CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

Britten: Peter Grimes

starring: Peter Pears, Heather Harper, Bryan Drake, Elizabeth Bainbridge, Owen Brannigan
directed by: Joan Cross, Benjamin Britten

Release Date July 08, 2008
This is the only opera written after Puccini's TURANDOT that I consider to be an opera, let alone a masterpiece. If you enjoy GRIMES, my recommendation is to get this superb telecast plus the one with Vickers. Two very different interpretations that cannot be equalled today in any opera house. Britten wrote GRIMES for Pears so we have that link here as well as Britten's marvelous conducting. Vickers' Grimes is more tragic while Pears is pathetic but both deserve to be seen as two sides of one coin. Picture quality, sound, and supporting cast are top-rate.

CD-Charts Position 2
Average Rating:

Britten: Billy Budd

starring: Peter Pears, Peter Glossop, Michael Langdon, John Shirley-Quirk, Robert Tear
directed by: Benjamin Britten

Release Date July 08, 2008
Britten: Billy Budd This recording was originally made in 1966 on the BBC. It has been carefully reconstituted in B&W and mono. Color and stereo would be nice, but the overall quality is such that their absence is not important. Personally I believe the B&W format improves the darkness of the opera. I highly recommend.

CD-Charts Position 3
Average Rating:

Schubert: Winterreise & Britten

starring: Peter Pears, Benjamin Pears
directed by: Benjamin Britten, Schubert

Release Date July 08, 2008
Britten and Pears recorded Winterreise for Decca in 1963, a landmark recording and an excellent one that I have reviewed myself and consider a "desert island disc" if you will. When I saw that this 1970 performance had been released on DVD, I had a few doubts. An aging Pears negotiating a very long cycle, and it's... staged? Cast these doubts aside, Pears was still four years away from Gustav von Aschenbach and is more than capable of delivering a performance that is not only colder and more bitter than the audio account seven years earlier, but the staging is simply putting Pears in a traveling cloak and placing him on a stage with some rather interesting backdrops and lighting. Britten is at the piano but not visible.

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CD-Charts Position 4
Average Rating:

Mozart: Idomeneo - Pears & Britten

starring: Peter Pears, Anne Pashley, Heather Harper, Rae Woodland, Robert Tear
directed by: Benjamin Britten

Release Date July 08, 2008
Britten and Pears recorded Winterreise for Decca in 1963, a landmark recording and an excellent one that I have reviewed myself and consider a "desert island disc" if you will. When I saw that this 1970 performance had been released on DVD, I had a few doubts. An aging Pears negotiating a very long cycle, and it's... staged? Cast these doubts aside, Pears was still four years away from Gustav von Aschenbach and is more than capable of delivering a performance that is not only colder and more bitter than the audio account seven years earlier, but the staging is simply putting Pears in a traveling cloak and placing him on a stage with some rather interesting backdrops and lighting. Britten is at the piano but not visible.

The humanism ... Read More: