Al Ayre Español is a vocal and instrumental ensemble formed in 1988 by the conductor Eduardo López Banzo. The ensemble plays period instruments and has brought back to life Spanish Baroque Music music, renewing the interest of contemporary audiences. The name of the band ('ayre' is an ancient word for 'aire') makes reference to playing music 'the Spanish way' ('con aire español').

Bland, incurious and passionless, this documentary about the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti is like a promotional video licensed by a team of copyright lawyers – and about as challenging as a Three Tenors gig at Wembley stadium. Pavarotti’s glorious voice all but drowns in a 114-minute montage of obsequious syrup…

Guillaume Tell was the composer’s last and longest opera. I do not think I would go on to say that it was also necessarily his best, but it is certainly an amazing work full of life. It is, in many ways, both a summation of his operatic genius and a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been had he continued to write for the stage. Like his other last operas it was written for Paris and in its scale and mixture of public and private events is a clear forerunner of such works as Les Huguenots and Don Carlos. At the same time it can be regarded as essentially classical, but with that style subtly transfigured into one that is just as essentially romantic. It represents a turning point in the history of opera, so that the obvious question arises as to why it is so seldom encountered on the stage, and why many music-lovers know it solely by its undoubtedly magnificent overture.

The plot is as follows: We are on an island where women reign; three of them–Tulia, Aurora, and Cintia–argue over who should become Queen. Their browbeaten boyfriends, when not begging for a kiss, groveling, or trying to figure out how to please the women, attempt to stop them from bickering, and worse, killing each other. Eventually, sick of the women’s petty rivalries and led on by the tenor Ferramonte, the men take over, returning things to their “natural” state: “You will find us merciful provided that you moderate your vanity,” they sing before the final chorus, which states that “Women in command make for a topsy-turvy world that is inevitably doomed to failure.” The Italian studios of Swiss Radio have lately produced a number of impressive recordings of early music, and their skills are well illustrated in this fresh, lively account of Galuppi, with a first-rate team of soloists, chorus and orchestra. (The Guardian)

This luxurious set containing 39 CDs, 3 DVDs, 1 CD-Rom and four detailed booklets will tell you the full story of Baroque opera in Italy, France, England, and Germany. No fewer than 17 complete operas (including two on DVD) and two supplementary CDs (the dawn of opera, Overtures for the Hamburg Opera) provide the most comprehensive overview of the genre ever attempted! The finest performers are assembled here under the direction of René Jacobs and William Christie to offer you 47 hours of music. An opportunity to discover or to hear again the masterpieces of Baroque opera, some of which have been unavailable on CD for many years.

The ‘sheer visual sophistication’ of Annabel Arden’s Barbiere serves ‘a triumphant celebration of Rossini’s musical genius’, featuring de Niese’s ‘powerfully sung’ Rosina, Bürger’s ‘gale-force’ Figaro and Stayton’s ‘pure and mellifluous’ Almaviva – a leading trio ‘musically and dramatically beyond compare’ (The Independent ★★★★★). Contributing to the ‘ensemble precision’, the rest of the cast includes a ‘scene-stealing’ Berta in Kelly, a ‘suavely unctuous’ Basilio from Stamboglis and Corbelli’s Bartolo, ‘an object lesson in comic understatement’ (The Guardian). With Enrique Mazzola at the helm of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, ‘the score bubbles along on a Puckish current of merry mischief’ (The Telegraph).

The first pleasant surprise here is the brightness and clarity of the radio broadcast sound; indeed, it is a bit too bright and harsh but better that than muddiness. There is evidently an audience who applaud at the end but otherwise there is no extraneous noise throughout. Secondly, there is the spring and bounce of the English Chamber Orchestra, alertly directed by Baroque specialist Sir Anthony Lewis. Thirdly we hear a first rate cast of splendid voices headed by Janet Baker, an array of voices unequalled in any of the other nine extant recordings. True, the performance is over forty years old but several of the subsequent recordings are in versions other than Handel's final thoughts before the 1724 premiere and are very much more expensive than this Ponto issue - furthermore, it offers as a bonus a live, 1972 recording of Berlioz's "Les nuits d'été" sung by Janet Baker and played by the BSO conducted by Colin Davis.

