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Commissioned to mark the 1882 All-Russia Exhibition of Industry and Crafts, this extraordinarily popular work was premiered at the consecration of the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Redeemer - the monument

Aïda is one of Verdi's greatest gifts to grand opera. It magnificently combines high drama, stage spectacle, and a musical score that is one of the glories of operatic writing. A great success from its

Brahms's deeply moving Alto Rhapsody is one of the glories of the choral repertoire. Though it was written as a wedding song for the daughter of his friend Clara Schumann, the work clearly seems a deeply

By the middle of the twentieth century, Umberto Giordano had established himself as a leading figure in the verismo (realistic) school of opera composition, rivaling Leoncavallo and Mascagni in importance.

One of the composer's most highly regarded operas, with a libretto by Hugo von Hoffmansthal that artfully intermingles backstage comedy, the lofty emotions of Greek mythology and the merry pranks of a

When he first heard Carmen, Tchaikovsky enthusiastically predicted it would become the world's most popular opera. Wagner, too, was an admirer of this dramatic masterpiece, and Brahms claimed to

Mascagni's first produced opera (1890), and ultimately his most successful, Cavalleria Rusticana is a tempestuous drama of adultery and revenge set in a remote Italian village. Its earthy passions,

This single volume contains all of Beethoven's string quartets: the six quartets of Opus 18; the three quartets of Opus 59; Opera 74 and 95; and the late quartets, Opera 127, 130, 131, 132, and 135. The

Translated from the Italian, Cosi fan tutte means "That's how all women act"; the libretto, the last of three Lorenzo da Ponte wrote for Mozart, concerns the behavior of women, particularly the

Perhaps the most majestic achievement in the last phase of Haydn's musical career, The Creation is a choral masterwork of seamless perfection. It is also among the most popular oratorios of all time,

This 20th-century orchestral masterpiece offers a rich musical setting of a pastoral Greek fable by Longus. Commissioned by Diaghilev for the Ballet Russes, the work premiered in Paris in 1912. The lush

Das Rheingold, the first opera in Wagner's celebrated four-part Ring Cycle, blends the powerful imagery of Norse and Teutonic mythology with glorious, robustly inventive music to produce a dramatic

This superb edition of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, one of the greatest masterpieces in the operatic repertoire, is reprinted complete and unabridged from a rare, limited, and numbered edition

"The more it is studied the more confidently can we assert its flawlessness as one of the masterpieces of music-drama." — Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
When English composer Henry

This beloved operatic work combines profound emotion and great comedy to tell the tale of a young knight and his struggle to become a Mastersinger. Wagner's only comedy, for which he wrote both the words