Life Is a Flower [CD-single] [Import]

Life Is a Flower [CD-single] [Import]

Track Listings

1. Life Is a Flower [Original Version]

2. Life Is a Flower [Reggae Version]

3. Life Is a Flower [Extended Version]

4. Life Is a Flower [Soul Poets Night Club Mix]

5. Life Is a Flower (No Good Lover)

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Taken from their 1998 release Flowers, this 5 track Japanese EP features the Original Version plus Reggae Version, Extended Version, Soul Poets Night Club Mix & 'No Good Lover' (non-album). BMG Japan.

Tracks:

Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer (CWM Rhondda) - Caerphilly Make Voice Choir
Land of My Fathers - Caerphilly Make Voice Choir
Dies Irae
Men of Harlech
You'll Never Walk Alone
Cadwyn O Emyn Donau Cymreig: Joanna (Trad./Elfion Wyn)/Crugybar (Trad.
Old Folks at Home
Il Liza Jane
Faust/Soldier's Chorus - Caerphilly Make Voice Choir
Vergine Degli Angeli
Ballard of Rourke's Drift - Cwt-Y-Collen Choir
My Hero
God Bless the Prince of Wales - Caerphilly Make Voice Choir
German Mass/Gloria
German Mass/Sanctus
Misbles/Master of the House/On My Own/Drink with Me/Empty Chairs at
All Through the Night - Caerphilly Make Voice Choir
Arwelfa
Invictus
Softly as I Leave You

Tracks:

Diolch l'R L
Hine E Hine (Maori Lullaby)
Pererin Wyf (Amazing Grace)
Tribute to the USA: America the Beautiful (Ward/Bates)/God Bless ...
Memories of Martha
I Lombardi/The Crusaders' Chorus - Treorchy Male Choir
Myfanwy - Treorchy Male Choir
Tales of Hoffman/Barcarolle
Creation's Hymn
In the Spirit!
Shall We Gather at the River
Nos a Bore
Very Best Time of Year
Soon Ah Will Be Done
Thanks Be to God
Flower That Shattered the Stone
Rhys - Treorchy Male Choir
Where Shall I Be?
Bywyd y Bugail
Lord's Prayer

Tracks:

Ave Maria
Pearl Fishers/Divine Brahma
She Was Beautiful (Cavatina) - Treorchy Male Choir
Cymru Fach
Nidaros
Jacob's Ladder - Treorchy Male Choir
Watching the Wheat
Pan Ddaw y Saint (When the Saints Go Marching In)
Misbles/Stars
Rachie
Pirates of Penzance/With Cat-Like Tread - Treorchy Male Choir
There Is a Balm in Gilead
Rise Up Shepherd and Foller
My Lord, What a Mornin'
Bryn Myrddin
Jesus Christ Superstar/Medley: Jesus Christ Superstar/Hosanna/The Last
Finnish Forest (Suomen Salossa)
Nabucco/The Glory of Israel
Ride the Chariot
Tydi a Roddaist - Treorchy Male Choir

Tracks:

Y Nefoedd
Phantom of the Opera/Think of Me
Morte Christe (When I Survey the Wondrous Cross)
By Babylon's Wave
I'm Gonna Sing
Where Could I Go But to the Lord?
Holy City - Treorchy Male Choir
Mefistofele: Ave Signor, Degli Angeli
Senzenina (Zulu Chant)
That's All I Want from You
Deep Harmony - Treorchy Male Choir
Give Me Jesus
Just a Closer Walk with Thee
My Wish for You
Jeptha/Waft Her Angels
Mose in Egitto/Prayer
Be Still My Soul (Finlandia Hymn)
God's Choir in the Sky
Floral Dance - Treorchy Male Choir
Smilin' Through

Tracks:

Calon Lan
True Love
Mor Fawr Wyt Ti (How Great Thou Art)
Aberystwyth
Comrades in Arms
Cats/Memory
They Led My Lord Away
State Fair/It's a Grand Night for Singing
When I Fall in Love
Let's Face the Music and Dance
Windmills of Your Mind
How Soon
Non Nobis Domine
Rhythm of Life
Kalinka
Sound an Alarm
Neapolitan Trilogy: It's Now or Never (Di Capua/Schroeder/Gold)/Mo ...
Turandot/Nessun Dorma
Christus Redemptor
Ann Evening's Pastorale

Album Details

Choirs Include the Morriston Orpheus Choir, the Pontadrddulais Male Voice Choir, the Caerphilly Male Voice Choir, the Cwrt-y-gollen Choir, the Treorchy Male Choir and the Lucknow Male Voice Choir.