According to Berlioz, Spontini was – after Gluck – the greatest genius of French music to pave the way for the Romantic era. And it may well be that the little-known Olympie, premiered in 1819 and subsequently revived in 1826 under the modified title Olimpie, had a greater influence than we have hitherto imagined on the massive upheaval that was to set French opera on the path of the modern ‘grand opéra’. From start to finish, this finely polished score, with its astonishing orchestration, is full of spectacular effects that clearly look forward to Les Troyens of Berlioz.

The German-born English transplant Johann Christoph Pepusch was an older contemporary and colleague of George Frederick Handel, and he is best remembered for arranging the music of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. His involvement in London's music scene also led him to compose his own works for the stage, such as the masque Venus and Adonis, a vehicle for two of the leading sopranos of the day, Jane Barbier and Margarita de L'Epine.

The tale of ill-fated Dido and her Aeneas, as recounted by Virgil, fascinated the 18th century English, who saw it as relevant to the royal machinations they had experienced over the previous hundred years. The glorious economy of Purcell's version was never matched, but numerous versions of the setting by famed Italian librettist Pietro Metastasio were performed on London stages. Handel gets top billing in the graphics here, but in fact this Didone Abbandonata is a work by the Italian composer Leonardo Vinci, who died at age 40 in 1730 before his influence was fully appreciated.

Tamerlano is one of Handel's finest operas, a work filled with deep feelings of love and loyalty, both filial and romantic. This 1970 recording presents more of the opera than any other available. Instruments are modern, but there's drama aplenty, some wonderful singing, crisp playing, and interesting embellishing of da capo sections of arias. Mezzo Gwendolyn Killibrew's dusky, masculine sound is suitable and appealing in the tyrannical title role, while Alexander Young as Bajazet, the opera's emotional center, is terrific–angry, proud, and vocally proficient. Carole Bogard's lovely soprano is just right for Bajazet's determined, adoring daughter, Asteria, and the other soloists are excellent. John Moriarty leads the Chamber Orchestra of Copenhagen with authority.

Donizetti’s fascination with the story of Gabriella di Vergy began in 1826. His first version, written for his own pleasure, was never completed. For over a century that was all that was known to exist. In 1979, Opera Rara discovered in a London library a hitherto unknown complete opera on the same subject. Donizetti had written this for Naples in 1838. The grisly appeal of the story of Gabriella lies in its powerful final scene in which Gabriella’s husband, Fayel, delivers to her a casket containing the still-warm heart of her lover, Raoul. On this world premier recording, Opera Rara also includes three pieces from the 1826 version.

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s Gothic opera The Mines of Sulphur is reminiscent of suspense thrillers from Edgar Allan Poe to Alfred Hitchcock. Love, longing, and dark as well as light comedy abound in this macabre tale of greed and retribution set in a haunted manor house in the West of England. The title of the tale, taken from Shakespeare’s Othello, refers to the theme of gradual corruption.

Xerxes is one of Handel’s latest and most frequently performed operas, famous for its marvelous opening aria ‘Ombra mai fu’. At the centre of the confusing tragicomedy, very loosely based upon the life of Xerxes I of Persia, is a powerful and lovesick royal eccentric, King Xerxes. Rising opera star Gaëlle Arquez in the title role of Xerxes ‘scintillates with her nimble, luminous mezzo-soprano’, singing ‘irresistibly beautiful, impassioned, furious – but never mean’ (Frankfurter Rundschau). Frankfurt’s excellent Opera and Museum Orchester contributes ‘all sorts of refinements’ to this ‘musical smash hit’ (Deutschlandfunk) and ‘In Frankfurt Tilman Köhler ensures a three-hour short abundant and furious banquett … a great evening of opera’ (Deutschlandfunk).

After Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Les Talens Lyriques concludes the group’s cycle of Antonio Salieri’s French operas with the world premiere recording of Tarare. Often unfairly overshadowed by his brilliant contemporary Mozart, Salieri here composed a genuine masterpiece on the only libretto ever written by Beaumarchais.
Salieri has a taste for exoticism and, like Mozart in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, he transports us into a fantasy Orient seen through the eyes of the pre-revolutionary philosophy of the Enlightenment.