LINK: DOWNLOAD

Fiordiligi ....... Montserrat Caballé
Dorabella ........ Janet Baker
Guglielmo ........ Wladimiro Ganzarolli
Ferrando ......... Nicolai Gedda
Despina .......... Ileana Cotrubas
Don Alfonso ...... Richard Van Allan

Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Douglas Robinson, chorus master

Sir Colin Davis, conductor

Recording date and location: May 1974, Watford Town Hall, London

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  amorous

Live performance from MET on December 27, 1962

Anna Moffo, Nicolai Gedda, George London, Jerome Hines

Conductor Ernest Ansermet

LINK:

   DOWNLOAD

Mood:  sad

Live performance from Boston Symphony Hall, April 1972

Tosca - Marilyn Niska

Cavaradossi - Nicolai Gedda

 Scarpia - Donald Gramm

Conductor Sarah Caldwell

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Soloists:

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Grace Hoffman

Nicolai Gedda

Jerome Hines

The Philharmonia orchestra and chorus, London, September 1964

Conductor Otto Klemperer 

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  amorous

Recorded in London, August 1974

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  lyrical

Recording from November, 1952

Lisa - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Gustl - Erich Kunz

Prinz Sou-Chong - Nicolai Gedda

Mi - Emmy Loose

Tschang - Otakar Kraus

Philharmonia orchestra and chorus London

Conductor Otto Ackermann

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  amorous

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  incredulous

Metropolitan Opera House  

January 28, 1967 Matinee Broadcast

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Fiorilla, a young Napolitana ( soprano ) -  Maria Callas
Selim, the Turk ( bass ) -  Nicola Rossi-Lemeni
Narciso, her lover ( tenor ) -  Nicolai Gedda
Geronio, her husband ( bass ) -  Franco Calabrese
Zaida, a Turk ( mezzo-soprano ) -  Jolanda Gardino
Albazar, a Turk ( tenor ) -  Piero de Palma
Il Poeta, Prosdocimo, a poet ( baritone ) -  Mariano Stabile
 
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala, Milano
Chorus master: Vittore Veneziani

Gianandrea Gavazzeni, conductor

Recorded: 31 Aug - 8 Sept 1954, Milano

LINK: DOWNLOAD

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Mood:  amorous

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Strauss's last opera is one of the wonders of lyric art: an intelligent conversation piece about aesthetic principles (which is more important, words or music?) wrapped in achingly beautiful music. Its humor and drama are subtler than we're used to, but the opera is no less pleasurable for it. Capriccio's reputation as a connoisseur's piece is well served by this 1957 recording that features a superb cast led by the distinguished Straussian Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. True, she could be mannered, but the role of the Countess who must decide between the poet and the musician fits her like a glove, and she's radiant in the final, soaring monologue. Everyone else in the cast is outstanding, and the monophonic sound is so clear that you almost won't miss stereo. Sawallisch has the Philharmonia playing with the utmost transparency. Karl Böhm's DG stereophonic version with Gundula Janowitz is almost as fine (although currently out of print), but this one, like vintage wine, just gets better and better. --Dan Davis

Live performance in MET, 1972

Lisa....................Raina Kabaivanska
Gherman.................Nicolai Gedda
Countess................Regina Resnik
Prince Yeletsky.........William Walker
Count Tomsky............John Reardon
Chekalinsky.............Paul Franke
Surin...................Andrij Dobriansky
Paulina.................Joann Grillo
Masha...................Carlotta Ordassy
Master of Ceremonies....Gene Boucher
Chloé...................Loretta Di Franco
Chaplitsky..............Robert Schmorr
Narumov.................Edmond Karlsrud
Dance...................Naomi Marritt
Dance...................Ivan Allen

Conductor...............Kazimierz Kord

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Narrator:          Arnoldo Foà

Oedipus:            Nicolai Gedda

Jocasta:             Magda Laszlo

Creo:                 Mario Petri

Tiresias:             Nestore Catalani

Nuntio:              Mario Petri

Pastor:               Aldo Bertocci

Orchestra and Chorus Rome  Rai

Conductor Herbert von Karajan

 Chorus: Nino Antonellini

Recorded on  20 December 1952,  live performance (51'34).

