Savage and unremittently dark, Richard Strauss’ Elektra is a gritty psychological thriller, a tale of revenge, torment, matricide and – yes – love.

Gustavo Dudamel and Joyce DiDonato head up this year's list of distinguished winners.

They played enemies in Alan Curtis’s recording of Ariodante, but French-Canadian Baroque specialists Karina Gauvin and Marie-Nicole Lemieux make a happier pair in this collaboration, a selection of arias and duets from Handel’s English oratorios. Handel ceased composing opera in 1741 and turned his hand instead to sacred vocal music. There’s a transcendent quality to these later works, befitting their pious status, but Handel was a man of the theatre, and never lost his knack for drama. Gauvin and Lemieux are well placed to strike that balance, bringing ravishing beauty and drama to these excerpts.  In duet, Gauvin’s pearly soprano contrasts ecstatically with Lemieux’s billowing contralto: the voices blend gorgeously without being subsumed within one another. Welcome as the dawn of day, a sensual love duet between Solomon and his Queen, is an especial delight. Lemieux can stray towards bluster in a militant role, as in Cyrus’s Destructive war from Belshazzar, but to calmer music – As with rosy steps the morn, for instance – she brings a tremulous and earthy beauty.  Gauvin is even better, singing with luscious tone, silken phrasing and keen emotional instincts. Her solo arias are some of the disc’s finest moments:… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

A Handel opera from René Jacobs is always an event and this recording is a veritable cracker.

Benedict Andrews’ long-awaited, controversial production is a match made in heaven. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The hunt is on to find a singer with a seriously low range to record a new composition.

Richard Bonynge gives his personal account of the struggles and triumphs of his late wife, La Stupenda.

New Yorker Joseph Colaneri takes up the baton for Madama Butterfly in July. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The conductor joins his late wife Dame Joan Sutherland as Companion of the Order of Australia. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Strauss’s Elektra is the Perth Festival’s most bloodthirsty offering.

This exceedingly rare anthology presents ballet music from four seldom-performed operas by the French late-Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. This disc may be the only way most people will ever experience these delightful works. We know the operatic Saint-Saëns for the most part only through Samson and Delilah and its famous aria Softly Awakes My Heart. His other operas have languished, but here we have excerpts from his Henry VIII, Ascanio, Étienne Marcel and Les Barbares – all mostly consigned to the music history books.  Orchestra Victoria under Guillaume Tourniaire makes a persuasive case for ending this neglect. If the rest of the operas are as graceful and beautiful as the ballet music suggests, then their resurrection is well overdue. The music is elegant, and surprisingly modern touches are couched in musical language wittily evoking a more Classical era. Tourniaire weaves an orchestral tapestry of the most delicate beauty and fluidity. The orchestral sound is never excessive – this refined music is always on its best behaviour. Orchestra Victoria’s playing has a silky sheen and is layered as if translucent. Their level of professionalism makes it extraordinary that our federal and state governments and even The Australia Council are not willing… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

It’s a brave man who steps into the shoes recently vacated by “Big Lucy” and certainly no one could accuse Vittorio Grigolo of timidity. For his second Sony album, the former Sistine Chapel choirboy with the matinee idol looks has nailed his colours firmly to the mast with a selection of popular arias and Italian song. In his sleeve note Grigolo cites Gigli’s influence but also, tellingly, popular tenor Claudio Villa. So how does it stack up? First off, the opera: Grigolo certainly has all the notes. He also has a fast, but not intrusive vibrato. My two quibbles concern a tendency to be below the note at medium volume and another to scoop up to notes in the upper part of his voice. Listen to his La Donna E Mobile for an example of what I mean. This is a pity as he is a good vocal actor and he tops it off with a terrific bravura high B. Elsewhere he offers us a most sensitive Lamento Di Federico from Cilea’s L’Arlesiana, proving that with a little control he can manage any vocal waywardness. Where this CD really takes off, though, is with the “popular”… Continue reading Get unlimited…