Welcome back as we explore the latest CD and DVD releases from around the opera world.

This week audiences get to hear rare pieces by Massenet, and Donizetti as well as Ethel Smyth, Bartok and Mark Abel.

Massenet: Songs With Orchestra II

Hélène Guilmette, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, Julien Henric, and Thomas Dolié lead an album cenetered on more than twenty mélodies for voice and orchestra by Jules Massenet.

The Orchestre de l’Opéra Normandie Rouen is conducted by Pierre Dumoussaud

Gaetano Donizetti Songs

Margarita Gritskova and Maria Prinz perform record songs by the prolific Bel Canto composer.

The Miraculous Mandarin

Music Director Gustavo Gimeno, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra release their third recording on Harmonia Mundi label, featuring music by famed Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, on February 13, 2026.

Captured live at Roy Thomson Hall on Nov. 21–23, 2024, the recording is bookended by two Bartók works—his popular Concerto for Orchestra and the complete score to his controversial pantomime, “The Miraculous Mandarin,” which also features the ethereal voices of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Donnacha Dennehy’s The First Child

Signum Records releases the debut recording of “The First Child,” the final piece in a landmark trilogy of operas by composer Donnacha Dennehy and librettist Enda Walsh. Produced by Irish National Opera and Landmark Productions, “The First Child” features a cast that includes Dean Powe, Emmett O’Hanlon, Eric Jurenas, Joan Sheehy, and Caia Leseure, alongside Crash Ensemble under the baton of Ryan McAdams.

Mark Abel: 4.4.2

Delos releases composer Mark Abel’s seventh album. The album features four works, each for two musicians, and showcases one of America’s most original compositional voices alongside an impressive roster of internationally accomplished artists.

Among the artists on the album are Michael McMahon, Alice K. Dade, Ieva Jokubaviciute, Jennifer Choi, Jonah Kim, Keisuke Nakagoshi, and Simone McIntosh.

The Spectre’s Bride

Navona Records releases Dvořák’s cantata “The Spectre’s Bride”  featuring the Prague Philharmonia, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno and conductor Petr Altrichter. The recording stars soloists Veronika Rovná, Richard Samek, and Roman Janál.

Magic & Desire

Navona releases Gilda Lyons and Roger Zahab’s “Magic & Desire” a song cycle of intimate connections. The album includes Robert Frankenberry and Gilda Lyons alongside pianists Benjamin Binder and Roger Zahab.

Twelve Blocks

Pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown releases a new music video for his work, “Lake Alan,” from his upcoming album, “Tweleve Blocks.  Created by filmmaker Angeline Gragasin, this 16mm music video imagines the founding family of Yaddo – an artist retreat in Saratoga Springs – at play on a winter day in 1878.

Conceived where Brown and Gragasin first met, and where the tragic death of all four Trask children occurred, the film hovers between document and fantasy, like a rediscovered home movie.

I Wish I Were Dead

The new album is devoted to contemporary music for voice and cello. Duo Étrange is formed by cellist Sahara von Hattenberger and soprano Vanessa Croome and the  new album includes “Urbexcelsis” by Nicole Lizée, “Rubaiyat,” Op. 82 by Airat Ichmouratov, “Simone: Modern Myth” by Laurence Jobidon, a work by Fong Jeffrey, as well as “Rumi: Quatrains of Love” by Luna Pearl Woolf, “Tree of Life” by Maya Fridman, and “Kväll” by Anders Hillborg (arranged for voice and cello).

Ethel Smyth: Der Wald

Samueol Park, Edith Grossman, Sangmin Jeon, Erik Rousi, Mariya Taniguchi, Zachary Wilson, Mira Ilina, and Hak-Young Lee star in Smyth’s opera in a new recording for CPO. The recording also includes the chor der Oper Wuppertal and Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal under conductor Patrick Hahn.