Step into the powerful world of opera with Great Opera Choruses, a stirring collection released by Warner Classics.

A keen advocate of the works of Antonio Salieri, Christophe Rousset continues his exploration of the composer's works, having unearthed the manuscript of another masterpiece. The three-act opera Armida, first performed on June 2, 1771 in Vienna, presents a perfect synthesis of the Italian and French styles. Salieri was just twenty when he turned to the difficult opera seria genre. He chose to tackle a well-known subject: that of the love affair between the Christian Crusader Rinaldo and the Saracen sorceress Armida, borrowed from Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata. A very dense plot focuses on an intense drama involving just four characters. The fluidity, originality and brio of his compositional style were to ensure Salieri's lasting reputation throughout Europe.

Suffering in an unhappy marriage, Woman yearns for a world beyond the boundaries of flesh and an existence outside of the conventions of human society. A secret young Lover's desire instigates an explosive metamorphosis, and Woman finds perfect release as a tree. Sivan Eldar composes with Like Flesh her first opera on a libretto by Cordelia Lynn, a poetic saga inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. A new eco-feminist myth about our broken relationship with an environment in crisis, interpreted by Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon, and recorded by b*records at Opera de Lille.

Four CD set. An anthology of George Martin's sound productions before the advent of the Beatles; before the collaboration that would change popular music forever. He re-defined the role of producer; pioneering the recording itself as an art form. This edition is testament to a elegant, fearless musical innovator. The surrealistic, sometimes free-form recordings he created with comic geniuses Sellers, Milligan, Cribbins and Ustinov involved sound effects and collage. These madcap sonic adventures, allied to his understanding of the workings of an orchestra, his contacts within the classical fraternity, his love of the romantic and impressionist composers, and his fascination with studio experimentation made George Martin uniquely able to provide a particular objectivity and realise what the ever-curious Beatles, or any artist, would ask of him. As head of Parlophone, determined to explode the label onto the scene, he sought artists of character; taking mobile recording units out to capture Flanders And Swann's two-man show and the irreverent satirical revue, Beyond The Fringe. The Top Five was breached in 1960 both by Matt Monro and by Peter Sellers And Sophia Loren. George Martin's first UK Number One single, and an exemplar, was 'You're Driving Me Crazy' by The Temperance Seven who combined a revival of popular music from the 20s with styles from the Edwardian era.

This extraordinary CD features an interesting chapter in music history that has given rise to many a speculation: Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera, Leonore, in the world-premiere recording of the version of 1806.

A contemporary of Mozart, Johann Christoph Vogel also died at an early age. Forward looking in approach, this composer of a tormented disposition, sought to extend the operatic revolution undertaken by Gluck in the 1770s. First performed in 1786 at the Opéra de Paris, 'La Toison d’or' reveals that search for an expressive art which demanded an all-embracing involvement from the performers and supplied the music with a sometimes unbearable intensity for audiences of the time.

During the early nineteenth century the new 1804 Viennese version of La Clemenza di Tito, was Mozart's most popular opera in Europe. However, in keeping with the practice during that period, it was performed in versions adapted to the times and the taste of the opera public and this is precisely the starting point for our recording's conductor Alessandro De Marchi. He would like to present Tito in the form in which it was staged and acclaimed in great houses from the Vienna Court Opera to the Milan Scala and from Dresden and Hamburg to Paris during the early years of the nineteenth century. Our recording is based on the acclaimed production at the Innsbruck Festival Weeks 2013 with the Academia Montis Regalis performing on historical instruments.

Demofoonte dates from the early Milan years of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), long before the radical reform operas for which he is most famous and his break with opera seria and the librettos of Pietro Metastasio. Gluck arrived in the northern Italian city in 1737 and was mentored there by composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. Though Sammartini primarily composed symphonies and music for the church, Milan boasted a vibrant opera scene, and Gluck soon formed an association with one of the city's up-and-coming opera houses, the Teatro Regio Ducal.

This recording of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra by De Nederlandse Opera (The Netherlands Opera) was made in November 2011 at the Amsterdam Music Theatre. In addition to an impressive cast, it features the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Toonkunst Choir Amsterdam conducted by Marc Albrecht.

Florence Price reached her musical maturity in Chicago during the 1930s – the decade in which she made a famous debut with the city’s orchestra and produced two substantial concertos. The Piano Concerto in One Movement contains some of her most beautiful music set alongside moments of Romantic bravura. Violin Concerto No. 1 seems never to have been performed during her lifetime but is the most expansive of her concertos and is richly orchestrated. The later Violin Concerto No. 2 is a much more compact work, cast in one expressive movement. Dances in the Canebrakes, originally for piano, evokes 19th-century African American life, heard here in William Grant Still’s orchestration.

Lise Davidsen has recorded Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer in a live performance at her home opera house, Oslo. Her first full length opera recording on Decca Classics. These live performances were the only time she will ever perform the role of Senta, and this album forms an important part of her future legacy. Gerald Finley stars as The Dutchman, a role in which he has won international acclaim for his superb acting and lieder-like vocal finesse. The concert marked the inauguration of Edward Gardner as the new Music Director at Oslo Opera House.

King Leontes of Sicilia is crippled with an all-consuming jealousy when his friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, stays with him and his wife Hermione. What follows is a tale where a marriage is destroyed, a child is abandoned and all hope is seemingly lost for two lovers.Celebrating its tenth anniversary, The Winter’s Tale is an award-winning modern ballet classic, packed with emotional turmoil heightened by Joby Talbot’s compelling score.

In the bicentenary of Paisiello’s death, Catania’s Bellini Theatre staged Fedra, a world premiere performance in modern times of this opera by the composer from Taranto. It was a musical and cultural operation of great interest, which saw the revival – based on the original manuscript and on various transcriptions – of a rich, complex score, and attracted the attention of the Italian and international critics. The French conductor Jérôme Correas, an authority in this repertoire, was on the podium. Fedra had only been performed once in the 20th century for a radio recording and had never been staged in our century before. That single radio recording, however valuable, is however incomplete and, unlike this edition, unfaithful, in many ways, to the original score.

Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence in 1632, moved to France early in his career. By the time he turned 30, he had been named music master to the royal family and elevated to the nobility. Italian opera, particularly the works of Cavalli, had become hugely popular in France, and Lully took up the task of creating a tradition of native French opera. In 1775, in collaboration with librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully produced Thésée, a "tragédie en musique," which marked a turning point in the synthesis of music, dramaturgy, and dance, and became the model for French opera for nearly a century, until the reforms of Gluck.

The timeless, rarely performed drama about witch-hunts, power games between wife and husband, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and prejudice is brought to life captivatingly on the stage of the Deutsche Oper.