Average customer rating:

A Timely Performance
Outstanding; a soon to be classic
Uninspired tedium
Holocaust Cantata: A Five Star Work of Art
An excerpt from my liner notes...

Holocaust Cantata

Manufacturer: Albany Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Composers of the Holocaust: Ghetto Songs & Instrumental Works
MUSIC FROM THE HOLOCAUST
Rossini: Petite Messe solennelle
Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (Oxford Historical Monographs)
Forbidden Music: Music from Theresienstadt

ASIN: B000031VRF
Release Date: 1999-11-23

Tracks:

The Prisoner Rises
Singing Saved My Life
Song Of The Polish Prisoners
The Execution Of The Twelve
In Buchenwald
A State Of Seperation
The Train
Singing From Birth To Death
The Striped Ones
There's No Life Like Life At Auschwitz
Tempo di Tango
Letter To Mom
Song Of Days Now Gone
Passacaille For Cello And Piano
Even When God Is Silent
A Child's Journey: An Accidental Meeting
A Child's Journey: I Once Had A Friend
A Child's Journey: There Are No Stars In The Sky
Is Not A Flower A Mystery?
We Remember Them

Album Description

The Holocaust Cantata uses the words and music of actual concentration camp inmates to create a wholly original and powerful work. Using material found within the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Donald McCullough's Holocaust Cantata traverses one of the bleakest episodes in human history. Yet the piece also evokes a sense of music's life-affirming power, even in the face of absolute despair, to express what words alone cannot.

McCullough discovered the material within the vast Aleksander Kulisiewicz collection in the museum's archives. Kulisiewicz himself had performed as a kind of camp troubador during his own incarceration at Sachsenhausen, and, after the war, spent several years interviewing fellow survivors about music in the camps, gathering together the scattered remnants of this music.

As McCullough painstakingly sifted through this material-much of which was uncatalogued-the arresting melodies and compelling testimonies that make up the Holocaust Cantata gradually began to emerge. "I wanted the Cantata to speak with a sense of immediacy," says McCullough, explaining his decision to set the choral texts and spoken testimonies in English, and his hope is that the piece may "transform statistics into people in the minds of the Cantata's listeners, and perhaps be a part of making it more difficult for such a horror ever to occur again." The Washington Post, reviewing the world premiere in March 1998, called it "an experience that should linger long in the audience's memory and should be regularly revived."

Customer Reviews:

A Timely Performance.......2001-11-18

In August of 2001, the choral group I sing with began practicing this work for performance on Veteran's Day Nov 11. We rehearse on Tuesday nights. As we all know on Tuesday Sept 11 the world change forever. Of course rehearsal was cancelled. When we returned the next Tuesday - a piece that we all thought was so powerful became more so. The first song contains the words "the fires burning, the iron furnace..". The paralells to what happened were evident. As one of the reviewers noted " so this can never happen again", well it has, only much faster, in one single day. Hate caused both events. People need to hear this CD and really listen to the words of the songs and the narration, and maybe we can prevent this from happening again and again. A MUST HEAR FOR ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. The music and lyics came from the hearts and the lives of the prisoners.This is a beautiful tribute to them.

Outstanding; a soon to be classic.......2000-05-04

Beautifully written and performed! This recording and an encore live performance of this inspiring work were downright demanded by audiences after the premiere. I rate it a "strong buy."

Uninspired tedium.......2000-04-28

McCullough has appropriated other people's material, "choralized" it, and appears to be attempting to capitalize on a wave of political correctness to buy himself a Grammy nomination. There are a few nice tunes scattered throughout this tedious piece, but overall the interpretation is lifeless, unimaginative, and uninspired, almost clinical. Here's hoping that victims of the Shoah can find a more suitable expression of their music than McCullough has tried to give them. They deserve better than this.

Holocaust Cantata: A Five Star Work of Art.......2000-01-07

For me, the Holocaust Cantata is one of those artistic representations of that cataclysmic period that evokes an even stronger picture of the horrors of the Holocaust then do many pictures in newspapers and museum exhibits. I think this is because the Cantata is poetry-it's message sounds a spare and powerful truth. I am grateful to Mr. McCullough for his vision and energy in bringing about the Holocaust Cantata.

