
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kashchey the Immortal is virtually unknown in the United States. When it was premiered in Moscow in l902 the audience cheered, but the composer
What? Another Don Giovanni? With an almost unknown cast, orchestra, and conductor (about whom we are told absolutely nothing in the accompanying Italian-only libretto)? Is
Between 1927 and 1930, the Columbia label embarked on an ambitious Wagner series, recorded under studio conditions in the Bayreuther Festspielhaus. The 1928 Tristan is
Here we have about 78 minutes of Handel’s Giulio Cesare taken from a live performance in Buenos Aires in l968. This includes just about all
Otto Klemperer’s 1968 recording of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman (on EMI) has long been considered a classic. Using the three-act version, Klemperer elicited performances from the
This live performance of Mozart’s great Cosi fan tutte adds little to our love and/or understanding of the opera. The l949 sound is mediocre, and
Strauss’s 1935 Die Schweigsame Frau was banned by the Nazis after only four performances becuase its librettist, Stefan Zweig, was Jewish, and, to be sure,
Unlike the grim timeliness and edgy expression characterizing many of Decca’s Entartete Musik releases, Emmerich Kálmán’s operetta The Duchess of Chicago oozes froth and fluff.
If you’ve been waiting for a really good performance of these two odd little Stravinsky works, wait no longer. Stravinsky’s Rossignol is like Verdi’s Luisa
On November 13th, 1936, Fritz Reiner led the San Francisco Opera in Wagner’s Die Walküre, with a dream cast. NBC aired only the second act,