Rusalka

David Pountney’s landmark English National Opera staging of Dvorák’s haunting fairy tale opera left critics and audiences spellbound. The production is set in a Victorian nursery where an adolescent girl, on the brink of sensual awakening, dreams of first love. Her story is that of Rusalka the wood nymph who, like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, sacrifices all for a love destined to be betrayed. High above the stage Rusalka dreamily swings as the picturesque gives way to the surreal. Influenced by Jung and Freud, Magritte and Delvaux and magically realised in the designs of Stefanos Lazaridis, Pountney’s Rusalka succeeds in creating a fairy tale to enchant the most hardened modern audience.

David Pountney states that Rusalka is about “a typical initiation into social and sexual experience” – the evolution from a child to young woman. He conjures up an enchanted world of repression and surreal fantasy. The set is spacious, gleaming white and full of archetypal symbols including a rocking horse, wardrobe, furniture which slides about, dolls that dance, floorboards that open to reveal a pool with a swing high above it. The effect produces a dreamworld which teeters on the edge of a nightmare. Sung in English.

Roméo et Juliette

This live recording features a concert performance of Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, a dramatic symphony, with solo and choral voices, in the original French language version.

Sir Colin Davis conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus and Orchestra with soloists Philip Langridge (tenor), Hanna Schwarz (alto) and Peter Meven (bass).

Roméo et Juliette is the greatest and most satisfying of all Shakespearean works and inspired Berlioz to one of his best and successful dramatic symphonies. Intended for the concert hall, ist musical core is purely orchestral, while the outer movements are choral and vocal, their function being narrative and more theatrical. Yet the whole piece coheres magically and no other work of Berlioz more perfectly demonstrates both his poetic and the individuality of his genius.

Aida

Luciano Pavarotti heads an exceptional cast in this spectacular live recording from La Scala, Milan, with Ghena Dimitrova, Maria Chiara, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Juan Pons, all in peak form. Luca Ronconi’s magnificent production of Verdi’s much-loved masterpiece was a triumphant success, with Mauro Pagano’s monumental settings capturing perfectly the imposing grandeur of the land of the Pharaohs and the ochre hues of the desert. Lorin Maazel conducts.

Madama Butterfly

From the Teatro alla Scala, Milan 1986 Japanese producer Keita Asari cast two of the Far East’s leading singers in Puccini’s coveted female roles, and collaborated with Japanese designers to create this exquisitely oriental staging of Puccini’s much-loved opera, which was hailed as a triumph by the Italian press and public alike. (Sung in Italian)

Der Rosenkavalier

“The best of the best assembled on stage,” wrote Germany’s leading newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Indeed, it would be hard to find a more ideal cast for this late-Romantic Rococo pastiche anywhere in the world. As the Marschallin, stellar soprano Renée Fleming uses her velvety tones and autumnal shadings to complement the youthfully lyrical and dynamic voice of Sophie Koch as her young lover Octavian. Diana Damrau’s Sophie enhances the trio’s sparkle with her ethereal high notes. Next to Franz Hawlata as a swaggering Baron Ochs and the always impressive Franz Grundheber as Faninal, the Baden-Baden production rounds off its male leads with international tenor star Jonas Kaufmann as the “Italian Singer.” Leading his Münchner Philharmoniker, acclaimed Romantic specialist Christian Thielemann revels in Strauss’s lustrous melancholy and obtains a rarely heard transparency from the brass and woodwinds.

Turandot

Whether through its phenomenal acoustics or breathtaking architecture, Valencia’s spectacular Calatrava opera house “Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía” – itself a work of art – seems to bring out the best of all who gather there to celebrate artistic creation. And this production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is no exception! Internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Chen Kaige (1993 Golden Palm in Cannes for Farewell My Concubine) delivers an opulent background for the fairy-tale story of the Chinese Princess Turandot, who will marry only a prince of royal blood who can solve her three riddles. With a wealth of sumptuous costumes and palace sets designed and produced in China, Kaige’s staging provides a compellingly authentic accent to Puccini’s exotic orchestral palette.

Otello

“An amazing range, with fresh young lows and girlish highs, full, glowing middle and high registers, a timbre of silk, champagne and sandpaper, a great lyrical-dramatic soprano,” wrote Berlin’s Tagesspiegel about Marina Poplavskaya. The Moscow native was clearly “the queen of this operatic performance,” as the eminent critic Joachim Kaiser put it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and perhaps the most dazzling discovery of this Salzburg Festival production of Verdi’s “Otello.” Poplavskaya’s Desdemona shares the limelight on the stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus with her partner Aleksandrs Antonenko, an up-and-coming Latvian tenor with an impressive stage presence and a light, heady timbre that gives his Otello a youthful note.

Roméo et Juliette

While Charles Gounod’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’ is less well-known than his ‘Faust,’ it is blessed with four great show-stopping love duets that let its two title roles bask in lyrical luxury. In this Salzburg Festival production recorded at the Felsenreitschule, the titular heroes are the much acclaimed Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón and the young Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze – two singers and personalities with the makings of a new ‘dream couple.’ ‘Villazón is ‘an ideal Roméo … His vocal cords seem to be grafted directly onto his heart’ (Der Tagesspiegel). His Juliette, Nino Machaidze, unites captivating good looks with a bright, clear voice and an agile, youthful stage presence – a singer on her way to stardom! Broadway director Bartlett Sher and his team succeed in evoking Shakespeare’s Verona with a few evocative props, many fine

costumes and much plot-driven action.

Don Giovanni

In Guth’s almost cinematic Salzburg Festival production, every character in Mozart’s most realistic opera seems to carry a back-story of thwarted love and frustration. Everyone appears to be seeking either salvation or damnation in the woods – a compelling concept that removes the opera from its traditional pseudo-Seville squares and palaces. And when Don Giovanni is played by Christopher Maltman, it’s no wonder that Donna Anna (Annette Dasch), Donna Elvira (Dorothea Röschmann) and even

Zerlina (Ekaterina Siurina) are ready to throw themselves at his feet.

La Cenerentola

This recording from Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu captures all the vocal sparks and dazzle generated by the two phenomenal singers, Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez. With his airy, effortless high notes and perfect command of rapid-fire Rossinian parlando, the charismatic Flórez (who also stars in Unitel’s recording of Donizetti’s ‘La fille du régiment’) once again proves that he was born to sing Rossini.