An excerpt from my liner notes..........1999-11-25

I was present at the March 1998 Kennedy Center premiere of this extraordinary work, and subsequently wrote the liner notes for the CD. Because of the unusual nature of this recording-which I think captures the haunting beauty of this work-I believe that others would be interested in reading an excerpt from my notes on the music. Please note that I am posting this material with the permission of the composer, Donald McCullough:

Notes on the Music

It is well-known that during the Holocaust inmates wrote music while incarcerated in concentration camps. Much of it has since been recorded. At Theresienstadt, for instance-the infamous "Paradise Ghetto"-the Nazis organized an orchestra made up of young musicians who had studied under such luminaries as Leos Janacek and Arnold Schoenberg. Most of these musicians, among them such promising students as Gideon Klein and Viktor Ullmann, perished during the Holocaust, leaving behind but a few pieces, composed under duress and co-opted by the Nazis for their own propaganda purposes. What might they have eventually accomplished had they survived? Such classical music-beautiful as it is-was the product of formally trained musicians. What about the music of the common man-music embraced by the whole community and passed secretly by aural transmission-music that carried with it powerful words revealing different aspects of camp life, or expressing the inmates' innermost feelings, of mourning, or resistance, or patriotism? Was there other Holocaust music, akin to the spirituals that sprang from slavery in America, that spoke with the same startling immediacy to express the agony of the victims of the Nazi regime?...

McCullough's [quest to answer this question] began with a call to Bret Werb, musicologist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who revealed the existence of the Aleksander Kulisiewicz collection in the museum archives. Kulisiewicz had traveled about Europe during the postwar period collecting and preserving what he could of the music that had emerged from the Holocaust concentration camps, but little was known about the music itself.

McCullough's first task, then, was to immerse himself in the collection, playing through the hundreds of tunes. He was encouraged to find that they contained some compelling melodies, and for the first time he began to wonder whether a choral cantata-perhaps reflecting the role of music in the camps or evoking the daily lives of these people-might emerge from the material. But he still had no idea what lay within the accompanying text.

At some point, someone had added a rough, English-language index to the collection, but the materials themselves were mostly in Polish. Marcin Zmudzki, a young Pole, was engaged to sift through the mountain of texts. McCullough told the translator that he was interested in anything that had to do with camp life, especially as it related to music. As he recalls, "It was my good fortune that not only was Marcin an excellent translator, but also he had a sense for poetry and thus grasped, very quickly, the type of material I was seeking."

In addition to music, Kulisiewicz also collected interviews, articles, and letters that had anything to do with camp life. With this wealth of material, McCullough decided to place between each musical arrangement readings that also spoke of life in the camps. After considering and rejecting literally hundreds of documents, he finally decided that he had what he needed from the archives. But in a sense, the real work was just beginning. "Because I wanted the Cantata to speak with a sense of immediacy," says McCullough, "I thought it should be sung in English. But before I could arrange a single note of it, I needed to have singable translations. Here I employed the talents of lyricist Denny Clark, who at first worked with Marcin, getting a word by word translation. Knowing which words appear on which notes is important in keeping the overall impact of the song." A trained singer himself, Clark was able to make transliterations to ensure that the best vowels for singing fell on the proper notes, all while remaining faithful to the original text. It was an immensely complicated task....

A few words about the structure of the Cantata. As you listen you should not look for a plot, as such. Because each song and reading represents a different person, a different place, and a different time in the Holocaust experience, you should be wary about viewing the entire piece as a streaming narrative. Nonetheless, certain common truths will begin to emerge, and no doubt others will come to you with each successive hearing. Among these is the certainty that these are nakedly honest responses to the most unthinkable of acts. Sometimes the responses are jarring; who could find humor amid such horror? And yet humor-albeit dark in nature-undoubtedly exists within this work. Nevertheless the inmates' responses never sink to the level of triteness. For them, music functioned as something much more than just a light in the darkness; its very existence was a form of spiritual resistance in an environment where such resistance risked instant extermination.

McCullough's hope is that this work may "transform statistics into people in the minds of the Cantata's listeners, and perhaps be a part of making it more difficult for such a horror ever to occur again." In the end, for me, the work flows inexorably back to its source: it is the voice of humanity, crying out to be heard.

Offenbach: La Belle Helene; Orpheus in the Underworld; La Vie Parisienne (Highlights)
Average customer rating:

Champagne Music!

