The important place of studio opera recording
Step back a few decades and studio recordings of operas featuring the day’s biggest stars were frequent flagship projects for many major labels. Sometimes they’d preserve a production from an opera house, but more often they were purely bespoke, capturing collaborations that were never heard on stage, or even artists in roles they’d never perform live. There was, of course, more money in recording back then, an era in which demand for physical products, LP and then CD, was substantial. It’s different today. There’s still a happily healthy flow of studio recordings of solo and chamber music, orchestral works too – but opera is different. That’s why a recording of Turandot, conducted by arguably today’s leading Puccinian, Sir Antonio Pappano, and starring singers at the summit of their profession – Jonas…
