The Valentine’s Day recital in the RBA was given by Simone McIntosh and Rachael Kerr. They served up fare appropriate to the occasion unlike in 2013 when Franz-Josef Selig gave us a Valentine recital mostly about Death! It was an interesting mix of material starting with two of the Britten folk song arrangements; “The trees they grow so high” and “The miler of Dee”. Quite a bold choice in some ways as the first one is almost, but not quite, a capella so there’s nowhere to hide. It was good. Not only was Simone’s voice accurate and expressive but she gave herself some metrical freedom. There is nothing worse than a singer singing this material as if they have a broomstick up their ass.
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Britten’s Owen Wingrave is a curiously neglected opera. It’s rarely performed live and the only recorded versions are 2 CD recordings plus DVDs of TV productions. The earliest of each feature Benjamin Luxon in the title role and Peter Pears as General Wingrave. The 
Chinatown; music by Alice Ho, words by Madeleine Thien and Paul Yee, is a multilingual opera about the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia. It ws commissioned by Vancouver City Opera where it played in 2022. It’s now been recorded for CD by the original cast.
Regular readers will know I’m something of a Peter Grimes completist so I was interested to get my hands on a recording previously unheard by me (one of only two such!). It’s a 1992 recording made in Watford Town Hall and, as far as I know, was not made in conjunction with a stage run. The Grimes is Anthony Rolfe Johnson with Thomas Allen as Balstrode and Felicity Lott as Ellen Orford. There’s also a young Simon Keenleyside as Ned Keene. Bernard Haitink conducts with Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House. 
Decca have just released a 3CD set of previously unreleased recordings made by the late Jessye Norman between 1989 and 1998 with various orchestras and conductors.
If you follow such things you will probably have seen that the Bergen recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes won Gramophone magazine’s “Record of the Year” award. This came as no surprise as it is very, very good. My detailed review is in the Fall 2020 edition of Opera Canada. In that review, which was made using the electronic copy supplied by the distributor (16 bit, 44.1kHz stereo .wav files), I speculated that the commercial release, which is hybrid 24 bit/48kHz stereo and SACD surround, might well be “demonstration quality”. It is. I’ve now had a chance to sample the SACD version and it’s really good. There’s a really good level of detail and transparency with plenty of entirely natural sounding bass extension. That’s generally been my experience of such releases on the Chandos label and this is one of the best of them that I’ve heard. If you have gear that will play SACD you really should hear this!
Earlier this month I was reviewing a new CD recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes for Opera Canada (you can read it in the Fall 2020 issue or 
operaramblings 