The Deutsche Oper in Berlin had hardly opened on 24th September 1961 before it started preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. How was that possible? Had it entered into some sort of time warp? That might indeed have been possible for a theatre that in the past had devoted itself to Richard Wagner’s works. But there was a simpler explanation: the Deutsche Oper Berlin had, in fact, originally opened on 7 November 1912 under the title of Deutsches Opernhaus.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding.

Bernstein opera sets come few and far between, but those that do emerge are treated as isolated landmarks. Such was his recording of Richard Strauss` ''Der Rosenkavalier'' of 1971 (CBS M3K 42564, three CDs), recorded three years after he virtually swept the Viennese off their collective feet with it at the Staatsoper.

From fairy tale to great opera: With Die Zauberflöte Mozart made the step from simple Singspiel to a full-blown German opera, thus laying the foundations for an independent opera culture in the German language. The 1973 Electrola recording combines a truly legendary vocal ensemble, featuring first and foremost Edda Moser, whom many people still regard as the best Queen of the Night of all time, Walter Berry as a Papageno oozing Viennese charm, Anneliese Rothenberger as the enchanting Pamina and Peter Schreier as her loving Tamino.

This DVD of Ariadne is a 1978 film based on Filippo Sanjust’s Vienna State Opera production. The bustling Prologue is set in the backstage area of the mogul’s palace and the 18th century costumes fit neatly. In the opera proper, the stage is transformed into a very stagey desert island with an improbable set of stairs leading to the heroine’s cave, the action spilling over into the theatre’s side boxes at times. While there’s nothing particularly imaginative about the production, it never distracts from the main event–the music. Strauss was profligate in his melodic gifts, his ability to make a reduced orchestra sound big, and his wonderful obsession with the female voice, which yields many glorious moments in the opera. Lavish casting helps.

This production of Mozart’s Zauberflöte received enormous and unanimous approval, when it was premiered in Salzburg. The Theatre wizard Jean-Pierre Ponnellecreated a staging which became part and parcel of the festival programme for over nine years and soon acquired the status of a legend. Of course, none of that would have had the same appeal if it had not been in accord with Mozart’s music, performed with perfect blend of lightness and pathos, humour and profundity, by James Levine and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; nor would it all have worked without a truly Festival-worthy cast of singers: the Finnish bass Martti Talvela, who departed way too soon in 1989, in his famous role as Sarastro, the incomparable Edita Gruberová as “the best-ever Queen of the Night” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), the legendary Tamino Peter Schreier as well as the petite, lyrical soprano Ileana Cotrubas˛ as Pamina. Further, Christian Boesch, who sang the role of his life with Papageno, was credited most for his performance in this legendary Zauberflöte.

The tale of womaniser Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello. Giovanni's attempts to woo Donna Anna end in tragedy when he kills her father in a duel. Anna and her fiancé Don Ottavio swear vengeance. Giovanni then attempts to seduce Zerlina at her wedding reception, but is foiled when his former mistress Donna Elvira warns the bride of Giovanni's reputation. Giovanni now has everyone out for his blood, but tries to trick his pursuers by switching places with Leporello. Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts the Vienna State Opera Chorus and Philarmonic Orchestra performing Mozart's famous opera. The principle singers are Walter Berry, Erna Berger, Otto Edelmann, Anton Dermota, Elisabeth Grummer and Cesare Siepi as Don Giovanni.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding. The roles of Caesar and Sextus, moreover, are taken by men, and there is not a countertenor in sight.

This production created for the opening of the Salzburg Festival in 1966, which remained on the programme for five years, was Karl Böhm's last Salzburg Figaro. After multiple tries to stage Figaro at the Salzburg Festival in the 1950's and 60's, the successful team Karl Böhm/Günther Rennert mounted this production with new décor, costumes by Rudolf Heinrich and with a practically new, young cast of singers. It was not only the celebrated highlight of the festival summer 1966 but also became a "standard for Mozart" " that at least was the headline the German critic and future director of the Stuttgart Opera, Wolfram Schwinger, gave his report in the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" of 27 July 1966.

Karl Böhm conducting the Requiem: one of the foremost Mozart conductors of the 20th century in one of Mozart’s most admired works. Singers Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry join forces to form a brilliant cast of soloists. Taped in 1971 at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna, this is a rare document of outstanding artistic quality.

Legendary Bach interpreter Karl Richter leads his Münchener Bach-Orchester and choir in a double-DVD version of J. S. Bach's grandest sacred work, a riveting chronicle of the Last Supper and Christ's final hours, with the Gospel text sung by Peter Schreier as the Evangelist.

…Luckily not only Arias and Choruses are featured but also two trial scenes [nos. 21 and 23] which give you the chance to hear the phenomenally powerful evangelist Ernst Haefliger - stunning! The other soloists are very good to excellent - Walter Berry [Jesus], Agnes Giebel, Marga Hoffgen and Franz Crass. An important feature is the great sound of the recording – surprisingly clear for its "age", and with the full and rich sound of large scale forces, supported by is a "full size" organ in the continuo, it all combines to a very "lush" and strong projection.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime - he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwangler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part ofthe music scene.

Herbert von Karajan recorded between 1966 and 1968 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and a cast of stars this reference version of 'The Creation' by Joseph Haydn.
After a legendary concert given in 1965 in Salzburg, Herbert von Karajan entered the studio a few months later to record Haydn's masterpiece with the same lead singers, Fritz Wunderlich and Gundula Janowitz. Almost completed in 1966, the recording was abruptly interrupted by the accidental and tragic death of Fritz Wunderlich at the age of 35, on September 17, 1966. The sessions then resume with a young tenor, Werner Krenn, who replaces Wunderlich on the songs. recitatives in particular.

Die Jahreszeiten, or The Seasons, is not as well loved as Haydn's other late oratorio, The Creation; here Haydn tried to force pastoral imagery – by 1801 a set of ideas that had been musically rehashed for centuries – into his late and in many respects proto-Romantic musical language. He resented, he wrote to a correspondent, having to compose "French trash" at one point in the score that called for frog sounds, and the score contains a menagerie of other rustic creatures and sounds – shepherds, shepherdesses, horn calls, birds, trees, bees, herbs, fish, roosters, rifle shots, thunder and lighting, stags, sunrises, and sunsets, among others. Yet the work is a strange mixture of cute and exultant.