Wagner Tannhäuser

2013 sees a series of Wagner reissues on Eloquence from complete operas and highlights to Wagner singer portraits and even an audiobook! This is a 31-year retrospective (1956 – 1987) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring fourteen extracts from nine operas with seven great singers.

This should clinch it: Jonas Kaufmann is the pre-eminent Wagner tenor of this generation. (Slated to sing Manrico soon, and judging from his Werther, he may just be the pre-eminent tenor, period.) For those who haven’t heard him, the voice is dark and manly, with easy ascents above the staff at all dynamic ranges (including some crooning that can become more like a mannerism than a service to the music), a top that rings loud and clear, phrasing that confirms great musicianship, a smooth legato, and flawless diction.

Kaufmanns 5th solo album on Decca - specially recorded for the Wagner anniversary year by the worlds leading Wagner tenor.
Kaufmann and Wagner is a classic combination: For any Wagnerians whove been slumbering, Fafner-like, in their caves during the last few years, heres your wake-up call: Jonas Kaufmann is the tenor we've been waiting for(Washington Post).

Bruno Walter's recording of the Siegfried Idyll with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra is radiantly beautiful–one of the most affecting of all this great conductor's statements. The horns wobble and nick a couple of notes, the ensemble isn't always perfect, and little things happen in the winds, but the sense of what the music is about–the character of the solo playing, the phrasing, and the wonderful feeling of delicacy and joy–is unmatched by anyone, except perhaps Karajan. The "cradle song" quality of the oboe solo early in the piece is captured to perfection, and the music moves along without ever being in a hurry. The end just floats away without seeming to drag or slow down at all. –Ted Libbey

Decca, the opera company, presents a premium collection of the 100 most beautiful Opera tracks on 6 CDs. Enjoy classic arias and overtures, performed by the greatest opera stars of all time. Artists include Pavarotti, Bartoli, Fischer-Dieskau, Tebaldi, Calleja, Sutherland, Bergonzi, Ghiaurov, Freni, Nilsson, del Monaco, Domingo, Horne, Te Kanawa, Solti, von Karajan, Terfel, Price, Caballe, Kaufmann, Gheorghiu and more.

Decca, the opera company, presents a premium collection of the 100 most beautiful opera tracks on 6 CDs. Enjoy classic arias and overtures, performed by the greatest opera stars of all time. This is a fine compendium of opera's "greatest hits" by great singers including Pavarotti, Bartoli, Caballe, Horne and Sutherland from opera's latest "golden age" in the last decades of the 1900s. They're all there on six CDs, from Pavarotti's great "Nessun Dorma" to Sutherland's "Casta Diva."