LINK : DOWNLOAD

Approached as an essay in words and music on a particularly resonant historic moment, when music, church and international politics stood at the same crossroads, Palestrina is an inspiring and often inspired work. It has at its heart one of the most visionary scenes in all opera, the apparition to Palestrina of the ghosts of his musical ancestors, urging him to save the art of polyphony by composing a Mass that will confound counter-reformation zealotry; it is followed by a still more moving tableau in which the heavens open to reveal a choir of angels from whose dictation Palestrina writes the Missa Papae Marcelli. Judged by conventional operatic criteria, however, the work is awkward and gravely flawed. The main line of its plot is furthered hardly at all by the Second Act, which is a lengthy, albeit brilliantly dramatized, resume of ecclesiastical politics at the Council of Trent, in which the composer's name is mentioned briefly, almost in passing, twice. The proportions of the opera are ungainly, too (the acts last roughly 100, 75 and a bare 30 minutes respectively), and to make matters apparently worse, the music and the text seem at times to be out-of-phase.

Perhaps the most affecting scene in Act 3 is the reunion of Palestrina and Cardinal Borromeo. Moved to tears by literally heavenly music, the Prince of the Church (who had commissioned the Mass and imprisoned Palestrina when he failed to deliser it) throws himself at the composer's feet and begs his forgiveness. Pfitzner's orchestra, as Borromeo falls to his knees and as Palestrina gently raises and embraces him, says all that is in both men's hearts and says it most movingly, but the rather plain lines of dialogue between those two orchestral passages add very little to them. At other times plainness of dialogue is just what you feel you need: Pfitzner's orchestral writing is so richly eventful, his counterpoint so cunningly wrought (and yes, I suppose one must admit, at times so unremitting) that you long either for a moment or two of thinly accompanied simple recitative or for the words to get out of the music's way. And yet I would not have the libretto (Pfitzner's own) a line shorter. Complex though it is, it is of remarkable quality, full of incident and beautiful imagery; it would work well as a spoken play.

In the opera house this sense of a play and a sequence of orchestral meditations upon it being performed simultaneously could be a problem; so could the long and densely populated scenes that seem to come from another opera (called Borromeo, perhaps). But in a fine recorded performance it is easier to accept that this is, so to speak, an opera with footnotes and appendices. The great passages (apart from the apparition scenes they include the eloquent preludes to all three acts, the culminatory pages of Borromeo's and Palestrina's monologues in Act 1, two impressive addresses in Act 2 and the beautiful end of the opera as Palestrina, left alone, returns to his music) are in an odd sort of way justified by what only a severe critic would dismiss as the pages of finicking detail between them. They are no more tiresome than those quarts-d'heure in which Wagner's characters remind the audience of what has been happening so far, and once you have allowed them to set the nobler moments in context, you can always skip them on later hearings (DG have provided plentiful cuing bands).

You will probably not want to when even the minor character roles are as strongly cast as they are here. There is not a weak link among them, and primus though Gedda's stalwartly eloquent Palestrina and Fischer-Dieskau's grandly authoritative Borromeo are they are very much inter pares with the likes of Ridderbusch, Weikl, Steinbach and Nienstedt around. Donath is bright and touching as Palestrina's young son, Fassbaender an impulsively eager pupil. Some of the real urgency that all these singers bring to their parts must be due to the inspired choice of a conductor in whom passion and intellect are ideally balanced, it sounds as though this opera was very close to Kubelik's heart and head, and he directs with noble eloquence. The recording copes with Pfitzner's vast resources very well, with an excellent sense of a space having depth as well as breadth. The sound is a little bright at times (Donath's purity is slightly edged), but for the most part both clear and sumptuous. An exceptionally welcome CD reissue.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [7/1989]

Nicolai Gedda, Karl Ridderbusch, Bernd Weikl, Herbert Steinbach, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Victor von Halem, John van Kesteren, Peter Meven, Hermann Prey, Friedrich Lenz, Adalbert Kraus, Franz Mazura, Helen Donath, Brigitte Fassbaender, Gerd Nienstedt; Bavarian Radio Chorus; Tölz Boys' Choir; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelík, conductor

Recorded in Munich, 1973

LINK : DOWNLOAD

Mood:  bright

1. Funiculi-funicula (Denza)
2. Du bist die Welt für mich (Tauber)
3. Non ti scordar di me (de Curtis)
4. Granada (Lara)
5. Schlaf ein, mein Blondengelein (Perez)
6. Gute Nacht, mein holdes, süsses Mädchen (Meyer)
7. Tiritomba (Traditional)
8. Mamma (Bixio)
9. Ein Stern fällt vom Himmel (May)
10. La Danza (Rossini)
11. Berceuse (Godard)
12. Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (Rotter)

