Editorial Product Review: :The labels that are now gathered under the Universal Classics umbrella have a pretty impressive scorecard in the area of classical compilations. We've seen The Greatest Opera Show on Earth, The Yellow Guide: Classical Music, Best of the Millennium, and now there's The No. 1 Opera Album. But that's no surprise, since Universal has some of the finest interpreters in its catalogue to draw from. This two-CD set (at the price of one), for example, brings together the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Georg Solti, ...
Editorial Product Review: :The labels that are now gathered under the Universal Classics umbrella have a pretty impressive scorecard in the area of classical compilations. We've seen The Greatest Opera Show on Earth, The Yellow Guide: Classical Music, Best of the Millennium, and now there's The No. 1 Opera Album. But that's no surprise, since Universal has some of the finest interpreters in its catalogue to draw from. This two-CD set (at the price of one), for example, brings together the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Georg Solti, ...
Editorial Product Review: :The labels that are now gathered under the Universal Classics umbrella have a pretty impressive scorecard in the area of classical compilations. We've seen The Greatest Opera Show on Earth, The Yellow Guide: Classical Music, Best of the Millennium, and now there's The No. 1 Opera Album. But that's no surprise, since Universal has some of the finest interpreters in its catalogue to draw from. This two-CD set (at the price of one), for example, brings together the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Georg Solti, ...
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: 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: :This disc is essential for Jussi Bjoerling fans--doesn't that include almost everyone?--and for anyone who wants a distinctive sampling from recorded opera's most eloquent age. Best are Bjoerling's duets with baritone Robert Merrill--especially the classic 'Au fond du temple saint' from The Pearl Fishers--and the scene with Renata Tebaldi, 'Signore, ascolta; non piangere, Liu,' from Turandot. Although the sound is variable--and sometimes disappointingly, annoyingly glitch-ridden in these recordings made between 1950 and 1959--the voice, the style, and the passion of the inimitable Bjoerling more than make up for it. --David Vernier
Editorial Product Review: :This disc is essential for Jussi Bjoerling fans--doesn't that include almost everyone?--and for anyone who wants a distinctive sampling from recorded opera's most eloquent age. Best are Bjoerling's duets with baritone Robert Merrill--especially the classic 'Au fond du temple saint' from The Pearl Fishers--and the scene with Renata Tebaldi, 'Signore, ascolta; non piangere, Liu,' from Turandot. Although the sound is variable--and sometimes disappointingly, annoyingly glitch-ridden in these recordings made between 1950 and 1959--the voice, the style, and the passion of the inimitable Bjoerling more than make up for it. --David Vernier
Editorial Product Review: :This really is a remarkable collection, and anyone even remotely interested in opera is bound to be vastly entertained by it. Almost everything and everyone is here, albeit in small doses: Tebaldi, Pavarotti (a lot), Bjoerling, Bartoli, Sutherland, Solti, Karajan, Troyanos, Gheorghiu, Nucci; the composers are Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, and all the other usual suspects. There are plenty of fine compilation sets on the market, and this is one of the best. One can only hope that it whets listeners' appetites for whole operas. --Robert Levine
Editorial Product Review: :Surely Björling was one of the greatest tenors of his or any other time, not only for the clarion ring, the purity, and the melting lyricism of his voice, but for his effortless lightness, impeccable intonation, endless breath control, and natural phrasing and line, enhanced by old-fashioned but wonderfully expressive scoops and slides. On this generous two-disc set, he is heard in a huge selection of arias and some duets with distinguished colleagues; most of them were recorded separately, and a few are excerpted from complete opera recordings--unfortunately not very skillfully, stopping ...
Steering clear of many of the pitfalls that sapped past video-on-demand broadband solutions, Vudu delivers the closest thing to "Netflix in a box" that we've seen to date.
It's June 29th and Apple is finally ready to let the public play with the iPhone. The past six months have shaped up to be the highest profile mobile phone launch ever, Apple has conjured up an...
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