Offenbach: La Belle Helene; Orpheus in the Underworld; La Vie Parisienne (Highlights)

Manufacturer: Class. for Pleas. Us
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

All Works by Offenbach | Offenbach, Jacques | ( O ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
Operettas | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
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Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus; The Gypsy Baron (Highlights)

Léhar: The Land of Smiles; The Merry Widow; The Count of Luxembourg (Highlights)

Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld / Burgess, Watson, etc (Highlights)

ASIN: B00009KHY3
Release Date: 2003-09-02

Tracks:

Overture
The Happy Bride Never Stumbles
You've Gone Too Far!
May I Make Myself Known?
My Death Appears Divinely Smiling
When Diana Leaves The Mountains
To Arms!
When Jupy Feels The Inclination
Here Comes Orpheus
When I Was King Of The Boeotians
I Thought That I Felt On My Shoulder
What Heavenly Joy Is Mine
Minuet And Galop
Overture
How Sad We've Made The Marchioness
Well Isn't That Just Life All Over?
I'm The Guide For Every Tourist
I Am A Native Of Brazil
In This Enchanting Queen Of Cities
I Am A Dab At Carving Pork
We Have Seen Sights Since Eleven... I'm A Colonel's Widow
Dinner Is Served

Tracks:

Oh, Little Cloud
When She Goes Out... Her Petticoats Go Frou, Frou, Frou
Does He Know He's Splitting Down The Back
Nobody Would Call Me A Rover
I'll Have So Much To Say
It's Most Important You Should Show
Here You See The Place
My Friends, I'm Most Delighted To See You
In Songs And Shouts... Paris Blooms Like A Flower
Introduction
To Bow To Jupiter We Gather At The Shrine
We've Had A Night Out
On Mount Ida Three Great Ladies (The Judgement Of Paris)
March And Entry Of The Kings
Entr'acte
We All Begin By Truly Trying
It Is Her That Has Sent This Sweet Love Dream
Come Here, You Kings Of Greece
When All Of Greece Has Been Ravaged
Do You See?

Customer Reviews:

Champagne Music!.......2006-07-09

Thank goodness that these well filled CDs of selections from three of Offenbach's most entertaining and tuneful operettas are available. Exactly the thing to provide some hearty nourishment for Winter nights. Ideal also for a Summer barbecue. In both cases, a glass of champagne, or at least some other bubbly beverage, would be good to have at hand - everything here no doubt will call for a toast or several.

It is so nice to be able to hear in these translations the witty words, sung with welcome clarity and meaning by these admirable artists. As I recall, there were no microphones in sight, and perhaps not even used, when this production of Orpheus In The Underworld was brought to Australia, with a few cast changes but the same sparkle as shown here. Crisp diction and lively, often lovely, singing - a great recipe for enjoyable listening indeed.

The recording sounds a bit shrill here and there, but what a churlish quibble; to Hades with such curmudgeonly qualifications! This is music to raise the spirits, and not just those from Hades.

Puccini - Madam Butterfly / Cheryl Barker, PO, Yves Abel [in English]

Average customer rating:

A touching English Butterfly

Puccini - Madam Butterfly / Cheryl Barker, PO, Yves Abel [in English]
Giacomo Puccini , Yves Abel , Cheryl Barker , Paul Charles Clarke , and Simon Birchall
Manufacturer: Chandos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Romantic (c.1820-1910) | Historical Periods | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

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Operettas | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Turandot (Chandos Opera in English)
Verdi: La Traviata
Puccini - La bohème / Haymon · O'Neill · Opie · McLaughlin · A. Miles · Dazeley · Shore · PO · Parry
Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin / Te Kanawa · Hampson · Rosenshein · Gedda · Sir Charles Mackerras [in English]

ASIN: B00005QF3K
Release Date: 2001-11-20

Tracks:

Act I: Introduction - Cheryl Barker
Act I: 'So The Walls And The Ceiling...' - Ann Taylor/Stuart Kale
Act I: 'I Think Your Honour's Smiling' - Jean Rigby/Ann Taylor/Stuart Kale
Act I: 'It Can't Be Much Further Now!' - Gregory Yurisich/Stuart Kale/Ann Taylor
Act I: The Whole World Over - Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich
Act I: 'Fate Can't Crush Him' - Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich
Act I: 'Is The Bride Very Pretty?' - Gregory Yurisich/Stuart Kale/Ann Taylor
Act I: 'True Love Or Fancy' - Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich
Act I: 'See Them! They're Climbing The Summit Of The Hill!' - Gregory Yurisich/Cheryl Barker/Gregory Yurisich
Act I: 'We Are Honoured' - Cheryl Barker/Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich/Stuart Kale
Act I: 'The Imperial Commissioner' - Stuart Kale/Ann Taylor/Cheryl Barker/Simon Birchall
Act I: 'Oh, Indeed, My Friend, You're Lucky!' - Gregory Yurisich/Cheryl Barker
Act I: 'Come, My Beloved' - Ann Taylor/Cheryl Barker/Stuart Kale
Act I: 'My Fate I Have To Follow' - Cheryl Barker
Act I: 'Silence! Silence!' - Stuart Kale/Roland Wood/Cheryl Barker
Act I: 'Congratulations' - Roland Wood/Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich/Frances Brett/Clive Bayley/Stuart Kale
Act I: 'Dearest, My Dearest, Weep No More' - Roland Wood/Ann Taylor/Jean Rigby
Act I: 'Evening Is Falling...' - Roland Wood/Ann Taylor/Jean Rigby
Act I: 'Child, From Whose Eyes The Witchery Is Shining' - Ann Taylor/Cheryl Barker
Act I: 'Ah, Love Me A Little' - Cheryl Barker/Ann Taylor
Act II Part I: 'Izaghi Izanami' - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: 'One Fine Day' - Cheryl Barker