Graunke Smphony Orchestra Munich 1964
Willy Mattes, conductor

Mood:  sad

Recording from 1955

Butterfly - Maria Callas

Pinkerton - Nicolai Gedda

Sharpless - Mario Boriello

Suzuki - Lucia Danieli

La Scala Theater Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan

LINK: DOWNLOAD

LINK: DOWNLOAD

Live concert performance from Carnegie Hall, 14 November, 1965

Mood:  incredulous

Prejudice. That is why this work does not appear on the shelves of some opera lovers. The composer’s name conjures dissonance; thus are great works and performances ignored. That is a sad mistake for one should really sit and listen. Then if you fall into the ‘hate it’ rather than ‘love it’ camp your decision will be based on reason.

Further it is unlikely that there will be a better recording. I was tempted to add the word ‘ever’ but that is presumptuous. Here is a recording that drips with emotion and power. Rostropovich conducts, cajoles, creates and controls a performance of outstanding fluidity. Of course that is what Shostakovich intended with the orchestral interludes between scenes creating seamless sound in each Act. And what overwhelmingly powerful sounds there are: from quiet haunting accompaniment through wonderfully deep vibrato via sharp tonal contrasts and into brass and full orchestral violence. Here is musical tension second to none.

With Galina Vishnevshaya singing Katerina it is hardly surprising that there is an outstanding reciprocity of musical understanding: musical husband and wife teams are frequently so and this is no exception. Of course Shostakovich made Katerina a more sympathetic character that she was in the original work where cruelty predominated and no sympathy could be aroused. Here we see another side of Katerina. Whilst she is venomous to, and about, her father in law (listen to sam ty krýsa and shudder) she arouses sympathy in her lonely bedtime ‘lament’ Zherebýonok k kobýlke torópitsa; sympathy she herself feigns so well upon her father in law’s death. This is a performance of many parts: from warm cream toned richness to awesome aggression.

Her father in law, sung by Dimiter Petkov, has a simple character: thoroughly unpleasant. A mean, moaning hypocritical role (keen to protect his son’s wife until the early hours of the morning when foiled only by her lover’s presence) Petkov sings it so well he is believably dreadful. My only reservation is a slight lack of variation in dynamics until he returns as ‘his’ ghost when there are dynamics and deep coloured variation aplenty. The ever-reliable Nicolai Gedda sings the sexually duplicitous Sergey. His distinctive timbre brings more that a hint of Wagner. This is a towering performance moving through raw animal passion to obsequiousness. There is a crudity in the music which Vishnevskaya and Gedda capture faultlessly. The cuckolded husband, sung by Werner Krenn has a comparatively small and somewhat unattractive role. There is little for Krenn to build characterisation upon until his return to his home and one of the infrequent duets. He and Vishnevskaya provoke strong vocal contrasts in each other before violence erupts and ends in his death.

At this point I cannot refrain from wondering why we have not seen a production on film or television ‘loosely based’ on the story. Two deaths so far, one more to come, with a mob-handed sexual assault scene (probably updated to a gang rape) and consensual coupling off stage rather than the earlier on stage aggressive sexual passion.

So first to an assault. Taru Valjakka as Aksinya is a totally convincing victim manhandled with crudity. Here is frenetic singing and accompaniment demonstrating serious unpleasantness. Valjakka leaves us in no doubt about that with some heart-rending tones and ear piercing cries. Birgit Finnlä, as Sonyetka, seducer of, and by, Sergey has a voluptuous tone judged to perfection. There is some light relief but not lightweight singing. Robert Tear is the ‘shabby peasant’ a role he obviously relishes both in its sober and almost drunken state. Leonard Mróz as the priest produces a vocal priestly parody with his deep strong intonation. All this and yet more with distinctive and particularly clear singing from Aage Haugland, Martyn Hill and Alexander Malta. Finally there is what we have come to expect in this series by way of accompanying booklet. There is the usual full libretto which follows Richard Osborne’s synopsis of each scene and thoroughly interesting history of the opera and comments on this recording.

With such a cast it is not surprising that this was an outstanding recording. Now digitally remastered it is nothing short of a stunning recording fully justifying its place in this series. So if you do not have it, overcome your prejudice and buy it. You might not ‘like’ it or even ‘enjoy, it but you will appreciate the power of the performance.

Robert McKechnie

LINK: DOWNLOAD