Ballet / Opera CDs

Chopin is universally acclaimed as one of the most original and innovative composers of music for the piano, especially in the romantic and lyrical field, but his compositions also demand brilliant technical virtuosity. His works have been heard in many contexts including ballets such as Le Sylp...

A Portrait of Renata Tebaldi is a special limited edition 2-CD set with a 68-page hardback book. The book contains full details of Renata Tebaldi's entire Decca discography while the CDs feature Renata Tebaldi in many of her most celebrated roles and chart her recording career from 1949 to 1968. ...

'Daydream' is the sensational new album from the record-breaking multi-platinum-selling mezzo soprano, Katherine Jenkins. The compelling Welsh singer returns to her musical roots on her eighth studio album which is her most personal to date. Incorporating songs that have inspired her, from folk and ...

This 2CD mid-price set, drawn from the catalogues of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics, presents a selection of the bestloved and most popular ballet music by the great composers, performed by the world’s leading artists.    

50 of the best and most loved opera classics including arias from Le Nozze Di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, O Isis und Osiris, Così fan tutte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Carlo, Norma, Aida, La Traviata, Otello, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Boheme, Manon Lescaut, Turandot and ...

A prolific composer in many genres, including operas, musical comedies, songs, orchestral works and stage and film music, Fikret Amirov came to prominent public attention at the age of 26, when his two symphonic mugams, Shur and Kyurdi Ovshari, were first performed in Baku in August 1948 to popular ...

A superb 6CD set that brings together the very best of Ansermet's Decca Tchaikovsky recordings. As well as the three great ballet scores, the 6th Symphony receives a wonderful reading. This conductor in this repertoire in classic Decca recordings can still stand comparison with the latest versions i...

Following the enormous success of the album OPERA 2011, Virgin Classics releases OPERA 2012. With 40 tracks, and over 2½ hours of operatic arias and duets, this double album features the best and most popular names in opera from the catalogs of both Virgin Classics and EMI Classics. This is a can't-...

"Pletnev's is a performance of individuality and high quality. It is a stroingly narrative abd dramatic account that has tenderness and much the same virtuosity that Pletnev exhibits at the keyboard. The articulation is pretty dazzling throughout and there is plenty of wit in the Act III Divertiment...

Orange Mountain Music presents the world premiere recording of Philip Glass’ opera Orphée performed by a renowned cast of soloists including Philip Cutlip as Orphée, Lisa Saffer as la Princesse, and the Portland Opera Orchestra conducted by Anne Manson. Orphée (1993) wa...

The bold and colourful music of Sergey Prokofiev, one of the great composers of the Soviet era, embraces both nineteenth- and twentieth-century idioms in a style entirely its own. His works are celebrated both for their striking orchestral textures and for the lyrical beauty of their ...

Recording made in 1994 Tchaikovsky thought highly of his music to Ostrovky's drama The Snow Maiden, writing to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck in 1879 'one of my favourite offspring....I think this music is imbued with the joys of spring that I was experiencing at the time' It was an important co...

First class cast of singers, with the late Richard Hickox directing Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is one of the great masters of orchestration. His vivid trilogy of symphonic poems The Pines of Rome, The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals are unrivalled in their vivid, pungent colours depictin...

Performers: Andre Post, Claudia Patacca, Francine van der Heyden, Cecile van de Sant, Nicola Wemyss & Marc Pantus Mozart hadn't composed in the archaic genre of opera seria for ten years when the impresario Guardasoni asked if he would write an opera to celebrate the coronation of Emper...

Elektra was the first of the collaborative fruits of Strauss and his long-term librettist Hugo von Hoffmanstahl. The work was premiered in Dresden in 1909, and the libretto caused much consternation among critics and public alike, being called immoral and perverse. However, the critics evidentl...

A classic EMI recording from 1957, produced by Walter Legge, and re-mastered in 1986. From the moment of its premiere in Rome in 1816, The Barber of Seville became Rossini’s most popular opera. Based on the first play of the trilogy by Beaumarchais, it forms a ‘prequel’ to Mozar...

Another superb reissue from the EMI catalogue on Brilliant Classics. The plot of Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci is based on an incident in Montalto, Calabria, where his father was a judge. Leoncavallo wrote the opera at tremendous speed, and thanks to promoter Edoardo Sonzogno it went on a w...

One of the great recordings from the EMI catalogue, recorded in 1953 and re-mastered in 1989. Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico (tragic opera) in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto loosely based u...

Jewels This alluring, abstract ballet, a triptych in which each piece sparkles with the brilliance of a precious stone, is a lyric tribute to women and to the cities of the great dance schools. Couturier, painter and craftsman Christian Lacroix created the glorious costumes and sets which, together...

Dr Dee, a new studio album by Damon Albarn, will be released May 4 by Virgin Records. Dr Dee is an 18 track work inspired by the life of John Dee (1527–1608), mathematician, alchemist, philosopher and advisor to Elizabeth I. Dee is a singular enigma: an Englishman so influential that he defined h...

