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

This week audiences get remasters, rare works, world premieres and many star-studded releases.

Musiques de cinéma

Erato will release “Musiques de cinéma” featuring Laurence Equilbey and the Insula Orchestra celebrating great works by Bach, Händel, Mozart, Pachelbel, Purcell, Rameau, and Vivaldi, all of which have featured on the silver screen. The album includes soloists countertenors Carlo Vistoli and Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, clarinetist Pierre Génisson, mandolinists Julien Martineau and Rossmery Rangel, harpsichordist Justin Taylor, and pianist David Fray.

Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies, etc.

This boxed set is a re-release of the Beethoven recordings recorded by Herbert von Karajan and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra between 1951 and 1958: the complete symphonies (with Nos. 8 and 9 in stereo), the “Missa solemnis,” three overtures, a selection of arias featuring Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 with Walter Gieseking as soloist. Warner Classics releases.

Lamenting Earth

AVIE Records will release “Lamenting Earth,” a program from the tenor Nicholas Phan in collaboration with pianist Myra Huang and The Jasper Quartet. that explores humanity’s interaction with nature as expressed through music by Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Ives, Patrick Castillo and Vivian Fung. The album traces humanity’s continually evolving relationship with the environment through a richly layered musical lens.

“Over the centuries, humankind’s relationship with nature has ping-ponged between two ideas: that we are a part of it, and that we are separate from it,” said Phan in reference to the release. “In this oscillating narrative, we have at times believed that we can subjugate and control nature, and at others sought to understand its rhythms and harmonies in order to live within its bounds and benefit from its gifts. This album traces several moments in that history, juxtaposing works shaped by Romanticism and Transcendentalism with contemporary responses to humanity’s environmental crisis.”

Music Like Water

Navona records releases American composer Katherine Saxon’s piece for double chorus. Inspired by water’s persistence and strength, the work features delicate individual lines and duets that transform into lush harmonies. The Kühn Choir of Prague is featured under the direction of Miriam Němcová.

Stephen Dodgson: Turn Ye to Me – Songs, Volume Three

SOMM Recordings releases music by Stephen Dodgson with Irish soprano Ailish Tynan and British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, both past winners of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. The album also includes tenor James Gilchrist, baritone Roderick Williams, and guitarist and Dodgson specialist, Mark Eden, and pianist Christopher Glynn.

Esther

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kirill Karabits, joined by Corinne Winters and featuring The Grange Festival Chorus, present the world premiere recording of Thomas de Hartmann’s lost opera “Esther.” Often written by candlelight during the Nazi occupation of Paris, Esther was composed as de Hartmann—a non-Jewish Ukrainian expatriate—lived through the unfolding horrors of the Holocaust.

The cast also includes Paul Appleby, Olga Bezsmertna, Andrew Foster-Williams, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Yuriy Yurchuk, and Bernard Richter.

RIGWRECK

“RIGWRECK” is The Crossing’s latest recording. The album has the ensemble immersed in the urgent, word-driven choral writing of celebrated British composer Gabriel Jackson. The five works are guided by texts that wrestle with what the Earth tries to tell us, gun violence, longing, and the fragile bonds between self and world. Conducted by Donald Nally, the ensemble gives voice to poetry by Gustav Sobin, Pierre Joris, Dean Rader, Walt Whitman and Kārlis Vēdeņš (in Ieva Lešinska’s translation).

AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION

Navona releases music by composer Garth Baxter. The album features the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava and Kühn Choir of Prague in a piece that draws its inspiration from a Dylan Thomas poem by the same name.

Concordance: 150 Years of Charles Ives,

The Owsley Stanley Foundation presents Concordance: 150 Years of Charles Ives, a new release from Bear’s Sonic Journals.

Paul Hindemith: Cardillac

The Wiener Staatsoper releases Hindemith’s opera with Tomasz Konieczny, Vera-Lotte Boecker, Herbert Lippert, Wolfgang Bankl, Daniel Jenz, Stephanie Houtzeel, and Evgeny Solodovnikov. Markus Henn directs and Cornelius Meister conducts.

Georg Friedrich Händel: Sosarme

Sarah Charles, Éléonore Pancrazi, Rémy Brès-Feuillet, Nicolò Balducci, Logan Lopez Gonzalez, and Giacomo Nanni star in “Sosarme,” an opera seria composed in 1732 for the King’s Theatre in London.

The Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versailles is conducted by Marco Angioloni.

Lully: Atys

This new recording of Lully’s “Atys” was made in March 2024 and is being released by ALPHA. Conducted by Alexis Kossenko, the recording includes Mathias Vidal, Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau, Tassis Christoyannis, Hasnaa Bennani, Eléonore Pancrazi, Adrien Fournaison, and David Witczak.

Pietro Mascagni: Zanetto

Oehms releases Mascagni’s rarely performed sixth opera featuring Yajie Zhang, and Silvia Narine Yeghiyan. The Chor und Orchester der Berliner Operngruppe is conducted by Felix Krieger.

Bedřich Smetana: The Two Widows

Naxos releases a recording of Smetana’s opera with Adriana Kučerová, Kateřina Kněžíková Jana Sibera, Pavol Breslik, Petr Nekoranec, and Adam Plachetka. The Prague National Theatre Chorus and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Robert Jindra.