionel Richie plus fellow tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in the live Three Tenors version of Nessun Dorma. Pavarotti The Greatest Hits is truly the definitive collection of the music of a true legend.
Decca is proud to present this unique recording of Rigoletto. The only Rigoletto stage production on film featuring Luciano Pavarotti, this performance of one of Verdi's best-loved operas was discovered in the Metropolitan Opera Archives and is available here for the first time. Recorded in 1981, it presents Pavarotti at the peak of his career, supported by an outstanding cast that includes Louis Quilico in the title role, Christine Eda-Pierre as Gilda, Ara Berberian as Sparafucile, and Isola Jones as Maddalena, with Met Music Director James Levine on the podium.
This was the very first “Live from the Met” telecast, and its availability on DVD will no doubt give rise to intense nostalgia, as it did for me. (How young everyone looked!) There’s an authentic sense of occasion to this performance. It’s one thing to play to a packed house, another to play to a nationwide television audience, and with so many eyes upon them, everyone involved in this Bohème rose to the occasion. It’s by no means a perfect evening—what performance ever is?—but it’s a treasurable one for anyone who cares about this opera, the Met, or the principal singers.
Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert (re-released as The Three Tenors in Concert) is a live album by José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti with conductor Zubin Mehta. The album was recorded on July 7, 1990 in Rome as the first Three Tenors concert with the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the orchestra of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma on the evening before the 1990 FIFA World Cup Final…
It would be hard to imagine a better performance of Donizetti's comic masterpiece. If there was one role that ideally suited Luciano Pavarotti's voice and stage personality, it was Nemorino, the impoverished and not-very-bright peasant who worships the village's prettiest and richest young woman from a distance, is swindled by a traveling vendor of "miracle" medicines, but wins her hand by dumb luck. The story has comedy, pathos, and a put-down of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (or at least the Tristan story) written long before Wagner composed it.
In 1994, the same Metropolitan Opera put two contrasting pieces of the verismo puzzle side by side—the belated verismo of Puccini’s Il Tabarro and the classic verismo of Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci, which had reached the stage some twenty-six years earlier.
Those who know Zeffirelli's style won't be surprised by the conventionally lavish production, but it effectively evokes the atmosphere of religious oppression and personal antagonisms Verdi so unerringly depicts. The dark-hued, threatening setting fits Muti's energetic, rhythmically vital conception. He quickens the emotions in a peculiarly Italianate way, and throughout evinces a feeling for the colouring of the score. His reading is in turn a good background for some thoughtful and idiomatic singing.