This is Schulze's first attempt at opera, and it has yielded mixed results. Klaus Schulze has been deeply influenced by Richard Wagner and his music. So it is natural that he would compose, produce and perform (except the vocals) the world's first electronic opera. Totentag: Oper in 7 Bildern (roughly Death Day: An Opera in 7 Scenes) is a monumental achievement. Klaus, in keeping with a tradition started by Mozart, composed the opera in his native German. He recruited five virtuoso vocalists to play/sing the roles. The opera, again in the truest German tradition, is tragic. It tells the story of a young man and his drug induced hallucinations and visions.

Premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2022 – with Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara as its stars – Kevin Puts’s The Hours was praised by The New York Times as “sincere and persuasive … fervent … and soaringly lyrical”. The opera returns to the Met’s schedule in May 2024. Based on both the award-winning 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry and the original novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours interweaves characters and events from three different periods of the 20th century. Joyce DiDonato, who takes the pivotal role of writer Virginia Woolf, says that: “Even though it deals with death head-on, the piece is life-affirming and tells a timeless story. The characters’ struggles are shared universally, and by highlighting them through the different personalities and periods, hopefully everybody can find a part of themselves in the story.”

Nonesuch releases the first recording of John Adams’ 2017 opera, Girls of the Golden West, on April 26, 2024. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars created the opera’s libretto, drawing from original sources, and also directs this performance. The composer leads the LA Phil in this live recording from Disney Hall. Girls of the Golden West also features the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon, and a cast led by Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, and Ryan McKinny.

Jesus Christ Superstar started life as a most improbable concept album from an equally unlikely label, Decca Records, which had not, until then, been widely known for groundbreaking musical efforts. It was all devised by then 21-year-old composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and 25-year-old lyricist Tim Rice. Jesus Christ Superstar had been conceived as a stage work, but lacking the funds to get it produced, the two collaborators instead decided to use an album as the vehicle for introducing the piece, a fairly radical rock/theater hybrid about the final days in the life of Jesus as seen from the point of view of Judas. If its content seemed daring (and perhaps downright sacrilegious), the work, a "sung-through" musical echoing operatic and oratorio traditions, was structurally perfect for an album; just as remarkable as its subject matter was the fact that its musical language was full-blown rock music.

The Deutsche Oper in Berlin had hardly opened on 24th September 1961 before it started preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. How was that possible? Had it entered into some sort of time warp? That might indeed have been possible for a theatre that in the past had devoted itself to Richard Wagner’s works. But there was a simpler explanation: the Deutsche Oper Berlin had, in fact, originally opened on 7 November 1912 under the title of Deutsches Opernhaus.

Jordi Savall is painting Monteverdi in the colours of the Mediterranean. The Catalan maestro has entrusted the title role of this foundational work of Western music to a remarkable baritone: the magnificent Marc Mauillon embodies Orfeo, his resonant and ductile voice in perfect unison with the conductor’s musical vision. Here, a warm performance and rich sound reign supreme!

Among modern recordings of the opera, this one is a safe bet, assuming you want a safe version of this opera. Unlike Herbert von Karajan's oppressively string-heavy reading with the Berlin Philharmonic on EMI, this is a balanced, idiomatic account of the score, given a special luster by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's coloristic instincts and the warm recording acoustic at St. Eustache Church. Conductor Charles Dutoit has a fine instinctive feel for Debussy in general and this score in particular. The singers in the title roles–Didier Henry and Colette Alloit-Lugaz–have both come to terms with the opera's enigmatic dramaturgy. However, it's very much a symphonic rather than operatic performance, clearly a product of the recording studio rather than of the stage.

Over a remarkably long and illustrious career, Camille Saint-Saëns thrilled audiences around the world as a pianist and organist, shaped the course of musical life in France, and enriched a multitude of genres with some 600 works, all bearing witness to the mastery of his craft. Setting his best-known compositions in their dazzlingly diverse context, this edition invites exploration and discovery. It spans more than a century of recording history, encompassing a host of great instrumentalists, singers, conductors and orchestras, many of them from France. Setting the pace, in performances from as early as 1904, is the composer himself.

Covent Garden’s 2003 production of The Magic Flute , designed by John F. Macfarlane, directed by David McVicar, and conducted by Sir Colin Davis, is magnificent from a strictly musical standpoint. More than that, it’s vastly entertaining. The comedic elements of the story integrate far more comfortably than is often the case with Schikaneder’s high-minded (if vague) theme of a quest for enlightenment, particularly in the second act. Visually, the production is a feast, yet it doesn’t distract from the music.

Hans, le joueur de flûte is a ravishing opera, loosely based on the legend of Hamelin’s pied piper popularized notably by the Grimm Brothers, composed by Louis Ganne and premiered in Monte-Carlo in 1906. Rarely recorded, its best rendition is undoubtedly this beautiful 1967 performance with the best French singers of their time, including Liliane Berton and the amazing baritone Michel Dens in the title-role.

On May 14, 1763, Bologna’s Teatro Comunale opened with the world premiere of Il trionfo di Clelia. Completed a year after Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck’s setting of Metastasio’s story of romantic fidelity put to the test against the background of the Siege of Rome, was tailored both to display the new theatre’s capacity for spectacle (Act II calls for the collapse of a bridge and a heroic swim across the rising waters of the Tiber) and a cast hand-picked for their fioritura (embellishment of a melodic line). Thus while musicologists may cherish Il trionfo di Clelia for its pivotal role in the composer’s progress from the gilded cage of opera seria to the grand austerity of his reform operas, the rest of us can enjoy an inventive score.

Mozart's genius in setting to music Da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks Così fan tutte as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful production for the Glyndebourne Festival in 2006, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be 'shockingly traditional', while Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.

This premiering album by Neville Marriner includes modern, witty instrumental arrangements of the most famous arias and scenes from Verdi and Puccini’s operatic masterpieces: Nessun dorma, La donna è mobile… Don’t miss the moving chant of the ondes Martenot in Madama Butterfly or the voluble cimbalom in the Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore!

Obsessive in gambling and in love, the soldier Hermann is the protagonist of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, based on a story by Pushkin. He is smitten with the aristocratic Lisa and fixated on learning the winning secret of ‘the three cards’ from her grandmother, the Countess, played by iconic contralto Ewa Podles. This opulent production from Barcelona’s Liceu captures St Petersburg in the era of Catherine the Great, while the house’s Music Director Michael Boden conducts a large and impressive cast.