Franz Lehár

SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER CELEBRATES HIS 70th BIRTHDAY IN STYLE

30-CD box, in the packaging-style of the Messiaen Edition of 2008: tremendous value for this calibre of recorded material.

Original Jackets

The 108-page booklet includes an extended interview-article (2,500 words) with Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London, recording producer and trumpet-player.

The truly great DG / Archiv & Philips recordings from across his career, ranging from Monteverdi to Stravinsky via Handel, Bach, Mozart and Verdi.

Released to co-incide with his 70th birthday, several major performances, at least one TV appearance and the publication of his long-awaited book on Bach

One of the great advocates of period-instrument performance he has received more Gramophone awards than any other living artist … and now Sir John Eliot Gardiner is reaching the ripe old age of 70 without any signs of letting up on his almost frenetic life in music.

It’s an overwhelmingly vocal collection, a sequence of highly dramatic musical works that faithfully reflects Gardiner’s musical ideals and predilections. Sung texts and translations will be available as a digital download. The 30-CD box, in the packaging-style of the Messiaen Edition of 2008, presents the recordings in their original jackets, the 108-page booklet includes an extended interview-article with Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London, recording producer and trumpet-player. As ever with Gardiner, this provides a stimulating account of his life and music, and we plan to make the full interview, conducted earlier this year, available on the special website we are preparing for the occasion.

The birthday itself falls on 20 April 2013. Around it will be a marathon concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall, consisting of all the Bach Passions and Oratorios performed in a single day. Gardiner is also publishing a book on Bach, and there will be TV appearances as well (The Andrew Marr Show in the UK).

Der Göttergatte is Lehár’s one and only comic operetta parodying the ancient Greek gods.

This historical recording from 1945 (a few weeks prior to the end of World War II) is a genuine gem and could not be topped by any new recording. The cast is simply dazzling, headed by Vienna’s then leading Mozart tenor Anton Dermota.

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.

Multi-award winning opera singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, praised for the ‘pristine beauty of her lyric soprano’ (The Guardian), was revered in opera houses worldwide and is perhaps most famous for her Mozart roles. However, she was also at home on the concert stage and this collection combines her acclaimed portrayals of Donna Elvira, Countess Almaviva and Richard Strauss’s Marschallin, among others, with her affecting interpretations of lieder and song-cycles.

This 6CD set contains 100 tracks from the international catalogues of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics of the best songs from the most famous operettas from Vienna, Berlin, London, New York and Madrid.

The operettas represented here are among the most popular and successful ever written, covering the period from the middle of the 19th century to the early part of the 20th century, after which the genre evolved into what we now know as musicals. These operettas produced some of the world’s best-known melodies that have become established in their own right outside of the theatre and have been heard in every context, including concerts, recordings and film soundtracks.

All the items are sung in the language in which they were originally written.

The Austro-Hungarian composers like Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár and Emmerich Kálmán contribute many gloriously romantic pieces from their timeless operettas, including Die Fledermaus, Der Zigeunerbaron, Gräfin Mariza, Der Graf von Luxemburg, Das Land des Lächelns and of course the immortal Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow).

There is also a representation of the Berlin school of operetta with extracts from works by Eduard Künneke (Der Vetter aus Dingsda) and Walter Kollo (Drei alte Schachtein and Marietta), the latter sung by the composer’s grandson, the tenor René Kollo.

The French operetta tradition is strongly represented by some of the finest operettas ever written such as Orphée aux Enfers, La vie Parisienne and La Belle Hélène by Offenbach, Véronique by Messager and La Fille de Madame Angot by Lecocq.

The works of Gilbert and Sullivan are acknowledged to be the pinnacle of English operetta and they are represented by items like ‘Poor wand’ring one’ from The Pirates of Penzance and ‘Take a pair of sparkling eyes’ from The Gondoliers. Other English composers include Edward German (Merrie England), Ivor Novello (Glamorous Night) and Noël Coward (Bitter Sweet).

In America, a group of composers produced some superb operettas that were fully comparable to the Viennese models that inspired them. These include The Belle of New York by Gustave Kerker, Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert and The Firefly by Rudolf Friml.

The lively world of the Spanish zarzuela is not neglected, with a generous selection of arias and choruses from some of the most attractive works of this genre, including Doña Francisquita by Vives, Los gavilanes by Guerrero, La taberna del puerto by Sorozábal and La tempranica by Giménez.

All the performances are in authentic style, and the singers are international stars who have appeared in all the major performing centres of the world. Their names include Victoria de los Angeles, Sari Barabas, Teresa Berganza, June Bronhill, José Carreras, Michel Dens, Nicolai Gedda, Barbara Hendricks, Mady Mesplé, Jessye Norman, Lucia Popp, Anneliese Rothenberger, Rudolf Schock, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Rolando Villazón and Fritz Wunderlich.