Tracks:

Act II Part I: 'Come, Let's Enter' - Stuart Kale/Gregory Yurisich/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: 'Yamadori, And Has your Unrequited Love Not Yet Released You? - Cheryl Barker/D'Arcy Bleiker/Gregory Yurisich/Stuart Kale
Act II Part I: 'Now, At Last!' - Gregory Yurisich/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: 'Just Two Things I Could Do' - Cheryl Barker/Gregory Yurisich
Act II Part I: 'This Child! This Child, Then!' - Cheryl Barker/Gregory Yurisich
Act II Part I: 'Do You Know, My Darling' - Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: 'I Must Be Going' - Gregory Yurisich/Cheryl Barker/Jean Rigby
Act II Part I: 'Ah! Ah!' - Stuart Kale/Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: 'Look, It's A Man-of-war!' - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part I: Flower Duet: 'Shake The Cherry Tree' - Cheryl Barker/Jean Rigby
Act II Part I: Humming Chorus - Geoffrey Mitchell Choir
Act II Part 2: Prelude - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part 2: Daybreak Over Nagasaki - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part 2: 'It's Morning' - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part 2: 'Who Is It?...' - Jean Rigby/Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich
Act II Part 2: 'I Know For Such Misfortune There Is No Consolation' - Gregory Yurisich/Jean Rigby/Ann Taylor
Act II Part 2: 'Farewell, Oh Happy Home!' - Ann Taylor/Gregory Yurisich
Act II Part 2: 'Then Will You Tell Her?' - Ann Taylor/Jean Rigby
Act II Part 2: 'Suzuki, Where Are You?' - Cheryl Barker/Jean Rigby
Act II Part 2: 'You, Suzuki, You're Always So Faithful' - Cheryl Barker/Jean Rigby
Act II Part 2: 'Viper! I Want You To Answer' - Cheryl Barker/Jean Rigby/Gregory Yurisich/Ann Taylor
Act II Part 2: 'Your Little Fluttering Heart Is Beating' - Jean Rigby/Cheryl Barker
Act II Part 2: 'Death With Honour Is Better Than Life With Dishonour' - Cheryl Barker

Amazon.com

This performance, the only one available in English, is problematic. Best is Yves Abel's leadership of the orchestra, which sounds wonderful, imbuing Puccini's lush score with just the right exoticism and emphasis. But aside from Gregory Yurisch's fine Sharpless, the singers don't please. Paul Charles Clarke as Pinkerton is lacking stylistically and vocally, and as Butterfly, Cheryl Barker sounds under strain and never pretty. While she has the power and feeling for the big second-act climax (the sighting of the ship), she never for a moment sounds fragile or girlish, not even in the all-important early scenes. English or not, this set isn't in the running. Stick with Callas or Scotto in Italian, and follow the libretto. --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews:

A touching English Butterfly.......2002-03-27

Anyone familiar with Cheryl Barker's Butterfly will be interested in hearing this recording. I have heard her in the role twice - in Auckland and London - and her voice has filled out as the years have gone on. She hasn't a large italianate soprano; the sound is too slender somehow. Yet there is the paradox - it has great carrying power and a decent cutting edge to make itself heard above the orchestral climaxes. What really impresses is the sense of vulnerability and moral strength she imparts, making sense of the big moments of the secong act. The sound in Act one is gorgeous (and a super D flat in theentrance aria) and she differentiates impressively between the child-bride and the embittered woman of the two acts.

She is surrounded by a mixed supporting cast. Jean Rigby is maternal, warm and affecting as Suzuki. Gregory Yurisich makes Sharpless' dilemma more understandable than usual, rather than being completely ineffectual. Paul Charles Clarke perhaps illustrates Pinkerton's arrogance with a degree of vocal swagger, but the sound is rough-hewn and unlovely save for some moments in the love duet. Stuart Kale's Goro is suitable ingratiating and oily.

Abel's conducting is the other chief draw of this set. That he has experience of the score in the theatre means that his pacing is really superb, and the lush orchestration is given its due, the potent intermezzo during the overnight vigil sounding suitably ominous.

