The opera is based on the play La Bataille de Toulouse by Joseph Méry.
The performance is conducted by Boris Brott, who served as Assistant Conductor to the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, and Music Director and Conductor for the Royal Ballet.

A beautifully-packaged 50-disc box set, released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, one of the most important and adventurous early music labels. The set contains 50 classic recordings of baroque and ancient music, chosen to represent the breadth of this huge and varied catalogue and each disc is slip-cased with artwork replicating the original CD or LP artwork.

Mozart's genius in setting to music Da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks Così fan tutte as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful production for the Glyndebourne Festival in 2006, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be 'shockingly traditional', while Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.

This production from Teatro Comunale Luciano Pavarotti Modena is conducted by Fabrizio Ventura. He has performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden as well as the Arena di Verona and the Sydney Opera House. The cast is led Giacomo Prestia who has performed with some of the world’s greatest conductors including Abbado, Mehta, Muti, Gatti and Barenboim. He is supported by Mario Malagnini and Cellia Costea.

A musically strong and visually spectacular production…In a very traditional staging, Lee brings an enormous amount of visual detail to the opera…Aida and Amneris lead with superb performances, extracting every ounce of the psychological drama of the later acts…The orchestra, under Fogliani’s direction, play with a brilliant palette of colours. (MusicWeb International)

Unlike Verdi's earlier successes, Nabucco and I Lombardi, both of which had been composed for the large stage at La Scala, Milan, Ernani was written for the smaller stage and more intimate atmosphere of Teatro La Fenice, Venice and he was in his thirty third year when it was composed. This recording is superb in every way. The singers, led by Placido Domingo as Ernani and Mirella Freni as Donna Elvira, entertain us with bravura performances and it's a joy to listen to and watch from beginning to end.

Parry’s 1888 oratorio on the Apocryphal tale of an avenging Jewish widow emerges as a worthy successor to Mendelssohn’s Elijah in this gripping world premiere recording with Sarah Fox, Kathryn Rudge and Toby Spence.

For "La forza del destino", Verdi created one of his most famous melodies, the "fate" motif that permeates the whole of the score. Music and action alternate in masterly fashion between large-scale crowd scenes and intimate interiority, in that way illustrating Verdi's real theme: the manner in which fallible human beings are destroyed by a cruel fate.

Il Trovatore was based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez and was an instant success. The cast is here led by Marcelo Alvarez, Norma Fantini and Leo Nucci and is conducted by Yuri Temirkanov.
Large symbols…make an effective home for a serious Il Trovatore, precisely paced and balanced by Yuri Temirkanov…Especially notable is his handling of what one might term 'old' Verdi orchestral tricks (ironic Bellinian wind counterpoints of parodistic military brass). The casting here is led by a Manrico from Marcelo Alvarez worthy of vocal and dramatic attention. (Gramophone Magazine)

This is a wonderful performance, one of the finest in this Tutto Verdi series of the complete operas. Conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti is an unlikely looking gentleman at first glance but at his first wave of the baton one realizes he is a master. His upbeat tempi have a big sweep that gives the opera the brilliance Verdi intended. The tenor, Francesco Meli (Riccardo), is a young fresh voice, powerful and sensitive; the baritone, Vladimir Stoyanov is beginning to take over from the venerable Nucci in the series.

This eight-disc set includes odes and theater pieces; and Gardiner's performances are more than excellent. He synthesizes the spare delicacy and ceremonial grandeur of Purcell's music in performances that are very satisfying.

'Ulysse' by Jean-Fery Rebel (1666-1747), with its prologue and five acts, was given at the Paris Opera on January 23 1703. The libretto by Henry Guichard, after Homer, recounts the return of Ulysses to Ithaca, where Circe, still in love with him, attempts to regain him by magic. The opera ends in the triumph of love over evil. Rebel followed the formal framework of the lyric tragedies of his master Lully, including some scenes to marvel at. But his orchestral writing also announces Rameau, especially in the depiction of battles, earthquakes or storms.

'Titon et l'Aurore' is an opera in three acts and a prologue by the French composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville which was first performed at the Académie royale de musique, Paris on 9 January 1753. The authorship of the libretto has been subject to debate; Mondonville's contemporaries ascribed the prologue to Antoine Houdar de la Motte and the three acts of the opera to the Abbé de La Marre. Titon et l'Aurore belongs to the genre known as the pastorale héroïque. The work played an important role in the so-called Querelle des Bouffons, a dispute over the relative merits of the French and Italian operatic traditions which dominated the intellectual life of Paris in the early 1750s.

The singing and musicianship here is of a high standard and Zanetti conducts with verve…Certain aspects of Pier Luigi Pizzi’s production are good while others are somewhat disappointing. (MusicWeb International)

Few productions in the Metropolitan Opera's repertory have been so unanimously admired as Richard Wagner's Tannhauser. The New York Times, reviewing the telecast performance of Tannhauser, observed:"One of the most gorgeous and gloriously romantic productions in the Met's repertory …the scenic designs are both breathtakingly grand and painstakingly subtle." The individual performers garnered praise from other critics: "you may just about explode with the musical excitement that conductor James Levine and his cast generate."