JOSÉ MARÍA CANO Luna - Canciones, Romanzas y Danzas

José María Cano was born in Madrid, and gave his first concerts as a university student there. There he met Ana Torroja, who would become the lead singer in their pop band Mecano. Their first album, also called Mecano (1981) and produced with the financial backing of his father, included the hit "Hoy no me puedo levantar". Both José and his brother Nacho composed songs for all their albums. In 1984, José began to play piano and changed his method of composition. He began to compose for other singers, such as Ana Belén, Amaya Uranga, Sara Montiel, Julio Iglesias, Miguel Bosé, Alaska, Françoise Hardy, Sara Brightman, Simone, Mario Frangoulis etc. He composed song that would become well known in the Spanish-speaking world, such as Hijo de la luna, Lia, Mujer contra mujer, Me cuesta tanto olvidarte, Aire, Tiempo de vals, Cruz de navajas, Naturaleza muerta, Una rosa es una rosa and several others, which were covered both by Spanish and Non-Spanish-speaking singers. After Mecano separated in 1992, he composed an opera, Luna, which was recorded with Plácido Domingo in the leading role.

Plácido Domingo / Pablo Sainz-Villegas VOLVER

Volver, is the brainchild of Domingo and Villegas out now. Featuring famous Iberian and Latin America songs alongside three solo works for the guitar: "The Spanish Coplas", "Nostalgic Fado", and "Mexican Bolero". The album includes pieces such as Violeta Parras’s Gracias a la vida, which was inducted into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013, as well as Volver by Alfredo Le Pera, and Carlos Gardel and Álvaro Carrillo’s immensely successful Sabor a mí. These arrangements were prepared by twelve-time Grammy winner Rafa Sardina, resulting in exciting new versions that capture Plácido Domingo’s voice in a uniquely intimate way.

Pavarotti THE 50 GREATEST TRACKS

This album contains nearly 3 hours of music and includes all Pavarotti's opera hits - including Nessun Dorma, used as the 1990 World Cup theme tune and the track that made him a household name as well as all his famous popular songs: O sole mio, Caruso, Santa Lucia, Volare and many more.

In a thrilling first, the album also contains the first official release of the first known recording of his voice, the aria Che gelida manina recorded on his Italian professional debut in 1961.

Other highlights include great duet collaborations with superstar friends Frank Sinatra, Bono, Eric Clapton and Sting plus fellow tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in the live Three Tenors version of Nessun Dorma.

For the first time all material is fully remastered at 24bit for the best sound ever.

Pavarotti The 50 Greatest Tracks - truly the definitive collection of the music of a great man and true legend.

Manuel Barrueco / Plácido Domingo RODRIGO Concierto de Aranjuez - Fantasia para un Gentilhombre

This CD contains the umpteenth recordings of the Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasia para an gentilhombre, of which there are already so many versions that the nomination of an all-time best defies my humble capacities. Suffice it to say that these are amongst the very best and, if these works are absent from your collection then [this] will serve you very well. Barrueco and [David] Russell are members of the guitar's top-drawer elite - giving performances of crystalline clarity - and they are both excellently supported by their orchestras... Barrueco adds two solos, neither one yet dulled by overfamiliarity. The Zarabanda lejana, Rodrigo's first solo work for the guitar, is given with the utmost expressivity, and Un tiempo rue Italica famosa, a tribute to the history of a once-famous Roman city near Seville, is delivered with panache; rapid passages in Rodrigo's guitar works are almost invariably scales, here (and elsewhere) appropriately testifying to the influence of flamenco.
Barrueco has one more trump card to play - his partnership with Plácido Domingo in four songs, selected from those for which Rodrigo himself has made adaptations for the guitar of the original piano accompaniments (the texts are given in four languages). Their coming together was no public relations exercise, for both are longstanding devotees of Rodrigo's music, and it shows. The partnership extends through the whole of this recording, in which Domingo also conducts the orchestra, an exercise in which both parties demonstrate their happy meeting of minds. (Gramophone)

Claudio Abbado / London Symphony Orchestra GEORGES BIZET Carmen

Prosper Mérimée who wrote the original story Carmen, placed Don José at the centre of its action. Mérimée's novel is a narration whitin a narration. His storyteller is a scholarly French archaeologist who has his repeater watch stolen from him - shades of Die Fledermaus! - while he is on his travels in Spain. He is asked to testify against the thief, demurs in a gentlemany fashion, but after being assured that the villian, Don José, is going to be hanged anyway for other crimes, goes off to see him in the interest of research into the Spanish character. The archaeologist takes along in his hand a number of good cigars. Encouraged by this act of generosity, José obliges with an account of the events which led up to his imprisonment and his execution on the morrow.

