Wagner: The Bayreuth Edition (30-CD BOX SET)

Composer: Richard Wagner
Artists: Various
Number of Discs: 30
Label: Opus Arte
Release Date: July 13, 2021

This epic collection brings together all six of Opus Arte’s Wagner recordings from the Bayreuth Festival. Included are many of the composer’s much-admired operas which show how the mastery of composer, conductor, and performer can combine to create true musical excellence.

Wagner’s epic four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is a work of extraordinary scale and is given an interpretation that is both thrilling and sensitive by conductor Christian Thielemann and a cast of renowned Wagner interpreters. Thielemann also presents an incredible account of Der fliegende Holländer in a recording which secured his place as the world’s greatest Wagner conductor.

Klaus Florian Vogt is staggering in the title role of Lohengrin, with Andris Nelsons bringing out the best in the festival chorus and orchestra.

This recording of Tannhäuser, Wagner’s tale of the struggle between spiritual and profane love, and of redemption through love, was described by Opera Journal as “outstanding,” while Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – a humorous tale about artistically inclined craftsmen – was described as “on an entirely new Wagnerian scale” (The Washington Post).

The box set is completed by the critically acclaimed recording of Tristan und Isolde, starring the leading Wagner exponents Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin in the title roles.

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