Editorial Product Review:Album Description:A special, limited edition 33-CD box set containing all of Wagner's operas from The Flying Dutchman (1841) to his final masterpiece Parsifal (1882) in performances from the opera house created specifically for the production of Wagner's masterpieces, the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. Landmark performances by some of the greatest Wagnerians can be savored here, among them singers Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Anja Silja, Waltraud Meier, Astrid Varnay, Wolfgang Windgassen, Jess Thomas, James King, Ramon Vinay, Peter Hoffmann, Bernd Weikl, Theo Adam, Karl Ridderbusch, Hans Sotin and Simon Estes. The all-star roster of ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Ordinarily, it pays to be wary of collections such as these, which often promise a lot but deliver a mishmash of disconnected excerpts. This disc, however, is something of an exception: you really do get just about all of Puccini's best arias, which is possible, because he didn't write so many operas that choosing the best moments becomes a matter of the producer's personal taste. Also, Puccini's operas are so popular that every major label has excellent complete recordings of all of them, so in making this compilation it was ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Ordinarily, it pays to be wary of collections such as these, which often promise a lot but deliver a mishmash of disconnected excerpts. This disc, however, is something of an exception: you really do get just about all of Puccini's best arias, which is possible, because he didn't write so many operas that choosing the best moments becomes a matter of the producer's personal taste. Also, Puccini's operas are so popular that every major label has excellent complete recordings of all of them, so in making this compilation it was ...
Editorial Product Review: :When Wagner set the Ring to music, he intended the orchestra to act in the fashion of a chorus from a classic Greek tragedy--setting the mood and commenting on the action. In order to allow a nonverbal musical line to reflect on the plot, Wagner developed a psychologically and musically complex symbology to communicate his thoughts to the listener. From the beginning the Ring has spawned numerous written commentaries on the relationships of the motif structure, but by using examples from the Decca Ring recording, Deryck Cooke's thoughtful spoken commentary is by ...
Editorial Product Review: :When Wagner set the Ring to music, he intended the orchestra to act in the fashion of a chorus from a classic Greek tragedy--setting the mood and commenting on the action. In order to allow a nonverbal musical line to reflect on the plot, Wagner developed a psychologically and musically complex symbology to communicate his thoughts to the listener. From the beginning the Ring has spawned numerous written commentaries on the relationships of the motif structure, but by using examples from the Decca Ring recording, Deryck Cooke's thoughtful spoken commentary is by ...
Editorial Product Review: :When Wagner set the Ring to music, he intended the orchestra to act in the fashion of a chorus from a classic Greek tragedy--setting the mood and commenting on the action. In order to allow a nonverbal musical line to reflect on the plot, Wagner developed a psychologically and musically complex symbology to communicate his thoughts to the listener. From the beginning the Ring has spawned numerous written commentaries on the relationships of the motif structure, but by using examples from the Decca Ring recording, Deryck Cooke's thoughtful spoken commentary is by ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Modern storage media (CD/DVD) offer both high fidelity and great reliability in the playback of music. Yet only a bit more than a generation ago, the possibilities inherent in the long-playing record inspired John Culshaw, a young producer for Decca, to attempt the most ambitious recording project ever contemplated up to that time--a complete studio recording of the Ring. Though other Rings were issued after this landmark enterprise, none have equaled the Decca Ring in popularity. There are those who prefer live performances, or who feel that the sound and ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:Modern storage media (CD/DVD) offer both high fidelity and great reliability in the playback of music. Yet only a bit more than a generation ago, the possibilities inherent in the long-playing record inspired John Culshaw, a young producer for Decca, to attempt the most ambitious recording project ever contemplated up to that time--a complete studio recording of the Ring. Though other Rings were issued after this landmark enterprise, none have equaled the Decca Ring in popularity. There are those who prefer live performances, or who feel that the sound and ...
Editorial Product Review: :Recorded in performance, but one act at a time so that the principals could sing full-out, this is one of the most electrifying opera recordings of the stereo era. Birgit Nilsson blazes as Isolde, and Wolfgang Windgassen's Act-III evocation of the delusional Tristan is heart-wrenching. Karl B'hm inspires transcendent playing from the Bayreuth forces, and the sound is stunning. --Ted Libbey
Editorial Product Review: :The most spectacular of the 21 operatic excerpts on this two-hour collection of Bell Telephone Hour telecasts is the last and longest--Joan Sutherland singing the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor--more than 13 minutes of incredible vocalizing, still as fresh and technically dazzling as it was when it was televised in 1962, shortly after her Metropolitan Opera debut in that role. In a sense, video recording was not Sutherland's best medium. She was not a great actress or a conventionally beautiful woman, but the video representation of her slightly awkward stage presence ...
Canon's XH A1 and XH G1 are excellent camcorders for entry-level professionals and independent filmmakers, with hard-to-beat prices for what they offer.
Thanks to a rich set of features and some great new additions, Evite maintains its stature as the top service for issuing e-invitations —but competitors are catching up.
