Deutsche Grammophon have re-released the Mozart M22 recordings in a new edition. It contains all the operas, singspiels and other bits and pieces mostly recorded at Salzburg in 2006. The whole thing comes to 33 DVDs recorded in HD and with 5.1 surround sound. It’s also incredibly cheap. Amazon.ca has it listed at C$139.99 including shipping. Full details are available on the Presto Classical site which is likely a good source for UK buyers but others might want to watch the postage charges on this one! The set includes some fine productions including Kušej’s Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito and Guth’s Le nozze di Figaro. It’s also still currently the only way of getting hold of Herheim’s notorious Die Entführung aus dem Serail which has been out of the catalogue for ages and still isn’t available separately. The only drawbacks I can see are that many collectors will already have many of these discs and it’s only available on DVD rather than Blu-ray (but most of these recordings never did make it to Blu-ray). It would make a great Christmas present for someone starting an opera DVD collection.
All the Mozart
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Tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon Off Centre Music Salon opens its 2016/17 season at 3pm at Trinity St. Paul’s. It’s an all Russian show called Four Seasons or Mother Russia. It will feature songs by Prokofiev’s The Ugly Duckling and songs byTchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff, as well as Arensky’s Piano Trio in D minor (op. 32). The highlight is the Toronto premiere of Valery Gavrilin’s song cycle Seasons inspired by Northern Russian folklore and chanting traditions. Performers include cellist Igor Gefter, pianists Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin, violinist Mark Skazinetky and singers Joni Henson and Ryan Harper.
Pauline Viardot is one of those names that crops up quite a bit when one is researching the opera of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was a mezzo-soprano of some note, friend (at the least) of both Turgenev and Chopin, hosted a notable Parisian salon and composed; though, being female, she was not taken entirely seriously by the musical establishment of the time. Among her compositions is a “chamber operetta”, Cendrillon, designed for performance at her salon and written when Viardot was already in her eighties. It’s going to be performed again this fall in Mazzoleni Hall at the Royal Conservatory and I sat down yesterday with director Joel Ivany to talk about the issues involved in staging such an unusual piece in a venue that’s not entirely opera friendly.
Mary Morrison, one of the true greats of Canadian opera, turns ninety today. In her day she was a most distinguished soprano soloist who was also an advocate for 20th century music; especially Canadian. She performed in at least a score of new Canadian works, few of which, sadly, made it to record but you can catch her in the 
operaramblings 