The Dresdner Philharmonie, Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden and conductor Daniel Oren present Verdi’s masterpiece La Traviata, together with a stellar cast including René Barbera as Alfredo, Lester Lynch as Germont, and world star soprano Lisette Oropesa as Violetta.

Collegium Vocale Gent and its founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with ‘Silenzio Mio’, which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a ‘pathos’ new on the literary scene.

The ensemble Ratas de viejo mundo lets us discover the richness of the musical heritage of Parma, which developed into a leading musical centre under the Farnese, at the latest in the 16th century. At the Farnese court, Flemish musicians such as Cipriano de Rore or Josquin Persoens achieved great fame and had a decisive influence on the development of instrumental music and the madrigal.

Even Dame Joan Sutherland has rarely if ever made an opera recording so totally enjoyable and involving as this. With the same cast (including chorus and orchestra) as at Convent Garden, it was recorded in 1967 immediately after a series of live performances in the Royal Opera House, and both the comedy and the pathos come over with an intensity born of communication with live audiences. That impression is now the more vivid on this superb transfer, for with spoken dialogue used in this original French version of the opera the absence of background noise is a special benefit, and the production vividly captures the developments in the story.

"Il Divino". This is how the composer Cipriano of Rore is qualified by his peers, in the Renaissance. Because he gave the madrigal a hitherto unprecedented finesse, he was then considered the "first of the musicians" and became a true European reference to the 16th century. Rarely at the time, his work continued to be published several decades after his death.

Perry Como returns to the homeland and the music of his ancestors via the sublime "Perry Como in Italy", recorded in Rome with arranger Nick Perito. Singing in both English and Italian, Como delivers some of the most poignant and thoughtful performances of his career, channeling a melancholy heartbreaking in both scope and depth. Perito's evocatively nocturnal arrangements further underscore the soul-searching drama of the vocals, and while retaining the subtlety and self-effacing honesty that are the signatures of Como's craft, the album borders on the operatic in terms of its emotional intensity.

Verdi wanted a passionate, fiery and action-packed subject for his seventh opera, and he wanted a real prima donna at the center. He found the ideal subject in Joan of Arc, probably one of the most famous female figures in world history. At its premiere in 1845, the new opera was frenetically acclaimed by the audience and further successful performances followed, before the work was overshadowed by Verdi's later, even more famous operas. It is high time to bring it back to the stage, where it can prove its undeniable qualities!

The Tulipa Consort is an ensemble founded by Johannette Zomer in 2013. For their first recording, a selection has been made from the many wonderful sacred works composed by Antonio Vivaldi, the Red Priest of Venice. Motets, including the splendid Nulla in Mundo Pax and Laudate Pueri Dominum, and two beautiful arias from his only surviving oratorio Juditha Triumphans. The goal of Tulipa Consort is to passionately explore 17th and early 18th century music. Being based in Holland, the name of the ensemble was inspired by an event that happened at the beginning of the 17th century in the Low Countries, the so-called Tulip Mania.

Tenor Charles Castronovo celebrates his first Delos solo album with an all Verdi programme which showcases the composer's spellbinding use of theatrical devices. Noble Renegades offers a collection of complete scenes from operas such as Don Carlos, Luisa Miller and I Lombardi which encompass the emotional arc the protagonists experience as the story unfolds, very much epitomizing Verdi's vision of opera as a true "operatic theater". This album shows Verdi's profound influence on Charles's career, featuring roles he has performed all over the world. He is accompanied by "the singer's dream collaborator" Constantine Orbelian and his Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra. Distinguished singers Kristin Sampson, Tomas Pavilionis and Tadas Girininkas, as well as the Kaunas State Choir join in.

This is not exactly the Mario Lanza "best-of" album its title might imply; it consists of recordings made during the last 18 months of the great crossover tenor's life, when he was beginning to suffer serious effects from the health problems that killed him in the fall of 1959…

Maria Callas (born Maria Anna Cecilia Sophie Kalogeropoulou), was an American-born Greek soprano who was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina ("the Divine one").

Gabriel Fauré considered Umberto Giordano’s Siberia to be one of the most interesting and singular works of the early 20th century. The opera’s tragic narrative follows Prince Alexis’s courtesan Stephana. She falls in love with an innocent soldier, Vassili, who is sent to Siberia for killing the Prince. Stephana gives up her life of luxury to follow him but cannot escape her past. With its intensely Russian atmosphere and passionately soaring melodies, Siberia was Giordano’s favorite among his operas. This acclaimed Fiorentino production was greeted with multiple ovations.

Mozart was just 14 years old when he composed Mitridate, re di Ponto for performance in Milan. An opera seria set in ancient times, it boasts a sequence of spectacular arias for its cast of strongly contrasting characters. At the centre of the action is Mitridate himself – the historical Mithridatus, King of Pontus, a ruler of Persian-Greek ancestry who was a formidable opponent of the Roman empire.

Faniska is an opéra comique in three acts by Luigi Cherubini. The German libretto, by Joseph Sonnleithner, is based on the melodrama Les mines de Pologne (1803) by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt.

A daring wife disguises herself in order to be hired as a prison guard and thus rescue her unjustly detained husband: the story of Leonora, taken from the French novel by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, is familiar to us through Beethoven’s only opera.