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.
The first is a series of extracts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde recorded in Leipzig in 1998 with Kurt Masur conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Besides the Prelude there’s most of the Isolde/Brangäne scenes from Act 1 (Hannah Schwarz is Brangäne). Then comes the huge Act 2, Scene 2 duet; “Isolde! Geliebte! – Tristan! Geliebte!” etc, with Thomas Moser as Tristan, and finally, and inevitably, the “Liebestod”. It all sounds really good with the duet properly ecstatic and the “Liebestod” very moving. It’s a studio recording made in many takes so that challenging final scene doesn’t have to be sung after many hours on stage which no doubt contributes but it’s all very fine and a good record of Jessye in the role.
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 
This new recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes was recorded from semi-staged performances in the Grieghallen in Bergen in November last year. It’s very good indeed. Of course, there are many good audio and video recordings of this piece going back to the composer’s own version with Peter Pears in the title role; recorded in 1959 and many fine singers have recorded the title role. To stand out from the field, a new recording needs an outstanding Grimes and in Stuart Skelton this version has one. He manages to encompass both the brutal, gritty side of Grimes as well as the more ethereal side. Pears did the latter brilliantly but could never quite manage the grit. Vickers, who practically owned the role in the 1970s, was brutal but didn’t have the voice or the stage skills to bring out the gentler side. Perhaps the first person to really portray the full complexity of the character was the late Philip Langridge and there’s much about Skelton’s portrayal that reminds one of him. It shades toward the delicate most of the time with some lovely singing in “Now the Great Bear” and in the mad scene. But when Skelton needs to be brutal he’s downright scary.
operaramblings 