Tracks:

The Mikado: Overture
The Mikado: A Wandering Minstrel I
The Mikado: Our Great Mikado, Virtuous Man
The Mikado: Young Man, Despair
The Mikado: Behold The Lord High Executioner!...Taken From The County Jail
The Mikado: As Some Day It May Happen
The Mikado: Three Little Maids From School Are We
The Mikado: Were You Not To Ko-Ko Plighted
The Mikado: I Am So Proud
The Mikado: The Sun, Whose Rays
The Mikado: Here's A How-De-Do!
The Mikado: Miya Sama (Entrance Of The Mikado)
The Mikado: A More Humane Mikado Never
The Mikado: The Criminal Cried
The Mikado: See How The Fates Their Gifts Allot
The Mikado: The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring
The Mikado: Alone, And Yet Alive!...Hearts Do Not Break!
The Mikado: On A Tree By A River
The Mikado: There Is Beauty In The Bellow Of The Blast
The Mikado: For He's Gone And Married Yum-Yum
Trail By Jury: The Learned Jungle
H.M.S. Pinafore: I'm Called Litttle Buttercup
H.M.S. Pinafore: My Gallant Crew...I Am The Captain Of The Pinafore
Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well
H.M.S. Pinafore: When I Was A Lad I Served A Term

Tracks:

H.M.S. Pinafore: Fair Moon, To Thee I Sing
H.M.S. Pinafore: Things Are Seldom What They Seem
H.M.S. Pinafore: The Hours Creep On Apace
H.M.S. Pinafore: Never Mind The Why And Wherefore
The Pirates Of Penzance: Oh, Better Far To Live And Die
The Pirates Of Penzance: Oh, Is There Not One Maiden Breast
The Pirates Of Penzance: Poor Wandering One!
The Pirates Of Penzance: I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General
The Pirates Of Penzance: When The Foeman Bears His Steel
The Pirates Of Penzance: Ah, Leave Me Not To Pine
The Pirates Of Penzance: When A Felon's Not Engaged In His Employment
The Pirates Of Penzance: With Cat-Like Tread
Patience: The Soldiers Of Our Queen...If You Want A Receipt For That Popular Mystery
Patience: Am I Alone And Unobserved...If You're Anxious For To Shine
Patience: Sad Is That Woman's Lot...Silvered Is The Raven Hair
Patience: A Magnet Hung In A Hardware Shop
Patience: Love Is A Plaintive Song
Patience: So Go To Him And Say To Him
Patience: When I Go Out Of Door
Patience: After Much Debate (Finale Act 2)
Iolanthe: When I Went To The Bar As A Very Young Man
The Lady Of My Love...(Finale Act 1)

Tracks:

When All Night Long A Chap Remains
When Britain Really Ruled The Waves
When You're Lying Awake With A Dismal Headache
If You Go In, You're Sure To Win
Ruddigore: My Boy, May Take It From Me
Ruddigore: The Battle's Roar Is Over
Ruddigore: In Sailing O'er Life's Ocean Wide
Ruddigore: You Understand?
Ruddigore: When The Night Wind Howls
Ruddigore: My Eyes Are Fully Open
Ruddigore: There Grew A Little Flower
The Gondoliers: We're Called Gondolieri
The Gondoliers: From The Sunny Spanish Shore...In Enterprise Of Martial Kind
The Gondoliers: I Stole The Prince
The Gondoliers: When A Merry Maiden Marries
The Gondoliers: Take A Pair Of Sparkling Eyes
The Gondoliers: Dance A Cachucha, Fandango, Bolero
The Gondoliers: There Lived A King, As I've Been Told
The Gondoliers: I Am A Courtier Grave And Serious
The Yeoman Of The Guard: I Have A Song To Sing, O!
The Yeoman Of The Guard: How You Say Maiden, Will You Wed
The Yeoman Of The Guard: Where I Thy Bride
The Yeoman Of The Guard: Oh! A Private Buffoon Is A Light Hearted Loon
The Yeoman Of The Guard: Comes The Pretty Young Bride

Gifts of the Spirit: Icelandic Church Music

Average customer rating:

Gifts of the Spirit: Icelandic Church Music

Manufacturer: Hastedt Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00004C8Q7
Release Date: 2000-05-30

Average customer rating:

Could be so much better
It's about time that this was put on CD
Don't waste the money
At last a complete recording of a Friml favorite

Rudolf Friml: The Vagabond King

Manufacturer: Albany Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Operettas | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Victor Herbert: Sweethearts/Ohio Light Opera
Maytime
Victor Herbert: The Red Mill
De Koven - Robin Hood / Ohio Light Opera
Herbert: Naughty Marietta / Byess, Ohio Light Opera, et al

