Warner Music releases a brand new remaster of Italian pop band Pooh's legendary release Parsifal in honour of its 50th Anniversary. The complex and wide-rangin album was originally released in 1973.

Claudio Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria is a love story pur sang. With this opera he narrates the long-awaited homecoming of Odysseus after his mythical travels in the aftermath of the Trojan War. After L’Orfeo - on the programme later this season - it was the second opera composed by the Italian master. Performing this masterpiece is I Gemelli, a young French ensemble founded by Chilean-Swiss tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro. The ensemble consists of a splendid cast including Fleur Barron, Emöke Barath and Zachary Wilder. Together, they will transform this tale of the union between Odysseus and his beloved Penelope into a breathtaking evening.

Am 2. Dezember 2023 feiert die Welt den 100. Geburtstag von Maria Callas. Aus diesem Anlass wird Warner Classics am 22. September 2023 eine umfassende Box und im Laufe des Jahres zahlreiche digitale Veröffentlichungen sowie LPs herausbringen.

Franco Calabrese - Maria Callas - Dario Caselli - Alvaro Cordova - Tito Gobbi - Melchiorre Luise - Angelo Mercuriali - Giuseppe di Stefano - Chœur & Orchestre de la Scala de Milan - Victor De Sabata, direction.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Carlotta Colombo, this set of La corona d’Arianna represents the second instalment of the Arcana series which documents the recordings made in the course of this six-year cycle, following the success of Dafne in lauro (A488, 2021 – awarded Gramophone Editor’s Choice and rated Eccezionale by Musica).

One of the leading sopranos of her generation, Ekaterina Siurina enjoys an international career that takes her to the top opera houses in Europe and America. She made her professional debut as Gilda in Rigoletto, singing opposite the world-renowned baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Commenting on her recent performance as Violetta in La bohème, Parterre Box called her singing “deeply touching, with arching beams of tone.”

The DECCA label is expanding the extensive discography of Donizetti's probably most popular opera with a recording with Zuzana Marková and Andrea Bocelli in the leading roles. The Wolferag picture (first picture of the third act) is no longer really up-to-date in the recording recorded at the Teatro Carlo Felice in 2018.

The female perspective on the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the starting point of SPECTRAL's extremely attractive compilation of numerous vocal and instrumental gems from the Italian early baroque, which are reflected in the touching and moving interpretation by Simone Schwark (soprano) and Jürgen Banholzer ( Harpsichord and organ) begin to sparkle again.

Handel's Dixit Dominus HWV 232 (1707) is certainly one of the most impressive compositions of his several years in Italy. With this extremely effective piece, the only 22-year-old obviously wanted to demonstrate all of his compositional skills. Il Gardellino and Bart Van Reyn accompany him on their recording with the breathtaking cantata Il Pianto di Maria, which was long attributed to Handel until recent research has shown that it was penned by the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (1710-1791).

An exceptional amount of musical activity took place in the court of Ferrara during the latter years of the 16 th century, in particular thanks to a remarkable trio of female voices who had been trained by Luzzasco Luzzaschi, the court’s maestro di cappella. To hear them was a privilege that Alfonso d' Este allowed his guests only briefly and infrequently. Their repertoire was kept secret and was finally published — and then only in part — in 1601. The singers of La Néréide here devote their first recording to this collection in its entirety, reconstructing the conditions in which these works were created with harpsichord, viol and lute accompaniment: the harpsichord would have been played by Luzzaschi himself, whilst the three singers mastered the other instruments with as much skill as their voices.

Hasse's Olimpiade premiered in Dresden as the last opera seria before the beginning of that fateful Seven Years' War - with great success, as usual and as deserved. At the same time, it is the last opera festival in the last courtly carnival of the of the last glorious Polish-Saxon carnival. It can claim to be one of the most successful among the many acknowledged good works of its two creators.

In the circles of early music lovers, documented information about performance practice is so important as to be obsessively searched for by musicians and musicologists. While iconography sometimes cannot be relied on as evidence because of its symbolic meaning, a piece of information on the aesthetics of a performance, the making of an instrument, the composition of a group of instruments, or the repertoire performed is all the more valuable if it comes from a document, be it official or private, such as a letter.

Among the musical genres that were most appreciated and cultivated in Vienna in the early eighteenth century, one that stands out decidedly is the chamber cantata. The Italian cantatas, which were favourite compositions for the cultivated entertainment of the court, were abundantly circulated in manuscript form and collected in a great quantity of books that made chiefly between the eighteen-tens and the eighteen-forties.

One of the legendary moments in Callas’ career came in 1950 in Mexico City, when she interpolated a stupendous top E flat at the end of the Triumphal Scene in Act II of Aida.

Pinchgut Opera’s brilliant interpretation of Cavalli’s masterpiece, directed by Mitchell Butel translates gloriously to record as it premieres on Pinchgut At Home. Pinchgut Opera teamed up with Australian Theatre Live to record the live performances of The Loves of Apollo & Dafne at City Recital Hall in May earlier in 2021. A stellar cast, featuring Max Riebl as Apollo, Alexandra Oomens as Dafne, Stacey Alleaume (in her sensational Pinchgut debut) and Jacqueline Dark, brought this twisting tale of love among Gods and mortals to life, and wowed the audience by playing the multiple roles demanded by Busenello’s clever libretto.