In addition you have Lang Lang live at Carnegie Hall, intriguing clips from films about Stephane Grappelli and Kathleen Ferrier, and eye-opening excerpts from Delius' A Village Romeo and Juliet, Wagner's Meistersinger and Halevy's rarely-performed opera La Juive -- all wonderful.
Additional bonus tracks promoting DVDs (or sets of DVDs) featuring Carlos Kleiber, Pavarotti and Renee Fleming are also enticing. Even in its own right this sampler is worth acquiring, but it's hard to believe most readers won't be lured into buying several additional products once they've seen it.
Andrea Bocelli long ago joined the ranks of the cross-over artists, as A Night in Tuscany amply testifies. It's not new, but has been re-released by Universal after being some years out of their copyright. Sarah Brightman and the Italian popular singer Zucchero make appearances, and in addition you see Bocelli riding his horse along a beach and making merry with his family. At one point he opines that opera and popular music are different things, and neither is better than the other. And in fact the tracks when he is lustily rendering popular numbers are more enjoyable than the over-exposed classical items he opts to sing in the open-air concert in Pisa that makes up the bulk of this rather over-genial DVD.
Lastly, two very strong CDs from EMI are worth noting. Yu Qian Dai proves himself a fine tenor on this new debut recording featuring mostly popular operatic excerpts, while Martha Argerich stars in two items from the Lugano festivals of 2002 and 2003, Schumann's Piano Concerto and Beethoven's Triple Concerto, with Mischa Maisky and Renaud Capucon joining her in the latter. The Beethoven is especially strong, and the CD is recommendable largely on the strength of it (EMI Classics CD 5 57773 2).
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