Above: soprano Amy Shuard
My friend Dmitry and I have found an interesting source for live opera recordings: Opera Depot. ince there are fewer and fewer things of interest on the current opera scene, we've found some very exciting souvenirs of the "Last Golden Age' at Opera Depot. And many of the titles in their catalong are things I'd never seen on offer from other sources.
I've just been listening to a 1965 WALKURE from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. the sound is surprisingly good for that era. Sample here. Sir Georg Solti conducts with his customary feel for the grandeur of the music, and the singing - though not always perfect - is emotionally committed. Of particular note is the radiant Sieglinde of the great Dame Gwyneth Jones, one of her earliest major succeses. Ernst Kozub is a vocally resiliant Siegmund and Amy Shuard, though smetimes a bit taxed vocally, is a womanly Brunnhilde. I'm especially taken with David Ward's Wotan: he manages with skill some of the role's highest-lying phrases and his voice floods with tenderness and despair in the opera's final pages.
