{"id":115,"date":"2012-06-08T16:06:34","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T15:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=115"},"modified":"2012-06-24T11:29:32","modified_gmt":"2012-06-24T10:29:32","slug":"test-post-for-graham-williams-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Seven Classic Operas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>7 Classic Operas\/<\/strong><strong>Various Directors\/Warner Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To say this package of seven masterpieces of the operatic repertoire is tempting would be something of an understatement \u2013 particularly as (largely speaking) these are the best performances available of the individual works. A more recent production of Britten\u2019s <em>Peter Grimes<\/em> has recently appeared on DVD (in anomorphic widescreen), but the definitive Jon Vickers\/Colin Davis performance included here absolutely obliterates the later version in intensity. And we have a delectable set of Richard Strauss\u2019 <em>Arabella<\/em>, meltingly sung by the American soprano Ashley Putnam, and a powerful version of Janacek\u2019s <em>The Makropolous<\/em> <em>Case<\/em>, while Puccini\u2019s <em>La Fanciulla del West<\/em> receives a matchless rendering by Placido Domingo and Carol Neblett. More Puccini delights can be found in <em>Manon Lescaut<\/em> with Kiri Te Kanawa. Johann Strauss\u2019 <em>Die Fledermaus<\/em> is more problematic (with some graceless singing), but Offenbach\u2019s <em>Tales of Hoffmann<\/em> is a delight. The discs are mostly academy ratio (rather than widescreen), but this is still a treasure trove of operatic delights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>7 Classic Operas\/Various Directors\/Warner Vision To say this package of seven masterpieces of the operatic repertoire is tempting would be something of an understatement \u2013 particularly as (largely speaking) these are the best performances available of the individual works. A &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=115\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}