Charles François Gounod

Alain Vanzo was born in Monaco in April 1928 and was apparently a gifted musician from an early age. From an inauspicious start, he was eventually heard by a singing teacher who recognised his talents, and from that point on, he was lucky enough to be integrated into the French music scene where he triumphed in various performances.

He made his debut at the Pera and the Opera-Comique in 1957, going on to sing the Duke of Mantua that same year.

He became known and respected as a lyric tenor and matured towards a more robust tenor, culminating in him taking on Werther at aged 40 and Don Jose at aged 45. By the time he reached the age of 48, and after his performance of Faust in 1976 in the US, he had become a star and this disc shows exactly why he was so well respected.

The Art of Magdalena Kožená is an anthology of her finest performances, documenting both the range of her voice and the breadth of repertoire to which she can bring authority, from early baroque of Monteverdi and Strozzi to sacred arias by Bach, opera arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Gounod, Bizet and Auber, as well as orchestral songs by Mahler. To all she brings an absorbing emotional depth and maturity of her interpretative abilities.

Unique to Kožená are the songs rooted in Bohemia and Moravia by Dvořak and Janáček. She still feels closely connected to her Czech roots. “It’s music that stays in your body forever”.

This is Magdalena’s own selection of her favourite songs and arias, sung in French, Italian and German as well as in her mother tongue.

28-page Booklet, including new liner notes from Nick Kimberley.

The 7-CD box Schöne Nacht, du Liebesnacht presents original sets of highlights sung in German (plus bonus material) from the Italian and French repertoire – classics such as Offenbach's Hoffmanns Erzählungen, Rossini's Barbier von Sevilla, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and rarities like Adam's Postillon von Lonjumeau, featuring such major Electrola singers as Erika Köth, Anneliese Rothenberger, Rita Streich, Edda Moser, Nicolai Gedda, Hermann Prey, Josef Metternich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Kurt Moll.

Sir Neville Marriner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Alongside his recordings of Baroque and Classical repertoire, he has also made a name for himself as an interpreter of Romantic orchestral music, as this compilation shows: it contains popular works from the highly colourful French and Russian repertoire, including new discoveries like Tchaikovsky's Barcarole, which can certainly hold a candle to the famous work of the same name by Offenbach, and the Berceuse by opera composer Benjamin Godard.

Arias by Wagner, Mozart, Gounod, Verdi, Mascagni and Puccini show off the ‘golden voice’ of Victoria de Los Angeles. Super budget price.

Nicolai Gedda, the most recorded tenor in history, is an exceptionally versatile artist who has excelled in a wide variety of operatic roles as well as in the art song. With a magnificent lyric tenor voice and extraordinary range, Gedda makes the notorious top D at the end of ‘Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire’ sound positively effortless. This collection offers a wealth of repertoire that has helped to cement Gedda’s reputation as one of the greatest tenors of his generation.

La folie française is an odyssey of the French classical composers from the 19th Century (Georges Bizet, César Franck…) to nowadays (Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux…), as well as the golden age (Satie, Debussy, Ravel or Saint-Saëns), reflecting the concert’s programme.

It’s a great opportunity to hear such masterpieces of this prolific period in the history of music as “La Mer” by Debussy, Bizet’s “Carmen suite”, the “Bolero”, two “Gnossiennes”, “L’Apprenti sorcier” by Paul Dukas (best known for being used in Fantasia’s soundtrack), César Franck’s violin sonata… and the more unusual Oboe sonata by Charles Koechlin, d’Indy’s “Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français”, and works by Chausson and Séverac. French melodies by Massenet, Duparc and Hahn, jazzy classical pieces of Darius Milhaud and Jean Wiéner, and great symphonic works by Poulenc and Roussel complete this compilation of 64 tracks and over 5 hours of music, all served by the greatest performers: Samson François, Michel Plasson, Jean Martinon, Alexandre Tharaud, Georges Prêtre, Anne Queffélec, Augustin Dumay, etc

Christoff was born in Plovdiv on 18 May 1914. Educated as a lawyer, he was heard by the King of Bulgaria while singing with the famous Gusla Choir and at the behest of the King in 1942 he was granted a scholarship to study singing. He moved to Rome and for several years his teacher there was the baritone Riccardo Stracciari. He made his operatic debut in 1946 as Colline in La bohème in Reggio di Calabria, where his singing of the Coat Song in the last act earned two encores.

Although not a particularly large man, Christoff’s magnetic stage presence and piercing eyes made him always the centre of attention on stage, and he exerted command and authority not only over his fellow performers but on the audience as well. His rich, sonorous voice was compact and perfectly focused and, like his physical presence, made its effect in every part of the theatre. His performances as Tsar Boris were not declamatory in the normal sense, but their intensity drew everyone in his audience right down to him on the stage. Every word was clear, every gesture meaningful and every note unforgettable. One might also say that the dark, resonant timbre of his voice was unmistakable and that the sheer emotional intensity of his performances has never been surpassed.

Christoff’s perfectly controlled Slavic voice was ideally suited to the Russian repertoire, especially the roles particularly associated with Chaliapin. He was also ideal for a number of Verdi bass parts, notably Philip II (Don Carlo), Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino), Procida (I vespri siciliani) and Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), but his repertoire covered a wide range of other Italian roles and a few French ones as well, particularly Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust. His German roles included Rocco (Fidelio), King Mark (Tristan und Isolde), Hagen (Götterdämmerung) and Gurnemanz (Parsifal). His concert repertoire also ranged widely, taking in the main composers of the Russian Romantic era, and this survey of Christoff’s art on record begins with what the writer John Steane remarked ‘may well constitute his prime contribution to recorded music and his supreme claim upon the enduring gratitude of musicians at large’, namely the complete songs of Mussorgsky. When first released on LP in 1958, the set was a milestone.

On Discs 4–8 of this set Christoff surveys the remainder of Russian art-song with the most intimate fusion of text and music – a power of advocacy unmatched by other singer on record, even the great Chaliapin.

CD 9 covers Christoff’s main Russian stage roles. These are recordings made in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra between 1949 and 1952 when Christoff was still at the beginning of his career, but already a fully developed and mature artist.

The final CD ranges right across Christoff’s operatic repertoire, with arias by Gounod (Faust) and Gluck (Iphigenia in Aulis), as well as Verdi, including the two great scenes from Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo in which Christoff and Gobbi strike dramatic sparks off each other. In both cases, Christoff portrays with immense dignity and command the elderly figure of authority (Fiesco and King Philip II) and Gobbi is the young firebrand (Simon Boccanegra and Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa) confronting the older man. The remaining tracks return us to Russian opera and some of Christoff’s greatest roles, starting with Ivan Susanin in Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar. Finally, we hear three extracts from the 1962 stereo recording of Boris Godunov conducted by André Cluytens: firstly Boris’s Prayer from the prologue, where he has finally agreed to become Tsar. Later in the opera a chiming clock terrifies him and he begs God’s mercy on his guilty soul, and finally we hear again Boris’s death scene.