Gaetano Donizetti

This 5 CD set covers the best of Björling’s EMI solo recordings and includes highlights from the three complete operas:

CD 1 contains Opera and Oratorio Arias and Songs in their original language recorded between 1936 and 1941.

CD 2 covers similar repertoire from 1941 to 1950.

CD 3 goes back to the period from 1929 when Björling was still a local Swedish artist and recorded all his material in Swedish. The CD opens with the two recently discovered test recordings that Björling made for EMI Sweden on 4 September 1929: ‘For You Alone’ and ‘Mattinata’, both sung in Swedish.

CD 4 contains a selection of Lieder and Songs, all sung in their original language, recorded between 1939 and 1959.

CD 5 contains a generous selection of highlights from Björling’s three complete EMI operas: La bohème, Pagliacci and Madama Butterfly. He is partnered in all three recordings by the soprano Victoria de los Angeles. All tracks, except those from Pagliacci and Madama Butterfly on CD 5, have been transferred and digitally remastered at Abbey Road Studios from the best available source material in the EMI Archives by the award-winning audio restoration engineer Andrew Walter.

The ten sides the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso cut at the Grand Hotel, Milan, on 11 April 1902 are among the most historic of historical recordings.

As John Steane notes in a wide-ranging essay that ideally complements this collection, these are legendary recordings by a legendary tenor. Indeed, Caruso’s fame, according to the old HMV catalogue, was perhaps the greatest ever attained by a singer.

Steane sifts fact from fiction in the story of the producer Fred Gaisberg, wowed by Caruso at La Scala and determined to secure him for his company, agreeing the then huge fee of £100 for the ten arias and then receiving a cable from London that said ‘Fee exorbitant, forbid you to record’.

Whatever the truth of that, the recording went ahead. Caruso came to the Grand Hotel that Friday afternoon ‘dressed like a dandy, twirling a cane’ with his accompanist Salvatore Cottone, and all was completed within two hours in the improvised studio Gaisberg had rigged up.

Again, the new remastering by Abbey Road 78 expert Andrew Walter improves greatly on the recordings’ previous appearance on Références.

Awards: Diapason d’Or, Timbre de Platine d’Opéra International, FFFF de Télérama

Scarlatti, Hasse, Cimarosa, Bellini, Donizetti und Pasculli - six composers from three different centuries, all inspired by the city of Naples. After the successful German release of his debut CD recital Fantasia Italiana which focussed on the so-called ‘Paganini of the Oboe’, Antonio Pasculli, oboist Christoph Hartmann embarked on another trip to Italy. There he unearthed some true gems for his instrument amongst the works of the great opera composers and piano masters: music full of virtuosity, drama and enchanting cantabile!

This new CD features the well known Bellini concerto, together with five world premiere recordings – Hartmann compiled the Scarlatti and Cimarosa concertos from sonatas of these early keyboard masters, together with the arranger Wolfgang Renz. The Hasse concerto is an original work altogether, whilst the works by Donizetti and Pasculli are originally set for oboe and piano but have been newly orchestrated by Wolfgang Renz.

The Italian tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, who died on 3 March 2008 aged 86, was one of the finest opera singers of his day. He was blessed with a lyric tenor voice of great beauty, as well as a bright, open tone, and possessed the ability to bring vividly to life the characters he played, both on stage and in the recording studio. He began his career in lighter roles like Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, but later graduated to heavier parts such as Alvaro in La forza del destino and Canio in Pagliacci. He first appeared at La Scala in March 1947 as Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon, and in February 1948 he made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. In the same year he was also heard for the first time in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, and he went on throughout the 1950s to enjoy a career of uninterrupted success, centred mainly on La Scala and the Met.

He recorded extensively for EMI for the first decade or so of his career, and after making several recordings of popular songs in 1944 in Lausanne, he consolidated his position as a recording artist in the years that followed with a series of operatic arias and Italian folksongs in London and Milan, as well as some titles for RCA Victor in New York. In 1953, the EMI producer Walter Legge teamed Di Stefano with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi in a recording of Lucia di Lammermoor in Florence and then went on during the next five years to make a series of unrivalled recordings of Italian operas with the same artists at La Scala. They remain to this day the benchmark against which all subsequent recordings of the same works are judged, and the 1953 Tosca conducted by Victor de Sabata is now generally acknowledged to be one of the finest recordings ever made. Di Stefano also appeared in several of Callas’s greatest stage successes at La Scala, including the 1954 Lucia di Lammermoor under Herbert von Karajan and the 1955 Traviata under Carlo Maria Giulini: live recordings of both are also available on EMI.

In the early 1950s, when the operatic catalogue of EMI was led by three of the greatest sopranos of the time – Maria Callas, Victoria de los Angeles and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf – it was Giuseppe di Stefano who carried the banner for tenors, and he did it with great style. All his recorded performances capture not only his glorious voice, but also his outgoing and exuberant personality, which made him so popular both on stage and off. Like Callas, his glory days were relatively short, but his talent burned brightly and he is remembered with great affection by all lovers of Italian opera.

Like Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni was also born in 1935 and was a native of Modena. She began singing at a very early age. She was soon heard by Gigli, who advised her to take up serious vocal studies and in 1955 she made her début at Modena as Micaela in Bizet's Carmen.

The association of Mirella Freni and EMI has been a long and fruitful one and some of her most notable recordings appear on the label. This 4-CD set includes examples of some of her most successful roles, including four excerpts from Mascagni's L'amico Fritz with Pavarotti and some material new to CD.