The stellar cast of this popular opera includes superb singers as well as excellent actors like Kathleen Battle, Leo Nucci, Rockwell Blake, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Enza Dara
Critical praise for this production: “One of [the Met’s] most ingenious stagings in recent years…made to order for a great Rossini ensemble” (New York Times ) – and for this ensemble: “Battle’s coloratura flowed with astonishing ease and grace, beautifully varied in color” (New York Times). “Alongside Battle’s stunning Rosina, the cast is close to ideal…Blake’s Almaviva is extraordinary…Nucci is a remarkable Figaro…Furlanetto makes a formidable Basilio, Dara an irresistible Bartolo” (Répertoire)

Shania Twain comes full circle on this album, cowriting 11 out of 12 cuts and proving that she can do more than sing. Once again she crosses over into pop-rock territory with this multiplatinum affair, bringing legions of new fans into the country camp. Peppered with hits such as "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" and "Any Man of Mine," Twain's sophomore effort features crisp and clear vocals and country-flavored pop arrangements. Husband and cowriter "Mutt" Lange, known for his production work with hard hitters Def Leppard, has produced a fresh sound for country, enhancing the traditional with a more gritty, gutsy sound; even the more delicate tunes resemble those power-pop tunes from the 1980s. This is music for all occasions: danceable, romantic, and powerful.

It s got to be a very special release that has Suzi Quatro announce proudly: The Devil In Me is the best album in my career to date! After all, the American rock vocalist would hardly utter such superlatives lightly. Suzi s enthusiasm for her latest offering has many reasons, twelve of them to be precise. Because The Devil In Me consists of exactly a dozen songs, each of them from the opening track and title song to the final Motor City Riders a real highlight. The reasons for Suzi s remarkable creative explosion: on the one hand the lockdown, which kept her from her usual touring life in spring 2020, and on the other another collaboration with her son Richard Tuckey, which had already worked out extremely well on her predecessor album No Control. Suzi Quatro knows what she is talking about, after all she s been on stage playing live for more than fifty years.

The Memory of Trees is the fourth studio album by the Irish singer, songwriter, and musician Enya, released on 20 November 1995 by WEA. After travelling worldwide to promote her previous album Shepherd Moons (1991), and contributing to film soundtracks, Enya took a short break before she started writing and recording a new album in 1993 with her longtime recording partners, arranger and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. The album is Enya's first to be recorded entirely in Ireland, and covers themes that include Irish and Druid mythology, the idea of one's home, journeys, religion, dreams and love. Enya continues to display her sound of multi-tracked vocals with keyboards and elements of Celtic and new age music, though Enya does not consider her music to be in the latter genre. She sings in English, Irish, Latin and Spanish.

In the five years between Roxette's last album, Crash, Boom, Bang, and this, their "comeback" album, pop music had changed considerably. Crash, Boom, Bang failed, in part, because it was completely out of step with the times; in 1994 grunge, alternative, and rap ruled the charts, but Roxette always produced a relatively crisp and clean brand of pop/rock. In the five years since then, however, Brit-pop brought alternative rock back towards pop, electronica made dance music "cool" again, and bubblegum pop bands like the Spice Girls made unabashed pop fun again. Also, Per Gessle was fresh off from his very rock-oriented 1997 solo album.

Christoph Graupner (January 13, 1683 in Kirchberg – May 10, 1760 in Darmstadt) was a German harpsichordist and composer of high Baroque music who lived and worked at the same time as Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel.

It's always great to encounter the recording that can "crack" a composer open, making his or her music accessible to a general listening public. And it's all the better when such a recording comes from beyond the usual quarters, as, for example, with this American recording of Renaissance polyphony. Nicolas Gombert was a Flemish Renaissance composer, a successor (and possibly a student) of Josquin who entered the service of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. His music, especially in his masses, tends to present itself as a dense, unbroken flow of polyphony. Gombert is one of the composers music history students tend to slog through in hopes of getting to the good stuff. One noted Renaissance scholar used to refer to him, Adrian Willaert, and Giaches de Wert as "the Ert brothers." All that could change with this disc of Gombert motets and chansons. These works are less dense than his masses, but not by much, and they are considerably less limpid than Josquin's pieces in the same genres. But here it is the performances that clarify them. The Massachusetts ensemble Capella Alamire (the name is a pun on an aspect of an old solmization system) under director Peter Urquhart, recording in a church in Portsmouth, NH, slows the motets down slightly and addresses them with a group of eight singers – the black belt of choral singing.

Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (January 27, 1806 – January 17, 1826) was a Spanish Basque composer. He was nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young. They also shared the same first and second baptismal names; and they shared the same birthday, January 27 (fifty years apart)

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré's Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell's Sleep, Adam, sleep with it's references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms's Salamander, Wolf's Die Bekehrte or Ravel's Air du Feu.

The group had eleven UK hits between 1975 and 1978, all of them making the top twenty. In 1980, they had a lesser (top forty) hit with Take good care of my baby, a cover of Bobby Vee's classic. Of their UK hits, four made the top five, these being If you think you know how to love me, Living next door to Alice, It's your life and Oh Carol (not a cover of the old Neil Sedaka song), all up-tempo songs. I like all those songs but my favorites are the ballads - Something's been making me blue, I'll meet you at midnight and Lay back in the arms of someone. Their other essential UK hits are Don't play your rock'n'roll to me, Needles and pins (a cover of the sixties classic) and For a few dollars more.