Richard Wagner

The Blu-ray booklet features 20 production photographs most of which have not been seen before. These photographs will also appear on our special web page for the Blu-ray release. Also included on the Blu-ray release for the first time, is a 15 minute bonus documentary made in 2005 featuring Daniel Barenboim and Sir John Tomlinson talking about the Harry Kupfer Ring production. Along with the photographs featured in the blu-ray booklet this documentary will be made available on our website by the time of the Blu-ray release date. It gives a fascinating insight in to the project, with the benefit of hindsight.

Technical Information:

Running time: 154+13+237+243+270 mins

Region code: All regions

Colour NTSC 16:9

Disc Format: 4 x BD-50

Audio: LPCM Stereo ·

Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround ·

DTS 5.1 Surround (operas)

LPCM Stereo (bonus feature)

Menu Screens: English Subtitles

English · Français · Deutsch · Español · Italiano (operas) Français · Deutsch · Español · Italiano (bonus feature)

Making a welcome addition to the catalogue, this iconic Bayreuth recording of Das Rheingold is brought to you by Myto in this budget 2 CD set.

FIRST RELEASE ON ANY FORMAT OF BAYREUTH 1962 RUDOLF KEMPE WAGNER DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN – recording is from the private collection of Grace Hoffmann preserved, sound quality good but not state of the art due private control recording.

This collection sees Otto Klemperer lead the Philharmonia and New Philharmonia orchestras in compelling performances of works by Wagner and Richard Strauss. The set features highlights from each of Wagner’s most acclaimed operas, as well as Strauss’s Don Juan and a 1962 account of Tod und Verklärung that was hailed as one of Klemperer’s finest late recordings.

Ambivalent is the word which best describes Klemperer’s feelings about Germany’s two great musical Richards, Wagner and Strauss. During his early years as an opera conductor in Germany, Klemperer conducted a modicum of Strauss and a good deal of Wagner, though from the outset it was clear that he was never going to be an unthinking fan of either. The music of both composers did, nonetheless, cast its spell. Recording Act 1 of Wagner’s Die Walküre in London in 1969 was, he said, like meeting a woman he had loved 40 years ago and discovering that she was much as she had always been. He went on: ‘I find the music thrilling. Thrilling! One can say this or that about Wagner, but no one else could have written that music. No one! It’s as stupid to underestimate Wagner as it is to overestimate him. He doesn’t need either’.

Klemperer’s attitude to the operas of Richard Strauss was no less mixed. He thrilled to Salome, which even as an old man he considered to be one of the twentieth century’s most original scores, revered Elektra, and took great delight in Ariadne auf Naxos. On the other hand, he found too much ‘sugar-water’ in Der Rosenkavalier and was baffled by Die Frau ohne Schatten of which he conducted a handful of performances in Cologne in 1919.

The Strauss work which had first impressed Klemperer – he was 15 at the time – was Tod und Verklärung. What struck the young enthusiast was the quality of the orchestration and the remorselessness of the build-up of the thematic material, qualities Klemperer would later bring to his own reading of a work which does indeed advance implacably towards its sought-for goal: the soul’s transfiguration as memories of childhood visions and unattained artistic ideals grandly mingle.

Knowing the man as he did, Klemperer experienced few difficulties in coming to terms with Strauss’s equivocations during the Nazi era. As the Second World War drew towards its close Strauss began working on Metamorphosen, a threnody for 23 solo strings born of the trauma of wartime cultural loss: the Goethe house destroyed, Dresden, Munich, Weimar all in ruins. ‘Basically quite nice’ was Klemperer’s laconic

comment on the piece, yet no one was more eager to conduct it, an ambition he realised in Budapest in March 1948. Klemperer’s coupling of Metamorphosen with Tod und Verklärung on an LP first released in 1962 was widely welcomed as one of the finest of all his late recordings.

As part of the Wagner 200th birth date celebrations, Israeli/German piano duo Yaara Tal & Andreas Groethuysen release "Goetterdaemmerung - Transcriptions for two pianists from Wagner’ most famous operas" on Sony Classical.

