Alban Berg's black, satirical opera is one of the masterpieces of the 20th Century. It charts the rise and fall of a femme fatale "created to make trouble", from life as a society hostess to prostitution and eventual bloody death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Berg's score is intensely beautiful, and the rich characterisation brilliantly executed.
Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.
Il signor Bruschino is the last of the five one-act operas - farsa giocosa - in which the young Rossini first demonstrated his operatic genius. The stage is small and the beautifully elegant and this shining production by Michael Hampe, recorded in May 1989, provides one and a half hours of the entertaining story about "the son won in a game" as it is subtitled. The staging transfers to the screen perfectly and the cast of principals, led by Alessandro Corbelli, Alberto Rinaldi and Amelia Felle provide musical excellence together with the flexible Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra under Gianluigi Gelmetti.