ASIN: B000777I6K
Release Date: 2005-01-25

Tracks:

The Vagabond King

Album Description

The 15th century poet Francois Villon, between scrapes with the law in Paris, wrote lyrics both poignant and bawdy. At the end of the 19th century, novelist R.H. Russell sentimentalized his career in a plot that borrowed the king-for-a-day motif, thus allowing Villon to defeat France's enemies and win the hand of an aristocratic lady, all in under 24 hours. Adapted as a play in 1901, by New York writer Justin McCarthy, If I Were King served as a star vehicle for E.H. Southern in a Broadway stage production. In 1923, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart were at the very start of their careers. They devised a musical version of the McCarthy play for a Manhattan girl's school and then looked for a more prestigious venue for their collaboration. Broadway backers turned down the young artists, but liked their idea, "borrowed" it from Rodgers and Hart and commissioned the more established Rudolf Friml to fashion a professional musical from the plot. Friml's Rose Marie was then enjoying great success in New York. Born in what is today the Czech Republic in 1897, Friml enrolled at age 14 in the Prague Conservatory (which was headed by Dvorak) and completed the six-year course in three years. He toured Europe and the United States as accompanist for violinist Jan Kubelik and made a piano debut in this country onstage at Carnegie Hall in 1904. Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony premiered his Piano Concerto two seasons later, with the composer at the piano. Friml's true calling was as a composer of songs. In 1912, he was called in by Arthur Hammerstein to complete the music for a new work which Victor Herbert had abandoned, owing to a run-in with a temperamental soprano. The resulting operetta, The Firefly, was his first Broadway success, and would be followed by many others. Friml continued to live in America for much of the 20th century long after his sentimental musical style was considered old fashioned. As late as 1969, he was celebrated by Ogden Nash on the occasion of his 90th birthday in a couplet which ended: "I trust your conclusion and mine are similar: 'Twould be a happier world if it were Frimler."

Customer Reviews:

Could be so much better.......2007-07-04

I love "The Vagabond King", but not this versiom. The problem is the sound level ... I had to keep adjusting it and kept having trouble understanding the words.Is the problem the singers or the technicians? I'm not enough of an expert to say.

It's about time that this was put on CD.......2005-06-13

Of all the famous operettas produced in the 1920's, the one most neglected in recordings has been Rudolf Friml's "The Vagabond King", first produced in 1925. Only now is the complete work, dialogue and all, appearing on CD. For those unfamiliar with the music, the best known songs are "Only a Rose" and the stirring "Song of the Vagabonds", perhaps the most rousing "battle song" ever written for an operetta. The story is almost exactly the same as that of "If I Were King", the fondly remembered 1938 non-musical film which starred Ronald Colman as poet-adventurer-thief Francois Villon, who lived during the fifteenth century. Both film and operetta were based on the 1901 play "If I Were King", by Justin McCarthy.

We get the entire "Vagabond King" on this 2 CD set, which is a real bonus for anyone who wants to hear what a 1920's operetta actually sounded like in its original, unaltered version. But this brings me to the problem. I don't know why the Ohio Light Opera decided to do this on "The Vagabond King", when all of their other recordings (and I have three others) are so sonically excellent, but the volume on this CD has to be really cranked up for the listener to catch everything. The recording equipment for this live performance was apparently placed in such a way that there isn't enough treble, except at certain moments. At other times,as happens in some live recordings, the singers are too far away for the listener to catch all of their dialogue, and this operetta has a better story than most, being a faithful adaptation of a good non-musical play. Fortunately, a booklet with a libretto is included, but it is one thing to read the words and quite another to hear them performed.

The singing, though, is quite good, and excellent for what is supposed to be a semi-professional group. I have no idea if the orchestrations and vocal arrangements used are those that were used in the original 1925 production, but if the Ohio Light Opera followed their usual practice, those are most certainly the original arrangements.

It is a true pity that the company saw fit to revise their recording techniques for this operetta, and that is why I am subtracting one star, when I would have otherwise given it a 5-star rating. Operetta fans have long waited for a complete recording of "The Vagabond King", and since this one is not without merit, I am suggesting that you buy it. But be prepared to be fidgeting with the volume control on your CD player.

And as far as I can tell, the complete score of the show is included here. The previous reviewer may be confusing the additional songs written for the 1930 and the 1956 film versions of "The Vagabond King" with the songs used in the stage version. (The film versions used little of the original music.) Only the songs written for the stage version are used here.

But where are the usual Amazon audio clips?

