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Opera Album Review: A Devilishly Good First Recording for Louise Bertin’s “Fausto”

June 26, 2024
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Much praised by Berlioz and others, this Italian opera (composed for the great mezzo María Malibran) brings a notable female composer out of the shadows.

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Classical Album Review: “Compositrices — New Light on French Romantic Women Composers”

April 27, 2024
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By Ralph P. Locke An 8-CD set of diverse and enjoyable works, brought back from obscurity by Aude Extrémo, Roberto Prosseda, and other major performers. Compositrices: New Light on French Romantic Women Composers Cyrille Dubois and Yann Beuron (t), Aude Extrémo (mz), Claire Le Boulanger (fl), Roberto Prosseda, Alessandra Ammara, and Nathalia Milstein (p), and…

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Opera Album Review: A Resplendent First Recording of a Forgotten Opera by the Composer of “Manon” and “Thaïs”

March 8, 2024
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With Egyptian-born Amina Edris in the title role, Massenet’s opera engages the musical and theatrical imagination with its rich characterizations of Greek mythic adventures.

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Opera Album Review: An Award-Winning Recording of a Spontini Opera Championed by Maria Callas

January 11, 2024
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Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka, under conductor Christophe Rousset, shows why Berlioz and others loved “La Vestale”.

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Classical Album Reviews: “Aux étoiles” and Saint-Saëns’ Symphonic Poems

December 15, 2023
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Spiffy discs of French music featuring the Orchestre National de Lyon led by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider and François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles.

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Opera Album Review: A Groundbreaking French Grand Opera Receives Its First Major Commercial Recording

March 25, 2023
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Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable paved the way for major works by Meyerbeer himself, Halévy, Verdi, Wagner (in German), Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and others — and this splendid performance shows why.

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Opera Review: Saint-Saëns’s “Phryné” — Short and Witty, and Rediscovered

September 1, 2022
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A one-hour opera that the world forgot — a world-premiere recording of Saint-Saëns’s Phryné.

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Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Delightful Skewering of the West’s Fantasies of Japan

March 27, 2022
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A major contribution to the recorded repertory, making clear just how effective Saint-Saëns’s The Yellow Princess could be on stage, its nowadays objectionable title repudiated by its varied and nuanced approach to the evocation of the exotic.

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Opera CD Review: Two Splendid World-Premiere Recordings Rediscover an Exotic Master of Song — Reynaldo Hahn

April 5, 2021
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Attention is being paid today to talented composers who have been sidelined or disdained because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Reynaldo Hahn qualifies on several counts.

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Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Opera about a Little Silver Bell Works Its Magic

March 7, 2021
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The world-premiere recording of a first rate production of a brilliant, fantastical opera, unstaged and unheard since 1914.

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