Welcome back for this week’s look at the latest CD and DVD releases in the opera world.

This week audiences will get to explore a new album by one of the most acclaimed Mozart sopranos of our time and a new Ring Cycle. There are some rarely performed composers being explored.

La Serenissima

Composer and vocalist Esbe will release her ninth studio album. The recording is named after the city of Venice, known in the 17th Century as the Most Serene Republic.

Motion Studies 

Navona Records releases The Crossing and Donald Nally’s latest album. The new record “MOTION STUDIES” features Justine Chen’s “Shallow Breath and Stealth” and Nicholas Cline’s “Watersheds.”

Chen’s piece captures poet Jena Osman’s musings on the 21st-century reframing of paranoia, privacy, and the pervasive desire to run away from the data that follows us. Meanwhile, Cline’s “watersheds” motion is boundary rather than escape.

Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 2

The Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron releases “Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 2.” The recording is the second in the ensemble’s multi-season project to commemorate the circa-600th birthday of the great Franco-Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem.Richard

Wagner: Das Rheingold

Unitel Classica releases the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s new “Das Rheingold” from October 2022. The cast includes Michael Volle, Rolando Villazón, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Mika Kares, and Claudia Mahnke. The Staatskapelle Berlin is conducted by Christian Thielemann and Dmitri Tcherniakov directs.

Mozart, You Drive Me Crazy!

Golda Schultz devotes her new album to Mozart’s music with the Kammerakademie Potsdam and Antonello Manacorda. The album includes arias from “Don Giovanni,” “Così fan tutte” and “Le nozze di Figaro.”

In a statement, Schultz notes, “Why does Mozart drive me crazy? First of all, because his music, which sounds so easy when you listen to it, is extremely difficult to perform . . . And when I immerse myself in the world of Da Ponte and Mozart, I realize that there’s a deep complexity to their female characters: they endure the toughest trials, but they also display great strength. In fact, these operas explore humanity from the feminine perspective: every single one of these women is constantly evolving. They show how human beings transcend trauma and how grief and pain can be overcome.”