Solti At Covent Garden (CD)

Beginning in 1961, Georg Solti enjoyed a ten-year tenure as Music Director of London’s Covent Garden Opera Company where he raised performance standards while giving British singers more prominence than ever before. Solti made some of his – and posterity’s – most thrilling recordings, cherished by music-lovers and audiophiles the world over.

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The 1960 recording of the ballet music from ‘Faust’ was issued first as a 45rpm disc and later as a coupling to the Offenbach-Rosenthal, ‘Gaîte Parisienne’, surely the very definition of the fabled ‘Decca Sound’ (it appears on Decca Eloquence 480 6589). The pieces by Verdi, Rossini, Offenbach and Ponchielli were originally issued by RCA in 1959 (in England) and 1960 (in the USA) and in the 1970s on Decca when the recordings repatriated to them.

TRACK LIST

CHARLES-FRANÇOIS GOUNOD
Faust: Ballet Music

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK
Orfeo ed Euridice:
Dance of the Furies
Dance of the blessed spirits

GIUSEPPE VERDI
La traviata:
Prelude to Act I
Prelude to Act III

GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
L’italiana in Algeri: Overture
Semiramide: Overture

JACQUES OFFENBACH
Les Contes d’Hoffmann: Entr’acte (Barcarolle)

AMILCARE PONCHIELLI
La Gioconda: Dance of the Hours

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Georg Solti