The inaugural production of Riccardo Chailly’s era as La Scala’s music director, Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco stars Anna Netrebko “ablaze in the title role of warrior-saint” (The Observer) and features an imaginative production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier. The first performance of the opera at La Scala in over 150 years.

The “Queen of Coloratura”, Edita Gruberova, is the undisputed star of this recording of I puritani from the opera house in Barcelona. Her interpretation of Bellini’s Elvira has certainly become one of her showpieces and her superb technique, her top notes and exquisite pianissimos and her amazing command of coloratura make her the focus of this production. The audience rewarded her with long enthusiastic ovations after her the mad scene in the second act, when her heart breaking rendering of the elegiac “Qui la voce sua soave” and the dazzling coloratura in the fast cabaletta undoubtedly sets her name next to the great Elviras of the 20th century. Arthaus captures on DVD Andrei Serban’s production of Bellini’s gloomy masterpiece.

The cast is a dream team', wrote the Financial Times after the premiere of this production of Verdis La forza del destino at the Wiener Staatsoper. Powerful performances by Nina Stemme, who gives a fullblooded portrayal of Leonora, Alastair Miles as her father, Salvatore Licitra as Alvaro, Carlos Álvarez as Don Carlo and Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla resulted in one of the Viennese ensembles most celebrated achievements of recent years. Zubin Mehta leads the Staatsoper Orchestra with agility, subtleness and relaxed mastery, and right from the start David Pountney establishes an atmosphere of entrapment by fate. 'A perfect utopia' (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

This live issue from the 2008 Salzburg Festival centers around Riccardo Muti’s driving, powerful take on Verdi’s score. He gets wonderful, idiomatic playing from the Vienna Philharmonic, and the recorded balance in fact tends to favor the orchestra over the fine, largely fresh-voiced singers. (Muti uses an unusual edition of Act III’s concertato that Verdi wrote for the opera’s Paris premiere, featuring considerable variants in the soprano line and lighter orchestration.)

For his production of “ Don Giovanni“ at the Vienna International Festival (Wiener Festwochen), Roberto de Simone does not want to follow in the footsteps of other directors who modernise the design and add something that did not exist in Mozart’s original. He sends Don Giovanni on a journey through time to revisit the centuries that the character lived through starting with the original costume of the 16th century and ending in the 19th century. Don Giovanni changes garments but is still the same legend and archetype. Something similar can be said for his accompanying antagonist, Donna Elvira. De Simone succeeds in sticking to the flow of the plot and to the music, in which the soloists and Riccardo Muti’s state opera orchestra have a crucial part. Muti spiritedly conducts with a sense for style and gives the singers room to shine. In the baroque ambiance of the theatre on the river Wien, we experience a “Don Giovanni“ in a unique unity of theatrical pretence and top-rate musical performance.

Luis Pasqual's powerful production for the Spanish capital sets Da Ponte's timeless story of sleaze and seduction into the dark world of 1940s Spain. Carlos Álvarez, in the title role, toys with the affections of Donna Anna, Zerlina and the Spanish lady Donna Elvira, before his overpowering methods finally bring his own destruction. "José Bros is a luxurious Don Ottavio, with an excellent high register, perfect diction and an exquisite vocal elegance. Alvarez is the perfect Trickster of Seville. Victor Pablo Pérez, one of the most reputed conductors of the Spanish scene, manages a crystal clear work, very attentive to the beauty of Mozart's score." (La Razón, Madrid)