The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Kirill Karabits, with Corinne Winters leading the cast, presents the world premiere recording of Thomas de Hartmann’s rediscovered opera Esther. Composed during the Nazi occupation of Paris, the work reflects the composer’s response to the Holocaust, drawing parallels with the Biblical story as adapted from Racine. Revived through detailed study of the manuscript and a new performing edition, Esther blends operatic and oratorio elements, combining monologues, choral writing, and rich orchestration. Influenced by de Hartmann’s diverse training and stylistic evolution, it stands as his most ambitious late work and a significant revival within the ongoing Thomas de Hartmann Project.

Premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1857, Ambroise Thomas’s Psyché recounts the tragic love of Eros and Psyche, entangled in jealousy and manipulation by Mercury and Psyche’s sisters. Exemplifying mid-19th-century French opéra-comique, the work blends Rossinian brilliance with expressive vocal writing, including dazzling coloratura passages for its leads, with Eros written as a breeches role. Librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré skillfully balanced comedy and tragedy through contrasting characters. Anticipating Thomas’s later masterpieces Mignon and Hamlet, Psyché stands as a major achievement in his oeuvre. This recording was made in February 2025 at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest.

Few operas are as emblematic of French music as Carmen. Premiered in 1875 at the Opéra-Comique, its overture was famously described by Sir Thomas Beecham as “the true French national anthem.” Initially scandalous for its intense emotions and morally ambiguous heroine, Carmen’s combination of dramatic flair and Bizet’s vivid Spanish-inspired orchestration gradually captivated audiences across Europe. To mark the 150th anniversary of its premiere and Bizet’s death, the Opéra Royal and Palazzetto Bru Zane present a historically faithful reconstruction of period sets and costumes, with Hervé Niquet conducting the orchestra on period instruments, bringing Seville vividly to life.

This recording derives from a production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1974 conducted by Solti.The team of singers here is entirely strong and convincing . As Onegin, Bernd Weikl skillfully suggests a range of feeling: scorn, vindictiveness, regret and desolation. Teresa Kubiak is an endearing Tatyana, especially strong in the last scene. Stuart Burrows is unexcelled as Lenski. Almost stealing the show, is the Gremin of Nicolai Ghiaurov, whose solitary appearance in Act 3 is well worth the wait.

Our first-ever full-length Italian opera recording, Delos’s star-studded current release of Giuseppi Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra promises to make quite a splash among today’s opera fans. As Verdi was entering his glorious “late period” (Otello and Falstaff) he wrote and re-worked much of Simon Boccanegra, a work that he had first tackled in 1857. The opera emerged in 1881 as a powerful masterpiece, although one that has been unfairly neglected, in comparison with Verdi’s other works on that level. So it’s high time for an authoritative new release of an opera that gives glamorous title star Dmitri Hvorostovsky – considered by many to be the world’s greatest Verdi baritone – the chance to record what he calls “…one of the most complex, deepest characters in the whole baritone repertoire.”

A new collection of Cecilia Bartoli’s finest recordings, including two unreleased arias from Handel’s Alcina. Featuring beloved arias and duets stretching from Handel and Porpora, through Gluck and Mozart, to the Three Kings of 19th-century Italian song: Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. Featuring guest appearances from Sir Bryn Terfel, Alessandro Corbelli, Sumi Jo, Juan Diego Florez and Luciano Pavarotti.

When this opera's oratorio was rediscovered in 1928, it was first believed to be composed by Mozart. But in fact it was a piece of the last opera of the Prague composer Josef Myslivecek (1731-1781), with whom Mozart had friendly relations and who indeed was inspired by Myslivecek’s work. This world premiere recording of the opera “Medonte” by the ensemble l’arte del mondo shows imposingly the exceptional skills of this wrongly neglected composer. Recorded live at the Bayer Kulturhaus, Leverkusen.

On The Sum Of All Fears, the legendary Academy Award-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith delivers a sweeping, high-stakes, and deeply atmospheric masterclass in cinematic suspense. Released in 2002 by Elektra Records for Phil Alden Robinson's blockbuster political thriller, this soundtrack stands as a brilliant testament to Goldsmith's late-career genius, masterfully balancing pulse-pounding action cues with profoundly moving, elegiac motifs. The 16-track landscape operates with a heavy, continuous emotional gravity, perfectly encapsulating the global tension of the film. The score features stunning vocal centerpieces, highlighted by Yolanda Adams’s soaring, soulful performances on If We Could Remember, alongside an intense, beautifully layered rendition of Puccini's iconic Nessun Dorma performed by Bruce Sledge. Shifting fluidly from the frantic, electronic-backed orchestral percussion of Clear The Stadium and Real Time to quiet, chillingly beautiful modal strings, this archive remains an indispensable, high-fidelity monument for serious score collectors and soundtrack purists worldwide.

A fine, effectively complete recording. Haitink's reading is sunny rather than brilliant, but with a typically superlative Glyndebourne stage cast even if the men - the sardonic Desdei excepted - are less characterful than the ladies.

Les Vêpres Siciliennes is one of Verdi’s misunderstood operas. It is usually presented to audiences today as I vespri Siciliani - that is, in a clumsy and pedestrian Italian translation and as such gives a false representation of Verdi’s original concept. This opera was composed for the Paris Opera to a libretto by Eugene Scribe, one of the greatest poets of the day and Charles Duveyrier. Verdi embraces the French idiom – the musical forms, the orchestration, the vocal writing – with the same grandeur and sense of occasion as Rossini and Meyerbeer before him. Certainly to give an opera in translation is no crime but to continually deprive the public of this particularly beautiful marriage of text and music is close to criminal. This is the third in the Verdi Originals series and this BBC recording of the opera finally restores the original French libretto.