Jonas Kaufmann Box Set

Jonas Kaufmann box set with 4 operas featuring Jonas Kaufmann. Below are the discs. Each of them has already been reported on this website, and you can get more details by using the links provided:

Bizet Carmen. 2014. (Grade NA)
Gounod Faust. 2014. (Grade NA)
💓 Massenet Werther. 2014. (Grade A+)
Puccini Tosca. 2014. (Grade D)

Released 2015. Grade: NA

We have reviewed only 2 of these titles, the excellent Werther, which is a traditional production, but made as a movie using the staged version as a location, and the dud Tosca. The other 2 titles are updated (not traditional) productions which seem to have been popular with the Amazon customers, mostly for great singing. Maybe this in one to try to buy used.

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.