Imelda de'Lambertazzi (1830) was written just before Donizetti's first great international success, Anna Bolena, and it remains one of his many operas that has never made it into the repertoire. In his illuminating program notes, Jeremy Commons argues that Imelda was probably Donizetti's most forward-looking, even avant-garde opera; the composer was determined to create music that matched the demands of the drama, and therefore ignored many of the operatic conventions audiences had come to expect. It's no surprise, then, that it was badly received, and has rarely been revived.

This DVD presents Seiji Ozawa conducting two great choral masterpieces, beloved by audiences around the world. Orff's Carmina Burana, boisterous and lyrical, sets medieval songs in a celebration of life's pleasures. Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony, concludes with the uplifting 'Ode to Joy', a timeless plea for universal brotherhood.

This time-honoured production of Verdi's final opera, one that has seen all the greatest Falstaffs of the last four decades hold court at its convincingly shabby Garter Inn and upset the decent folk of its lovingly recreated Tudor Windsor, marked the first appearance at the Met of producer and designer Franco Zeffirelli in March 1964. The Anglophile Zeffirelli had by then made his Shakespearean reputation with a revelatory Romeo and Juliet in London - his films of this play and of The Taming of the Shrew were shortly to follow - as well as with a similar production of Falstaff at Covent Garden, and the attention to visual and psychological detail displayed in his Met Falstaff won it high praise: “a milestone in the history of operatic production in this city" was the judgement of the New York Herald Tribune.

It is more than twenty years since Solti last recorded Così for Decca, and if that earlier version was far from ideally cast, this new one more than makes amends. Above all, it has a commanding Fiordiligi in Renée Fleming, who conveys all the tragic vulnerability of this central character. Her performance of the great second-act rondo ‘Per pietà’ would be enough to melt the hardest of hearts. Anne Sofie von Otter and Olaf Bär are in fine form, too; and while Adelina Scarabelli is not exactly a mistress of disguises (she scarcely alters her voice at all for Despina’s part as the mesmeric doctor), her vitality is irresistible.

In 1813, a month before his 21st birthday and three years before his Barber of Seville, Rossini had his one-act farsa Il Signor Bruschino premiered at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice. It was not well received, although its overture, with the second violins tapping their music-stands with their bows, has become popular. The cast is strong, with Samuel Ramey providing the most potent performance as the duped guardian Gaudenzio. Claudio Desderi weaves through the absurd plot as the ridiculous figure of the elder Bruschino with a great deal of character, although the sound is somewhat threadbare at times. Frank Lopardo as the lovelorn Florville, pretending to be the young Bruschino, has a splendid, mellifluous tenor.

The central facts of this brilliant performance are the conductor's vision and energy, expressed through a virtuoso orchestra and a cast carefully selected for theatrical as well as musical skills. The feeling of unrelenting pressure in the music seems to be an externalization of Don Giovanni's compulsions, which are only thinly veiled by his aristocratic manner and Mozart's mellifluous but intensely dramatic music. Riccardo Muti's tempos are often fast, but not so fast as to interfere with the fine nuances of dramatic expression in the orchestra and the singers, and he makes the gritty realities underlying the often smooth surface of the words and music intensely clear at every point.

A studio recording made in association with staged performances in Vienna in 1989 features the very beefy Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Abbado with Agnes Baltsa’s tangy mezzo giving a very characterful portrayal as Isabella. …[E]xpert Rossinians Corbelli and Enzo Dara sing Haly and Taddeo and are joined by a very characterful Ruggero Raimondi as Mustafa. Despite the size of the band, the performance goes along with zip with the finale of act one particularly invigorating.

Semiramide is Rossini's last opera seria. The title role was written for his wife, Isabella Colbran. The extremely florid vocal style is often a vehicle for spectacular vocal display rather than an intrinsic part of the score. The ensemble-scenes (particularly the duos between Arsace and Semiramide) and choruses are also of a high order, as is the orchestral writing, which makes full use of a large pit. The work starts with a well-known overture, and throughout it calls for outstanding singers in the leading soprano and contralto roles. Semiramide is occasionally performed but is not part of the standard operatic repertoire.

This DVD presents three of Mozart's best-loved sacred works, filmed in the magnificent Baroque Basilica of Waldsassen, Bavaria. "It is the time and the place for Mozart, that he may strengthen us, bless us, and help us finally to archieve peace of earth", declared Leonard Bernstein, introducing this concert in 1990 - the year of his death. Featuring superb soloists, his inspirational performance of the great C minor Mass found widespread critical acclaim.