Word: mono
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Figaro, and The Force of Destiny (monaural and stereophonic) in impressive boxes with brass fittings and color-dripping illustrations. Another and more daring approach is to look for obscure, rarely or never-recorded works. Part of the recent growth of operatic exotica is London's Giuditta (three mono and stereo), the principal serious effort of Vienna's operetta master, Franz Lehar, who had lifelong pretensions to grand opera. First produced at the Vienna State Opera in 1934 when Lehar was 63, the work has to do with a Carmen-like doxy in an unidentified southern fishing town...
...Mozartians, Epic offers a series of highlights from La Finta Giardiniera (mono), written when Mozart...
Columbia dips into Donizetti's over flowing old trunk of 70-odd operas and comes up with a 3-LP recording of Linda di Chamounix (mono). Written late in the composer's life, the work has a good deal of facile melody, and Antonietta Stella, Renato Capecchi and Cesare Valletti give it a rousing performance. But the libretto, which has to do with a girl driven mad when wrongly accused of being a wanton, is enough to shake anybody but the staunchest Donizetti...
French Composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) is represented on France's Pathe label in a farcical work titled Platee (mono). The plot deals with the wooing of Jupiter by a spinsterish water nymph. The quicksilvery score, with its pastoral interludes and lavish descriptive effects, is a delight, and the performance is first rate...
Less rare than any of these items, but never before recorded in full, is Das Rheingold, Wagner's thunder-throated masterpiece, presented by London (3 LPs, mono and stereo) in a superb performance. Conductor Georg Solti leads the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with anvil-stroking power; Kirsten Flagstad sings with serene beauty; and George London's Wotan towers with granitic strength. The majestically rolling accompaniment of the gods' procession to Valhalla is sure to lift almost any listener out of his seat...