

Beverly Sills has said that Elizabeth I in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux was the role that took 10 years off her career, and indeed, it’s a

In this performance Roger Norrington achieves his lifelong ambition of making a modern symphony orchestra, engineered according to the latest SACD technology (albeit a bit

Even 40 or so years after it was written, Charles Ives’ Psalm 90 still seemed radically, ingeniously cool to a certain familiar bunch of ’60s-era

These very early works, dating from the mid to late 1950s, reveal Schnittke’s talent from the outset of his career. This is by no means

William Alwyn is a composer I usually enjoy, but his only opera, Miss Julie, is a failure. The story, described by Strindberg, the original playwright,

The Chicago Symphony under the leadership of Henry Fogel started the trend of releasing its own recordings, initially as a fundraising opportunity, so it was

Ned Rorem had long wished to compose a concert-length piece that would sum up his life’s work as a composer of art songs. A commission

Of the four available recordings of this great opera–Rossini’s last comedy–this is the weakest but is not entirely dismissible. It has charm, life, and energy

The Golden Legend, one of a number of dramatic cantatas Arthur Sullivan composed apart from the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, was enormously popular during

Ciro in Babilonia was Rossini’s first opera seria. Actually, it was performed during Lent, 1812, and the just-20-year-old composer had to call it a “dramma
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