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Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, Joyce DiDonato, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Puts: The Hours (Live) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:22:57 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2022 with Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara as its stars, Kevin Puts’s The Hours was praised by The New York Times as “sincere and persuasive … fervent … and soaringly lyrical”. The opera returns to the Met’s schedule in May 2024. Based on both the award-winning 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry and the original novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours interweaves characters and events from three different periods of the 20th century. Joyce DiDonato, who takes the pivotal role of writer Virginia Woolf, says that: “Even though it deals with death head-on, the piece is life-affirming and tells a timeless story. The characters’ struggles are shared universally, and by highlighting them through the different personalities and periods, hopefully everybody can find a part of themselves in the story.”
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Krzysztof Kaczka, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Schubert: Works for Flute (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:38 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © haenssler CLASSIC
From the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 25, D. 795 (“The Fair Maid of the Mill”), the eighteenth lied titled Trockne Blumen (“Withered Flowers”) served as inspiration for Schubert to compose Introduction and Variations, D. 802 for flute and piano. This piece was written in 1824 for Ferdinand Bogner, a flute professor at the Vienna Conservatory and one of Schubert’s friends. Eventually, Bogner became head of the Gesellschaft der Österreichischen Musikfreunde (Austrian Philharmonic Society) and helped organize the premiere of several of Schubert’s works. Deeply expressive and lyrical, the version for flute and string quintet in this recording was arranged by Rainer Schottstädt and is a technical tour de force for every flutist.
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Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – A Concert for Ukraine (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:07:53 minutes | 679 MB | Genre: Classique
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
In another gesture of solidarity with the victims of the war in Ukraine, the Metropolitan Opera and the Polish National Opera will gather leading Ukrainian musicians into the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra for a European and American tour July 28–August 20, including stops in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, before culminating with concerts in New York and Washington, DC. Under the leadership of Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, the orchestra will perform a program that includes Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Seventh Symphony and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with Ukrainian virtuoso Anna Fedorova. Leading Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, who sang the title role of Turandot at the Met in the spring, will perform the great aria “Abscheulicher!” from Beethoven’s Fidelio, a paean to humanity and peace in the face of violence and cruelty.
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