José's narration is brief - little more than 40 pages - but it is direct and totally unsentimental. It is a soldier's tale of a man who has lost everything, his rank, his livelihood and now his life itself, because of a sudden infatuation with a woman. José asks for no sympathy but simply requests the archaeologist to make a detour to Pamplona on his return journey to France and give a small silver medallion to a good woman in that town. She is to be told that José is dead, but not how he died ("... vous la ferez remettre à une bonne femme dont je vous dirai l'adresse. Vouz direz que je suis mort, vous ne direz pas comment.") It was from these two sentences that Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy were to invent the character of Micaëla when they came to construct the libretto for Bizet's opera.

Mérimée's Carmen may be more of a liar and a cheat, but the fascination she exerts in the novel and the opera are identical. The José who sings about the way he has been struck and overcome by a sudden passion for a gypsy girl is the same man - or almost the same man - as the one who tells a passing archaeologist just why the gallows await him in the morning. (WOLFGANG DÖMLING.- Translation: ADELE POINDEXTER)

This is a super performance, slightly outside the common mold. In 1977, when this was recorded, Claudio Abbado was a great opera conductor, filled with sharp insights and a nice sense of the architecture of whole operas. He always seemed to know where he was going, and his ability to build to climaxes was second to none. Abbado has a rather elegant Carmen here in the smallish-voiced, introspective Teresa Berganza, a gorgeous singer who patently refuses to force her voice or her character into vulgarity. It's a fine reading. Placido Domingo is at his best in both intimate and maniacal moments, and Ileana Cotrubas's Micaela almost makes us care about this happy little gal. Sherrill Milnes's Escamillo has plenty of swagger and voice. Berganza's subtlety combined with the wild passions of those around her make this a very good Carmen indeed. (Robert Levine )

Domingo VERDI

The world-renowned tenor releases his first album of baritone arias “apparently unstoppable in his second career as conductor and baritone” The Telegraph. For the very first time, Plácido Domingo records a complete album of baritone repertoire and assembles Verdi´s most beloved baritone arias from Don Carlo, Rigoletto, La Traviata and Simon Boccangera among others.
Verdi played the largest part in Domingo´s long career. His debut as an opera singer was in the part of Borsa in Rigoletto. As he has sung 22 of Verdi tenor roles and has recorded all of Verdi's tenor arias, Domingo is now exploring the darker characters of Verdi’s opera.
In 2009 Plácido Domingo performed his first baritone title role as Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Opera House in London, which was soon followed by leading roles as Rigoletto, Francesco Foscari and Giorgio Germont from La Traviata. This year will see Domingo debut in the leading roles of Nabucco at the Metropolitan Opera New York and Conte di Luna from Il Trovatore at the State Opera in Berlin.
Considered to be THE Verdi tenor of his generation, Plácido Domingo presents now a new side of his vocal abilities, for which one may want to name him THE Verdi singer.
Plácido Domingo is accompanied by the Orquestra de la Comunítat Valencíana under the direction of conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.

Plácido Domingo about Verdi: “Verdi is a wellspring of great music, and every lyric singer is grateful to him. When you think of the musical distance that he travelled from his first opera, Oberto, in 1839, to Falstaff, in 1893, the evolution is almost incredible. The passion, the dramatic sense, the sensitivity to the voice – those qualities were there from the start. But the ability to develop individual characters in music, the refinement in orchestration, and the gradual transformation of Italian opera from a series of beautiful set-pieces into a logical, dramatic whole – this process of maturation seems almost miraculous. So for me 2013 must be a special celebration, a tribute, and an act of thanksgiving and love toward Giuseppe Verdi.”