In this delightful collection, I Salonisti has gathered together a variety of pieces from the White Star Line Songbook, a compilation of overtures, waltzes, marches and even sacred music used for the shipping company's "Olympic Class Liners," the most famous being the ill-fated Titanic. Not simpl...

In celebration of our armed forces, the new multimedia WWII opera by Michael F Williams and John Davies is being released this ANZAC Day - 25 April 2012. Set in the Battle of Monte Cassino, the work has been in process since 2008 and the work looks to be New Zealand's first truly international op...

The Cleveland Orchestra.

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

La Traviata - the ultimate opera of love and loss - is a great favourite of opera-goers. Joan Sutherland's first recording of La Traviata is complete on 2 CD's. It is for many her greatest recorded portrayal of the doomed heroine Violetta. Her Alfredo is the 'simply supreme'(Gramophone) Carl Berg...

One of the greatest choral works of the Baroque era, Vivaldi's Gloria remained relatively unknown until it was revived, along with the composer's setting of the Stabat Mater, during Sienna's "Vivaldi Week" in 1939. "There is a freshness of approach and a lightness of sound and texture, which serve t...

Andrea Bocelli stars in the title role of Giordano's romantic and passionate opera of life and death, set during the French Revolution. Andrea Chénier, a historical figure and poet who lost his life to the French Revolution, gave Giordano and his librettist, Illica, inspiration for an oper...

Staged by Ole Anders Tandberg, adapted and filmed by Anja Stabell and Stein-Roger Bull in 2010 at the Norwegian National Opera. The Coronation of Poppea was the début production from critically acclaimed stage director Ole Anders Tandberg in the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, and he lets blood flow. T...

Carlo Maria Giulini was one of the 20th century’s greatest conductors along with fellow Italians Arturo Toscanini, Guido Cantelli and Victor de Sabata. His live performances of operas by Verdi, Rossini and Mozart have acquired legendary status while his distinguished recordings have remained in the ...

Staged by Ole Anders Tandberg, adapted and filmed by Anja Stabell and Stein-Roger Bull in 2010 at the Norwegian National Opera. The Coronation of Poppea was the début production from critically acclaimed stage director Ole Anders Tandberg in the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, and he lets blood flow. T...

Madame Larina – Olga Savova Tatjana – Krassimira Stoyanova Olga – Elena Maximova Filipjevna – Nina Romanova Jevgeni Onjegin – Bo Skovhus Vladimir Ljenski – Andrey Dunaev Vorst Gremin – Mikhail Petrenko Petrovitsj – Peter Arink Zaretski – Roger Smeets Monsieur Triquet – Guy de Mey Zapevalo ...

This unique programme is the first time that all the ballet music from Verdi’s operas has been brought together in a single recording. Although The Four Seasons from I vespri siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers) and the ballet scenes from Aida and Otello have survived, substantial pieces from Il trovato...

This volume of the Naxos McCormack Edition charts a chronological survey of recordings made in Camden, New Jersey, between April 1920 and September 1923. Two outstanding examples of the great tenor’s art are here; the famous recording of Handel’s O Sleep! Why Dost Thou Leave Me?—a miracle of breath ...

The Invisible City of Kitezh, completed in 1905, is a remarkable opera that fuses folklore, mysticism and realism. Its subject is the story of the advancing Mongol army’s entry to Great Kitezh and the city’s subsequent miraculous survival. Rejecting archaisms and the more religiously inclined sugges...

This unique programme is the first time that all the ballet music from Verdi’s operas has been brought together in a singe recording. Al- though The Four Seasons from I vespri siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers) and the ballet scenes from Aida and Otello have survived, substantial pieces from Il trovat...

From Delibes to Stravinsky, this collection amply demonstrates why ballet remains one of the most loved musical genres. We are then swept along in a whirlwind tour of some of the greatest Russian ballets by such great composers as Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shostakovich, while no ballet anthology w...

In this collection, we have brought together some of the most-loved operas, ranging from the elegance of Mozart’s  Don Giovanni to the raw emotion of Mascagni’s  Cavalleria Rusticana. The light-hearted japes of Rossini’s Barber of Seville contrast royally with the pomp and spectacle of Verdi’s  Aida...

In January 1956 Norwegian Radio broadcast an almost complete performance of Götterdämmerung starring Kirsten Flagstad and Set Svanholm, and conducted by Øivin Fjeldstad. Despite opportunities to re-record the work in Vienna, Flagstad was insistent that this performance be released. Most of the missi...

The operas of Nicola Vaccaj, renowned as a vocal teacher and still known today for his Metodo di Canto, employ a similar bel canto style to that of his rival Bellini. Based on a tragedy by Friedrich Schiller, the powerfully dramatic plot of La sposa di Messina deals with the inescapable and, in this...