Don't waste the money.......2005-04-15

This one is only for completists. The recording level is strangely low, so that only a strong audio system or listening indoors with headphones can give you a strong sound. This is especially problematic since the chorus is incomprehensible. The performers are conservatory types most of whom can't act, which makes it too bad that the producers for some reason record the dialogue along with the score. And -- that dialogue is what makes this a 2-CD set; this is by no means a full rendition of the score. There is clearly a lot of missing dance music and reprises; there is about half as much music as you get in, say, JAY's STUDENT PRINCE double-CD, and much less than on Encores' NEW MOON recording. This recording gives no notion of why THE VAGABOND KING was such a hit in its day, and most buyers will be better off waiting for someone else to really do the score proud.

At last a complete recording of a Friml favorite.......2005-02-26

May the Muse of Operetta shower blessings on the Ohio Light Opera for its seemingly endless stream of recordings of complete operettas, dialogue included (not always a Good Thing), as performed at the College of Wooster. Having enjoyed, some more than others, such rarely heard complete performances of Victor Herbert's "The Red Mill" and "Elaine," Gilbert and Sullivan's "Princess Ida" and "Utopia Ltd.," some Kalaman, some Messager, and so on, I am delighted to report that their latest, Rudolf Friml's "The Vagabond King," is among the best of the lot. It is on a double-CD set from Albany Records (TROY 738-39) and well worth the hearing.

For one thing, the tunes range from truly memorable to at least quite good: "Only a Rose," "Love for Sale," "Sons of Toil and Danger," "Love Me Tonight." The story is actually a pretty good one for an operetta, with just enough seriousness to make you care for these characters. The cast is game, with a virile sounding Francois Villon in Ted Christopher, who can handle both music and dialogue with an Alfred Drake dash.

If Brian Woods' King Louis sounds too much the stock stage villain (an older voice would have helped) without any real menace and if there is no real depth to the female roles, Julie Wright (Katherine) and Sandra Ross (Huguette), the music helps you forget that fact. Conductor Steven Byess does a good job with a small orchestra.

I begin to wonder if a chorus can be trained to sing so that we can actually understand the words without following the full text that is thoughtfully provided in all of these OLO sets. The same goes for sopranos at the higher registers. Granted these are taken from stage performances and not from a recording studio, but a little more attention to consonants within and at the end of words would help immensely.

Nevertheless, a complete recording of this Friml work is certainly a MUST for anyone who loves musical theatre. Ironic footnote: Rodgers & Hart had already adapted a play about Villon and wanted to create a Broadway version. The backers agreed and gave the job to Friml! Such is showbiz.

Average customer rating:

Richard Tauber: In Concert, 1937-1947

Manufacturer: Archipel
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B000056VBT
Release Date: 2001-01-23

Average customer rating:

Wonderful sounds

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Manufacturer: Decca
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Il Divo

ASIN: B0002L2ZUU
Release Date: 2005-02-08

Tracks:

Il Canto - Luciano Pavarotti
Pokarekare Ana - Hayley Westernra
La Donna E Mobile - Joseph Fleming
Ebben?... Ne Andro Lontana - Renee Fleming
Shenandoah - Bryn Terfel
Lullaby - Bond
Whistle Down The Wind - Sarah Brightman
Torna A Surriento - Russell Watson
Love Street - Nigel Kennedy
White Night - Ludovico Einaudi
Meditation - Julian Lloyd Webber
My Heart Will Go On - Julian Lloyd Webber
Canon - Duel
Adagio In G Minor - Dominic Miller
Gymnopedie No. 1 - Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Funiculi, Funiculi - Jose Carreras

Tracks:

O Sole Mio - The Three Tenors
O Mio Babbino Caro - Kiri Te Kanawa
Una Furtiva Lagrima - Juan Diago Florez
Bond - Allegretto
Nella Fantasia - John Themis
Griet's Theme - Russel Watson
Si Mi Chiamano Mimi - Angela Gheorghiu
Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis - Vaughan Williams
What Is Life To Me Without Thee? - Kathleen Ferrier
Main Theme - Janine Jansen
All I Ask Of You - Renee Fleming & Bryn Terfel
Ashokan Farewell - Duel
She Moved Through The Fair - Izzy
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Song For Athene - Ian le Grice
Ombra Mai Fu - Handel

Album Description

2-CD compilation featuring the greatest stars including Bond, Hayley Westenra, Russell Watson, Pavarotti, The Three Tenors, Sarah Brightman and many others. Decca. 2004.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful sounds.......2007-05-14

Nice eclectic collection - Russel Watson presentation of Nella Fantasia using guitar interlude instead of traditional oboe is special piece.