In 1641 Monteverdi made this masterpiece based on Homer’s Odyssey for a public opera house in Venice. It has more characters than you can shake a stick at – presumably one reason why William Christie chose to direct it from the harpsichord – so it needs a cast that has strength in depth. Luckily, these performers from the 2009 production at the Teatro Real in Madrid are superb. Christine Rice gives us a finely-paced Penelope, full of complexity beyond the merely stoical, and with a dark voice that signals restrained fury as well as painful neglect.

Arrigo Boito's treatment of the Faust legend is imaginative yet also faithful to Goethe's original conception, and the score is memorable for its rich orchestral sounds, beautifully punctuated with lyrical passages and choral interludes. Robert Carsen's sumptuous, post-modern production of Mefistofele is a gloriously decadent and theatrically stunning realisation, and the San Francisco Opera's performance has been unanimously acclaimed in both Paris and San Francisco. Samuel Ramey, in the title role, has won both critical and overwhelming popular approval.

André Previn turned seventy in 1999. From Berlin refugee to multi-Oscar-winning film score composer, from great jazz pianist to chief conductor of both the London Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, through four marriages including Mia Farrow and present wife Heather, with an honorary knighthood for his services to British music, his story is extraordinary. Previn's remarkable career reached a climax in September 1998 with the premier of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire. He also conducted the production at the San Francisco Opera, with Renée Fleming as Blanche.

This is, by operatic standards of fidelity, a very faithful musical treatment of Edmond Rostand's classic drama about the swashbuckling poet and swordsman with the big nose. The music is competent but not spectacular; that quality is found in the libretto. The title role is expertly filled by Roberto Alagna, who not only has the best tenor voice in France but also turns out to be an accomplished actor in a demanding role. He is well-supported by a cast that clearly loves the story, its various characters and its often brilliant dialogue.

This DVD of the recently issued Britten/Pears mini series recorded by the BBC for television way back in the 1960's and the 70's is for all intents and purposes another resounding success. All four priceless documents were thought lost, but this Idomeneo seems to have had a charmed life more than others. Indeed, three days before the Aldeburgh première, the hall was left in cinders and it is something of a miracle that the television production could actually go ahead.

The Festival della Valle d'Itria mounted this lavish production of Gioachino Rossini's 1813 opera Aureliano in Palmira, in July 2011. Aureliano in Palmira movie It was staged and performed at the Palazzo Ducale, in Martina Franca, Italy. Aureliano in Palmira video The cast includes Bogdan Mihai as Aureliano, Franco Fagioli as Arsace, Maria Aleida as Zenobia and Asude Karayavuz as Publia, with the special participation of Louise Frank as Vecchia Zenobia. Aureliano in Palmira film The Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia and the Coro Slovacco di Bratislava provide additional musical accompaniment, with Pavol Prochazka serving as chorus master and Giacomo Sagripanti conducting.

Here is what is probably Handel’s most accomplished opera: the heir to L’incoronazione di Poppea with respect to the villainy of some of its characters, but also the Baroque ancestor of certain Romantic operas! Scrupulously based on historical characters, this work illustrates many different facets of the human soul, and also boasts perhaps the most sumptuous orchestral textures Handel ever conceived, magnificently brought out by Lars Ulrik Mortensen in this production from the Copenhagen Opera. Francisco Negrin’s transposition of the opera to the universe of modern war and Anthony Baker’s refined designs place Andreas Scholl (Giulio Cesare) and the other soloists in an unsettling, crepuscular atmosphere that is highly contemporary.

The Milan „Otello“ traditionally opens the Scala season and did so in 2001 on 7 December, but at the same time it was the farewell production before the start of the three-year renovation of the house and not least a brilliant end to the Verdi Year. The audience as well as the press cheered Barbara Frittoli as a youthfully charming Desdemona, Leo Nucci as cleverly self-controlled Iago and Plácido Domingo as a thrilling Otello, both from the dramatic and the singing point of view. Domingo had been the leading Moro di Venezi for a quarter of a century, and in Milan he said farewell to this role – “in triumph”, according to ‘The Herald Tribune’.

Plácido Domingo as Vasco da Gama and Shirley Verrett as the African queen, whom he has enslaved, star in Giacomo Meyerbeer‘s spectacular grand opera L’Africaine, in a colourfully exotic production by Lotfi Mansouri, under the sensitive musical direction of Maurizio Arena. The visual splendour of Wolfram Skalicki’s designs matches the vocal distinction of the cast in this seldom performed masterpiece. Director Brian Large captured this magical performance from the San Francisco Opera House for video in 1988.

Zwei Filme von Bruno Monsaingeon, die herausragenden Streicher-Persönlichkeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts gewidmet sind, bietet EMI in der jüngsten Staffel der DVD-Reihe „Classic Archive“ an, jeweils ergänzt durch weiteres seltenes Material aus den Archiven der INA und der BBC. Der einen von ihnen ist Yehudi Menuhin, der andere Paul Tortelier gewidmet.

Collection includes all studio albums and two compilations by English musical group Talk Talk. The group had a string of international hit singles including "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World". In their later years the band's commercial appeal receded, but their critical reputation increased as they moved from synthpop to a more experimental form. Their final two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, were highly acclaimed and remain influential to experimental alternative rock genres, especially post-rock.

Fiona Apple defied categorization or any easy career path, almost running the pattern in reverse, opening her career as a highly touted and popular alternative singer/songwriter, then transitioning into a cult artist. Apple certainly benefited from the open-door policy of modern rock in the mid-’90s, following the path of crossover alt-rock piano-based songwriters like Tori Amos, but Apple was hardly an Amos copycat: she had a strong jazz undertow in her vocal phrasing and melodies, she had richer arrangements, she had a poppier bent to her songs. All these things helped her 1996 debut, Tidal, find a wide audience, one that increased considerably in the wake of the controversial video for the single “Criminal,” but Apple made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t an amateur provocateur with her sophomore album, When the Pawn Meets the King, an album that increased her critical reputation and cult, which would be pillars of support during her intense battles while making her third album, Extraordinary Machine. Collection includes: 'Tidal' (1996); 'When The Pawn…' (1999); 'Extraordinary Machine' (2005), and 'The Idler Wheel…' (2012).

Valentina Lisitsa, a stunning virtuosic pianist, has become the first classical musician to achieve fame via YouTube, emulating Justin Bieber s achievement in the pop world. Having amassed an impressive 43 million views on her channel, Valentina is now in the unique position of going straight to one of the world s leading concert venues for her central London debut. The self-made virtuoso who has achieved all of this on her own without the help of a manager or promoter has now leapfrogged even the world s most revered and long-established pianists and thrown the traditional concert hall route out of the window. Having already booked the 5000-seater Royal Albert Hall in which to perform, Valentina was today in London four weeks ahead of her June 19th date to undertake her own concert promotion. As a thank you to her current online fans Valentina is determined to make the concert a fully digital and interactive experience by inviting fans to vote online to decide what she will play and by fully streaming the concert live via YouTube for those who can t travel to London. This level of online digital interaction is a first for a solo classical concert.

A collection of 21 CD, which includes all the studio albums by Al Stewart at the moment, as well as a compilation of his best songs. Al Stewart (born Alastair Ian Stewart, 5 September 1945) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician. Stewart came to stardom as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history. He is best known for his hit 1976 single "Year of the Cat" from the platinum album Year of the Cat.

Staged for the first time at Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1826, Don Gregorio is the Neapolitan version of one of Donizetti’s earliest masterpieces, L’ajo nell’imbarazzo (1824). This is the first representation in Italy in modern times, and a world premiere recording. Director Roberto Recchia sets the performance in the 1920s, at a time when restrictions and false morality were strongly linked with Italian political and social situation. In its new adaptation, the work differs from the original version in several aspects, the most important being the insertion of spoken dialogues in Neapolitan dialect in place of the recitatives. But Donizetti’s musical verve remains unchanged as he underlines the very enjoyable farcical situations of this comic work. The characters are inspired by Italian Commedia dell’Arte, but possess at the same time a deeper psychological and human dimension.