Claudio Abbado Opera Edition

Forget what might not be here; what is in the box of goodies that makes up "Claudio Abbado: The Opera Edition" is mouth-watering. Twenty complete operas, plus discs of overtures and choral highlights; recital discs by Nicolai Ghiaurov, Roberto Alagna, Bryn Terfel, Anna Netrebko, and Jonas Kaufmann; and live recordings of gala concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic. Even better is the fact that DG's engineering allows all of this music to come through with crystalline clarity. While you might occasionally wish for more reverberation or concert-hall acoustics, you get to hear both the orchestral details and the give-and-take between singers and orchestra exceedingly clearly. This may be the point--Abbado's recordings may not always be the most theatrical discs around, but musically they are superb. Even the few problematic performances make illuminating points. The key to understanding this Abbado box set is in the Rossini discs. The overtures disc is probably the best Rossini overture collection I've ever heard: clean, crisp, and driven. In the opera recordings, you can hear Abbado--a noted Rossini expert--goad the orchestra into precise staccatos and clean attacks that delineate the musical line clearly. Then let singers like Teresa Berganza execute the brilliant coloratura vocal lines that mesh with this, and you're in opera heaven. The box gives you two versions of "Il barbiere di Siviglia" (do you want Herman Prey's Germanic Figaro or Placido Domingo's pallid first attempt at a baritone role?), "Cenerentola," "L'italiana in Aligeri," and best of all the premiere recording of "Il viaggio a Rhiems"--the zenith of Rossini's ensemble writing. The clarity of presentation that Abbado adopts for Rossini clearly became something of a hallmark for him, and it works well in some unexpected corners of the repertoire. His "Lohengrin" is luminous, and early Wagner clearly benefits from a little disinfecting Italian sunlight. (It's probably just as well Abbado never ventured into the Ring cycle; the orchestral excerpts are less convincing, although his accompaniment to Terfel and Kaufmann's "Parsifal" excerpts for once sound truly spiritual.) "Pelleas et Melisande" is almost too bright--for Abbado, the moon is always full in this nocturnal opera--but Debussy's shimmering chording and delicate harmonies do sound miraculous. And while Abbado's Mozart probably won't displace any classic recordings like the Giulini "Don Giovanni," they are well worth hearing for their sense of ensemble. "The Marriage of Figaro" is probably the best of the bunch, with immaculate pacing and vivid interactions during the Act II & IV finales. While "Don Giovanni" takes some time to warm up, the scene in which Giovanni is dragged down to hell is one of the most terrifying on record. Then there are the Verdi discs, which take up a quarter of the box. If Rossini was Abbado's touchstone, his Verdi was also renowned. Two of these performances, "Simon Boccanegra" and "Macbeth" are essentially reference recordings and have rarely been equaled on disc. Abbado captures the dark and brooding majesty of "Boccanegra," and part of his genius is that he manages to make the original music from 1857 and the revisions from 1881 sound like they belong in the same work. He does something similar with "Macbeth," aided and abetted by Shirley Verett's incisive and terrifying Lady--I'm not sure that even Callas put that much venom into the Letter Scene. Close on the tail of these two works is Abbado's "Falstaff": Terfel's knight is Shakespearean in depth, and if Abbado's conducting lacks the quicksilver intensity of Toscanini, we certainly get to hear Verdi's orchestration in luscious detail. Abbado's lightness of tone works well in "Ballo in Maschera" as well, although he's at his best in the French fripperies of the first scene. Interestingly, the two weakest operas in the box are also Verdi. "Aida" is disappointing; Abbado's downside a the lack of healthy, earthy vulgarity--and you need a little to make "Aida" tick. This reading is just a little too refined. Elena Obraztsova isn't in good voice as Amneris, and Domingo sounds bored as Radames. Then there's "Don Carlos": Abbado leads a powerful rendition of the score, but the entire cast sounds as if they would rather be singing in Italian rather than French, which is distracting. (Admittedly, they were hired for an Italian version, but were switched to the French version when DG tried to cancel the recording.) Also, if you're going to record the "1867 Paris version," why are all the passages cut for the Italian revisions in the Appendix and not the body of the recording? That aside, there are lots of other goodies in here. Abbado made some marvelous Schubert recordings, and makes the best possible case for his opera "Fierrabras"--plenty of gorgeous melodies, although a lack of theatrical contrast may explain why this one never took off in the opera house. Abbado gives us a powerful reading of "Wozzeck"; again, his insistence on musical clarity pays dividends, as it makes Berg's modernism much more approachable. Then there is "Khovanschina," which may be the best version on record. I think Abbado makes an even more compelling case for Mussorgsky's other opera than Valery Gergiev does: there no longueurs here. The various gala recordings are fun, and Abbado proves a sensitive accompanist for the solo recitals, especially for Netrebko and Kaufmann. So, if you're going to lay out money for an opera box set, this is a pretty good bet. Abbado was accused by some critics of playing it safe when it came to his musical interpretations, but I think this set proves that Abbado refused to sacrifice musical values for transitory excitement. You won't give up your preferred versions of "Carmen" or "The Magic Flute" for Abbado, but these recordings still provide enjoyment and insight into the works. Try this box and you won't be disappointed--unless you were expecting sung texts and libretti, which you're never going to get in a budget box these days anyway. You'll just have to settle for hours of quality music-making instead.

Abbado was clearly an outstanding conductor of opera. The casts on these recordings are consistently excellent.

This is intended strictly as an overview of the Abbado Opera Edition. I plan on reviewing each opera separately as I listen to it to give enough detail to be helpful to a prospective buyer. So as to the product itself, it complies all of Claudio Abbado's opera recordings for DG - it also contains his Decca recording of Fidelio with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The box housing the CD's is a cube with a flip-top lid. It does a good job holding the discs but i wish the box were a bit sturdier - the box moves at an angle when I hold it to lift up the lid and remove the contents. So care must be taken when you handle the box. The CD's are held in those ubiquitous paper sleeves we see nowadays in these mega-sets. But again the sleeves are thinner than what one usually sees in these types of releases, so care must be taken in taking out a CD and putting it back in the sleeve as well as taking the sleeve out of the box. Oh, and the sleeves have no track listings, just cast listings and disc timings. For track listings you must go to the included booklet which contains said listings and an article about Abbado and his opera legacy with pictures. But ALERT - there are no libretti for any of the operas or recital discs - not so much of a problem I guess for the more familiar operas but less so for some of the others. As to the performances themselves, I can say that none may replace or eclipse versions you may already have, but most are very good to excellent with the Mozart operas IMHO the weakest entries (see my separate reviews for details). The best are the Verdi, the Rossini, the Fidelio, Carmen, the Wozzeck, the Lohengrin and the Verdi and Rossini overtures discs, not to mention the recital discs with various soloists. So while this set may appeal best for die-hard Abbado fans (of which I am one) there may very well be those who amy find the varied repertoire in this set intriguing and find Abbado's approach a welcome amd interesting contrast to recorded versions one may already have. If you can get this set for $100.00 or less this would be a better deal. Paying more than that would be overpriced, i think. Stay tuned for my individual reviews.

La caja esta rota, en mal estado y faltaban discos. Lo devolví.

The record label squandered the opportunity to release, after nearly 30 years in captivity, their studio recording of Strauss' ELEKTRA that Maestro Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic recorded in the late 1980s. Read the main cast for a moment: Jessye Norman, Cheryl Studer, Helga Dernesch, Victor Braun. Today, for myriad reasons that I will not go into, it has become impossible to put together such an important, aristocratic and mouthwatering ensemble for a project. And yet there it remains, hidden for too long. Why?