OehmsClassics is now offering the Ring of the Hamburg State Opera conducted by Simone Young in a complete boxed set. The features consist of an elegant box, including a booklet and 14 individual CDs each with the photo motif of the individual editions that have been previously issued by OehmsClassics.

After the sensational success of his debut album ‘Helden’ (Heroes), Germany´s leading Wagner tenor - Klaus Florian Vogt - presents his first all-Wagner arias CD.

The album presents arias from the Wagner operas Mr Vogt has sung at famous opera houses around the world, including ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’, ‘Lohengrin’ (being his breakthrough success and most famous role at the Bayreuth Wagner festival), ‘Parsifal’ (new production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 2012), ‘Walküre’ (new production of the ‘Ring des Nibelungen’ at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich).

The CD also includes roles Vogt has not sung before on stage, such as ‘Rienzi’ and ‘Tristan and Isolde’. Vogt is accompanied here by the acclaimed Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jonathan Nott.

Klaus Florian Vogt sings in all major opera houses around the world. In 2013, he will star in a new production in Milan (‘The Flying Dutchman’) and will also perform at the opera houses in Barcelona (‘Rusalka’), Tokyo (‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’), Berlin (‘Lohengrin’), Munich (‘The Flying Dutchman’ & ‘Lohengrin’), Hamburg (‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’) and Helsinki (‘The Dead City’). He will also be on stage in Bayreuth in 2013.

Mr Vogt received the prestigious German Echo ‘Singer of the Year’ Award in 2012 for the ‘Helden’ CD.

“…the timbre rewards the ear with its clarity, youthfulness and affecting sweetness” International Record Review on ‘Helden’

“…delightful, fleet nimbleness…” The Independent on ‘Helden’

Kaufmann’s fifth solo album on Decca is specially recorded for the Wagner anniversary year by the world’s leading Wagner tenor. Kaufmann and Wagner is a classic combination: “For any Wagnerians who've been slumbering, Fafner-like, in their caves during the last few years, here's your wake-up call: Jonas Kaufmann is the tenor we've been waiting for” (Washington Post).

A selection of the great Heldentenor scenes and arias coupled with the complete (and rarely recorded by the tenor voice) Wesendonck Lieder. Also includes scenes from Die Walküre, Siegfried , Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin (extended Grail Scene – Gralserzählung - with its original second verse).

Joined by one of the most formidable combinations in the opera world today – the chorus and orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, under director Donald Runnicles – this recording is also a sonic spectacular, made in Decca’s time-honoured tradition.

In February 2013 the Mariinsky label launches its most ambitious project to date, releasing the first title in a cycle of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Valery Gergiev. Recorded in the sumptuous acoustic of the Mariinsky Concert Hall, the cycle features a sensational cast, helping create the most finely crafted Ring cycle of modern times.

The first release features Die Walküre, starring Anja Kampe, Jonas Kaufmann, René Pape, Nina Stemme, Mikhail Petrenko and Ekaterina Gubanova. Recorded during sessions and performances in 2011 and 2012, it will be released internationally in February 2013 in a 4-disc Super Audio CD box and as a high resolution download. This will be followed in September 2013 by the Das Rheingold (chronologically the first opera in the cycle, although originally envisaged as a prelude by Wagner) with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung completing the cycle in 2014.

Der Ring des Nibelungen was the pinnacle of Richard Wagner’s long and turbulent career and without question one of the greatest achievements in opera. Wagner wanted to create the perfect synthesis of music and drama and assumed total creative control of the project which was to take him 26 years to complete, with frequent interruptions. He introduced numerous innovations, not least the sheer scale of the project – typically a complete performance will last in excess of 15 hours, spread over four evening. No other opera matches the scale or ambition of the Ring. The Mariinsky Theatre has close connections with Wagner and his music. The composer conducted at the theatre and was even offered the post of Music Director. It is also believed to be the first place where any of the music from the Ring was performed. Since Valery Gergiev became Music Director of the Mariinsky, Wagner’s music has once again become a core part of the theatre’s repertoire, both in St Petersburg and on tour. The Mariinsky label’s recording of Wagner’s final opera Parsifal starring René Pape, Gary Lehmann and Violetta Urmana, was released in 2010 to international acclaim.