KARAJAN: The Complete Opera Recordings
Bizet, Gluck, Haydn, Lehár, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Mozart, Musorgsky, Puccini, R Strauss, J Strauss II, Verdi & Wagner
Various orchestra & singers/Karajan
Deutsche Grammophon 479 4640 (70 CDs)
www.prestoclassical.co.uk
It’s the last piece of DG’s Herbert von Karajan rehabilitation project, the most potent reminder of the power he wielded from the 1950s to the 1980s: ‘The Complete Opera Recordings’. It contains 26 operas, some mouthwatering casts, and not just the recordings made for the big Yellow Label, but also Karajan’s earlier Decca operas, and live documents from Austrian Radio’s archives of the Salzburg Festival. Jürgen Kesting’s essay reminds us that Karajan had climbed the ladder the traditional way in provincial German opera houses before the war, but by the time the first recording here was…