This gripping and visually stunning film has been universally hailed as one of the most satisfying of all versions of opera on celluloid. Director Gianfranco de Bosio has given an extraordinary dimension of realism to this story of love, deception and murder by shooting it all in the original Roman location. Using diverse cinematic tricks and imaginative camerawork, this opera film is much more a visual interpretation of Puccini’s music than a theatre piece filmed in original settings.

The long awaited new studio album! For the recordings, Tito Larriva chose a studio near his hometown. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, and always wanted to record in this studio called Sonic Ranch, less than an hour away. He thought it would be fun to be near his dad while recording the new album. Larriva drew energy from his father, the desert, and all the magical moments he carries in his heart. From what he calls home. "8 ARMS TO HOLD YOU" captures the colors and smells of the desert, is passionate and romantic. Along with Tito's electrifying vocals, another masterpiece in his long and successful career as a musician, composer and actor.

All-Time Greatest Hits is a budget-priced, ten-track selection of the Little River Band's best-known material, and in many ways, it functions as a definitive collection for casual fans, since it contains all of the big hits – "Help Is on Its Way," "Happy Anniversary," "Reminiscing," "Lady," "Lonesome Loser," "Cool Change," "The Night Owls," "Take It Easy on Me," "Man on Your Mind," "The Other Guy" – and no filler.

The international success of Faust after its premiere in 1859 completely overshadowed all of Gounod’s subsequent operas. He had known Goethe’s masterpiece for two decades and brought to the text his gifts for memorable melody and rich orchestration. Added to this, the plot of Faust’s ageing and the heroine Marguerite’s redemption, offered the opportunity for the most spectacular stage effects. Heard here in its 1864 London version with an additional air and without spoken dialogue or ballet, Faust represents 19th-century French opera at its peak.

Royal Rhymes and Rounds is the King's Singers' contribution to the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne in 2012. There are ballads, part songs, madrigals, rounds, and anthems written during the reigns of (and some also in honor of) Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. The music from the times of Henry and Elizabeth I is especially strong since it was the era of a flowering of English song, which then lay relatively dormant for several centuries. The composers include such luminaries as William Cornysh, Orlando Gibbons, John Dowland, and Thomas Weelkes, as well as Henry himself, whose rousing ballad Pastime with good companie opens the album. It's in this transparent repertoire that the group sounds its absolute best. The singers' immaculate intonation, focused tone quality, and sensitive musicianship are remarkable.

Robben Ford is an American rock, blues and jazz guitarist. Ex-member of fusion pioneers Yellojackets, he is admired for his solo works but also known for his collaborations with giants of music like Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison and many others. He comes from a generation of Californian musicians who contributed to eliminate boundaries between different genres, often writing and performing timeless music that will stand the test of time.

Formed in 1968, the original Alice Cooper band forged a theatrical brand of hard rock that was destined to shock and had never been seen before. Within five years they would release no fewer than seven studio albums, amongst them their international breakthrough School's Out (including the Top 10 hit of the same name) and the US #1 Billion Dollar Babies (1973). By 1974, the band had risen to the upper echelon of rock stardom… and then, it dissolved.

Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau ("The mermaid") is a three-movement symphonic fantasy based on the Hans Andersen story. It was first performed (under the composer's direction) in 1905, and is thus a good deal earlier than the works that have recently excited renewed interest in him—the oneact operas Eine florentinische TragOdie (1916) and Der Zwerg (1921), and the exquisite Lyric Symphony of 1922. In its masterly handling of a large orchestra, however, and of an episodic but firm structure, it is a far from immature piece. Zemlinsky was 34 when he wrote it, after all. If his list of works were not in such a terrible mess—many are unpublished; several, including the present work, were until recently thought to be lost—Die Seejungfrau would count as his Op. 30 or thereabouts.

When the Czech composer Petr Eben died in 2007, he was renowned and performed the world over as a composer for choirs and organ. Nevertheless, 15 years on, this album inaugurates the first attempt at a complete survey of his output for the organ – an output so rich and individual that it has come to define a late 20th-century sound for the instrument as characterfully as Marcel Dupré achieved some six decades earlier.

The tragic fate of composer Oskar Böhme long went unresearched. His music suffered a similar fate. On his new album “Oskar Böhme – Trumpet Concerto & Pieces” the trumpeter Matthias Höfs is joined by The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in a performance of his most ambitious works that aims to win a hearing both for his striking and sensitive music and for the story of his life. The album will be released by Berlin Classics on September 30.

Excellent recording from the Heath Brothers' drummer, with brothers Percy (bass) and Jimmy (sax), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Ted Dunbar (guitar), and Kenny Barron (piano).

This underrated Average White Band album produced by David Foster featured songs by AWB with Foster co-writing a couple with the guys. The album's smooth, jazzy sound turned off fans that liked AWB rawer. Time, however, has treated these tracks well (they can be found on CD) and what wasn't cutting-edge at the time has proven to be timeless trinkets. Check out: "Catch Me (Before I Have to Testify)," "Let's Go Round Again," "For Your Love," and "Into the Night," the LP's rawest cut.

Riccardo Chailly's much-anticipated recording of Mendelssohn's Italian symphony in the revised 1834 version recorded in Dolby Atmos in the glorious, golden auditorium of Teatro alla Scala. Coupled with Schubert's two Rossini-inspired overtures (in the Italian Style) and three Mozart overtures to operas premiered in Milan.

Early Plague Years combines Thinking Plague's first two albums on one CD. Moonsongs was a 1986 cassette released the next year on LP by Dead Man's Curve. …A Thinking Plague was first released on LP in 1984, then on cassette in 1986. Both were long out of print and impossible to find. The remastering is fabulous, giving these albums a sound far superior to what they ever had. Due to time limitations, a few edits had to be done. "Warheads" misses four bars toward the end, the improv "Collarless Fog That One Day Soon" fades out two minutes earlier, and the percussion section on "Moonsongs" has been shortened a bit. Nothing dramatic and all seamless, but one can't help but wonder why Cuneiform put the second album first on the CD. Fans of Thinking Plague and of American avant-prog bands like the Motor Totemist Guild, U Totem, and 5uu's will be delighted, but newcomers to this style should begin with In This Life or In Extremis.