Recently in News

Latest news

 

Bizet’s Carmen Uncovered

https://boydellandbrewer.com/bizet-s-i-carmen-i-uncovered.html

The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev

https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-sergei-prokofiev.html

Incoming Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi announces her 2020 programme inspired by William Shakespeare and the launch of the Wexford Factory Academy for young Irish singers

https://www.wexfordopera.com/media/news/incoming-artistic-director-rosetta-cucchi-announces-her-2020-programme

Music In The Present Tense: Rossini’s Italian Operas in Their Time

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo43988096.html

The Last Opera: The Rake’s Progress in the Life of Stravinsky and Sung Drama

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=809636

Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/prokofievs-soviet-operas?format=HB

The Operas of Benjamin Britten – Expression and Evasion by Claire Seymour

https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-benjamin-britten.html

The Opera Singer’s Acting Toolkit

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-opera-singers-acting-toolkit-9781350006454/

The real Traviata. The Song of Marie Duplessis

https://h-france.net/vol18reviews/vol18no52palidda.pdf

Glyndebourne announces new Artistic Director

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2018/08/glyndebourne_an.php

BLACK OPERA: HISTORY, POWER, ENGAGEMENT

A musical challenge to our view of the past

Die schöne Müllerin by Mark Padmore

Opera Rara - How to Rescue a Lost Opera

https://vimeo.com/operarara/how-to-rescue-an-opera

Welsh National Opera explores Madness for autumn season

 

New Releases from Opera Rara

 

A Time-Out With Isabel Leonard: In 'L'Heure Espagnole' at San Francisco Symphony

 

On Site Opera Presents 'Barber of Seville' at Fabbri Mansion on New York’s Upper East Side

 

Il Trittico: Puccini's most underrated opera

 

Bizet's Carmen | English National Opera

 

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

News

05 Jan 2005

A Dead-end at Abbey Road?

Twilight of the CD Gods? A Studio 'Tristan' May Be the Last Ever By MICHAEL WHITE LONDON, Jan. 4 - The EMI recording studios at Abbey Road in north London are always a surprise when you walk through the modest...

Twilight of the CD Gods? A Studio 'Tristan' May Be the Last Ever

By MICHAEL WHITE

LONDON, Jan. 4 - The EMI recording studios at Abbey Road in north London are always a surprise when you walk through the modest regency-villa facade and find yourself in a citadel of sound technology. It's like passing through some science-fiction barrier from one world into the next: a magical world that has embraced all categories of music making since the 1930's.

It was here that the 16-year-old Yehudi Menuhin recorded Elgar's Violin Concerto under the composer's baton. Here that the Beatles made their soundtrack to the 60's, turning the adjacent zebra crossing into one of London's tourist sights. And here that through the holiday period an army of orchestral players, singers, agents and sound technicians has been gathering in Studio One — the largest and most celebrated studio in the world, despite its resemblance to a school gymnasium - for what many in the business think will be another landmark of recording history, touched this time with sadness and nostalgia.

The mood can be judged from comments in the cafeteria: "Make the most of it," and "There won't be many more like this."

And what is "this"? It's a gargantuan, million-dollar recording of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," put together as a now-or-never enterprise for the tenor Plácido Domingo but also as a last, heroic stand from a classical CD industry so crushed by economic pressures that many consider it in terminal decline.

[Click here for remainder of article.]

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):