CD-Charts Position 141
Average Rating:

Cecilia Bartoli - An Italian Songbook (Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini)

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Decca

Release Date September 16, 1997
To be honest I am not an admirer of Bartoli's voice and art. However her interpretation of these 'Composizioni da Camera' is excellent, very sensitive, in style and with deep emotion and feeling. It's the BEST performance I have ever heard of these songs.

CD-Charts Position 142
Average Rating:

Very Best of

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Montserrat Caballe

Release Date April 22, 2003
Leaving the hype aside, EMI would have been more accurate to entitle this 2-CD ssurvey "Opera Arias by the Young Caballe." In the whole generous 151 min. there are only 6 songs to represent her extensive recital repertoire, and no Zarzuela. For those items you have to go to rCA. Here we get Caballe mostly from the Seventies (1971-79) with bits form the early Eighties.

The reviewers below have given deserved praise to Caballe's abilities as diva. My onw opinion is that she was better on records than in the opera house. She wasn't gifted as an actress and cut a short, wide figure onstage. But as a vocal actress on disc she was very convincing, despite her over-reliance on pathos and delicacy. One longs at times, amid all the beauitful floated ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 143
Average Rating:

Machaut: Messe de Notre Dame / The Hilliard Ensemble

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Hyperion UK

Release Date November 16, 1993
Whether a devotee of early music and polyphony or just someone looking for beautiful relaxing music, it would be hard to go wrong with any recording of the Hilliard Ensemble. This is one of their finest. Machaut was a defining voice of late medieval music and is here afforded a quietly joyous treatment by a world class group. The Hilliards are apparently named after Nicolas Hilliard, an Elizabethean court painter noted for his beautiful small portraits, and thus are aptly called as their performances too are exquisite miniatures.

CD-Charts Position 144
Average Rating:

Donizetti - L'elisir d'amore / Sutherland · Pavarotti · Cossa · Malas · Casula · ECO · Bonynge

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Gaetano Donizetti, Richard Bonynge, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, English Chamber Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Dominic Cossa, Maria Casula

Release Date October 25, 1990
Buy this recording for Pavarotti; it is one of his best performances on record. However, There are other better overall recordings. Sutherland comes across as too old and matronly for Adina, and Bonynge's conducting is absolutely dull and lifeless. Malas and Cossa are just OK.

If you really want to hear how this opera should be performed, get di Stefano's recording on Decca with Gueden, Capecchi, Corena, and Molinari-Pradelli conducting. Or, if you don't mind a live recording with decent quality stereo sound, get Bergonzi's recording with Scotto, Taddei, Cava, and Gavazzeni conducting. Both these recordings were a revelation for me after learning the opera many years ago with the Pavarotti/Sutherland version.

CD-Charts Position 145
Average Rating:

Mario Lanza Live At The Hollywood Bowl: Historical Recordings (1947 & 1951)

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Gala

Release Date June 06, 2000
Mario Lanza was the greatest voice of all time because of the depth, breath, and sheer beauty of his natural tenor qualities and his magnificent ability to sing in nearly all fields supremely well. These recordings are good examples of the range and power and unique ability of this splendid artist who still captures the imagination of those who listen to his voice for the first time and those who cannot stop listening.

CD-Charts Position 146
Average Rating:

The Ultimate Gilbert & Sullivan Collection

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Arthur Sullivan, Isidore Godfrey, Royston Nash, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Colin Wright, Donald Adams, George Cook, Gillian Knight, Jean Hindmarsh, Jeffrey Skitch, John Ayldon, John Reed, Joyce Wright, Kenneth Sandford, Lyndsie Holland, Owen Brannigan, Pauline Wales, Peggy Ann Jones, Thomas Round, Valerie Masterson, D'Oyly Carte Opera Company

Release Date June 09, 1998
The Ultimate G & S CD is everything I could have hoped for.
Living in NYC I was fortunate to grow up attending all the Doyle Carte performances as they came to New York.
The CD brought back all the memories of that fabulous company.
Liz H.

CD-Charts Position 147
Average Rating:

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto / Oboe Concerto -Antony Pay / Michel Piguet / The Academy of Ancient Music / Christopher Hogwood

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Decca

Release Date October 25, 1990
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
CLARINET CONCERTO K.622 & OBOE CONCERTO K.314
ANTHONY PAY,Clarinet & MICHEL PIGUET,Oboe
CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD, CONDUCTOR
ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC (AAM)

RATED 5-STARS by classical music critics/enthusiasts as the numero uno authentic period-instrument interpretations of MOZART'S CLARINET CONCERTO K.622 & OBOE CONCERTO K.314! This CD by the ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC (AAM), one of the world's first and numero uno critically acclaimed classical period instrument orchestras, is a MUST HAVE CD FOR ALL MOZART AFICIONADOS!

CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD is a world-famous English conductor, harpsichordist, writer, and scholar of classical music. In 1973, Christopher Hogwood founded the ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC (AAM), one of the ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 148
Average Rating:

Zarzuela Arias & Duets

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: RCA

Release Date September 04, 1995
Do you like beautiful music? Do you like sumptuously gorgeous new melodies ? Do you sing? Are you fond of listening to great voices, if for no other reason than to be inspired by? ...by a resplendent, opulent voice? Well then what are you waiting for?

I have only seen this legend perform once, in Bellini's "Norma". I can honestly say that I was not interested in opera until I saw her in that.
It's the one outdoors at night; and a fresh breeze piped up just about dusk, too late to cancel...so on with the show, satin robes billowing like clouds...and Madame Caballe's voice soaring, circling, diving to grasp her prey with gentle talons and whisk away to her lair- all around shuddering with awe.

If you are a singer, a soprano or tenor, even,I dare say you may catch ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 149
Average Rating:

Puccini: Manon Lescaut

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Giacomo Puccini, James Levine, Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, Dwayne Croft, Ramon Vargas, Cecilia Bartoli, Orchestra and Chorus of Metropolitan Opera

Release Date September 14, 1993
"Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public. A woman like Manon can have more than one lover."--Puccini.

Puccini's third opera Manon Lescaut (1893) was his first great success, and hints at his three great compositions to come: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904). I experienced a live HD simulcast performance of Puccini's opera from The NYC Metropolitan Opera yesterday, with soprano Karita Mattila and tenor Marcello Giordani in the title roles, and conducted by James Levine. Based on the 1731 novel L'histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts. It tells the story of Manon, who falls in love with a student, Des Grieux, on her way to a convent, following ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 150
Average Rating:

Bach - Christmas Oratorio / Gardiner

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: John Eliot Gardiner, Nancy Argenta, Olaf Bär, Hans Peter Blochwitz, Alison Bury, Lisa Beznosiuk, Valerie Darke, Valerie Botwright

Release Date October 25, 1990
MONTEVERDI CHOIR AND THE ENGLISH BAROQUE SOLOISTS THE 'STARS' OF THIS RECORDING!!!!!
Johann Sebastion Bach (1685-1750) wrote very little church music after 1730, so it is not surprising that when he produced for Christmas, 1734, an 'oratorio' in six parts he adapted much of it from earlier compositions, mostly from secular odes. Recitatives and chorale settings were, of course, new, but otherwise all but one of the arias and nearly all of the choruses were 'parodies'. The six cantatas of the 'Christmas Oratorio' are designed to be performed on separate days from Christmas to Epiphany, but it does not necessarily follow that they are unconnected. Bach must have composed the work continuously, and there are many, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle connections between the separate parts. The 'Christmas Oratorio' ... Read More: