CD-Charts Position 1
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Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet - Barcelona Opera

starring: Simon Keenlyside, Natalie Dessay, Béatrice Uria-Monzon, Alain Vernhes, Daniil Shtoda
directed by: Toni Bargalló

Release Date October 05, 2004
Great work by miss Dessay who set the bar for Ophelia quite high, perhaps a new standard for this role.

CD-Charts Position 2
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Rossini - Il Viaggio a Reims

starring: Valery Gergiev, Daniil Shtoda, Larissa Youdina, Anna Kiknadze, Irma Guigolachvili
directed by: Alain Maratrat

Release Date May 29, 2007
This opera has a rather silly plot(sort of like the Grand Hotel movie), but it is filled with great music very well performed. The singers (from the Kirov young artists program) all sing and act very well and look their parts. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves in this comic opera, and so did I.

CD-Charts Position 3
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Verdi - Falstaff

starring: Ruggero Raimondi, Barbara Frittoli, Manuel Lanza, Daniil Shtoda, Zubin Mehta
directed by: Luca Ronconi

Release Date February 27, 2007
Musically this 'Falstaff' probably passes muster -- barely. Ruggero Raimondi is frankly a bit long in the tooth for the part, it now being more than twenty-five years since he first sang the part. And he never had the low notes for the part, even back then. Barbara Frittoli is fine as Mistress Ford, and vocally Mariola Cantarero is a an equally fine Nannetta but she is a good deal more matronly than one would hope for a girl in the first bloom of love. Her lover Fenton, sung by Daniil Shtoda, is vocally acceptable but he is wooden as an actor and spends an awful lot of the time looking at the conductor. Laura Polverelli as Mistress Meg Page is OK but nothing special. The Mistress Quickly, Elena Zilio, simply doesn't have the chest voice for the part; her repeated ... Read More: