Back when we and the Internet were somewhat younger, I signed up for a WWW site. In more than six years, that site has served up a page almost every week of matters relating to classical vocal music. These discs collect those pages - about three hundred of them - in convenient form. Almost all contain audio clips and many have photos of the people, productions or places heard.
The incentives for producing the disc were repeated requests to post a page again, to send one which had mysteriously vanished from a hard drive and, most plaintively, to help the user unload that hard drive of pages too valuable to discard but by now interfering with doing useful work. Admittedly, there's a bit of showing off here as well, though if I were not trying to be truthful to history, I would have updated many of the pages.
The pages on named singers include one with all known recordings (Giuseppe Bellantoni) and one with no recording at all (Ruby Helder - though she is heard elsewhere on the disc). The other 105 pages are divided among several categories. 32 focus on individual operas or portions of operas; 36 focus on voice types and vocal technique; the rest cover everything from the fire at La Fenice to audio clips for desktop events.
There are a few other comestibles in this operatic stew, including a collection of vocal Oddities largely supplied by Charlie Handelman and some selected video clips. In short, the disc defies concise description. However, the Oddities page will not be accessible readily on a Mac due to my error; you may need to select them from the folder manually. Similarly, on a PC the included browser will not play the first three Konya selections; you will need another browser or manual selection to play them back.
The pages are larger, reflecting the increased speed with which people are accessing the Internet. That allowed me to post and to include here complete recordings of "Dichterliebe" with Suzanne Danco and with Pierre Bernac and Robert Casadesus. There is also Britten's setting of "The Beggar's Opera" thanks to the generosity of the late John Ardoin. There are fifty pages on individual artists and forty on broader topicsl; hardly encyclopedic, but little of the material is available elsewhere and much is memorable.
The 74 pages now include complete performances which could only be excerpted at the WWW site. Among them are a complete English-language Norma, a Russian Don Carlos with Irina Arkhipova and Ivan Petroff, and the "Lisbon" Traviata with Maria Callas and Alfredo Kraus as reprocessed in Portugal and given limited release.
There are 61 pages in this volume including the complete "World's Greatest Operas" ("Heart of the Opera") and six complete and one partial recording of Mozart and Salieri - two in Russian, one each in English, German, French and Hungarian with the excerpts in Russian recorded by Fyodor Chaliapin. By popular demand, the full collection of 'auditions' selections is provided, including the 15 tracks of the unforgettable Sirach van Bodegraven.
This volume offers 23 singers, 9 assortments (comparisons and such) and 12 complete works and collections. Complete operas from Edinburgh, 1957, are La sonnambula with Callas, and L'Elisir d'amore with di Stefano. Others are Ruggero Raimondi's first Don Giovanni, Andrea Chénier in French, and a Verdi Requiem with Ina Souez.
With two dozen artists and 9 collections and comparisons, the 14 complete works make this the largest CD-ROM yet issued in these series. The operas offered are Wozzeck with Gobbi; Adriana Lecouvreur with Olivero; Don Giovanni with Souzay, Sills and Sénéchal; La clemenza di Tito (Simionato's last performance); and Tosca with Marie Collier - along with Verdi's Requiem with Tebaldi under Toscanini.
Sixteen pages are devoted to singers and twenty-eight to opera excerpts and short works. The disc includes a complete Don Giovanni with Tito Gobbi; Idomeneo; Manon Lescaut (in French); Tosca in English; The Gondoliers; and the audio of two telecasts of La traviata in English.
Twenty-four pages of singers of which regrettably six are 'in memoriam'. Twenty-one pages of extended works including the Bach Aria Group, complete and selections of Idomeneo, Die Zauberflöte and La Bohème - and two versions of Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor.
Of some 32 pages devoted to individual singers, seven ar in memoriam. 29
offerings of individual works plus four complete operas: Lucia in
German, Faust from 1948, Tosca from 1971, Rigoletto from
South Africa. Topping it off, five special programs:
Basso profondo
Christmas 1945 broadcasts
Lohengrin von Wolfratshausen
Opera from the music box
Stan Kenton swings Wagner
Mail me at operas@mrichter.com