Gustav Holst has earned a place among the most revered of late 19th and early 20th century composers and is best known for his enduring Orchestral suite The Planets.But before that great work in his use of Englsh folksongs Gnostic texts and these Vedic hymns one can discern Holst’s search for a compositional Voice beyond the constraints of the European canon in the early 1900’s. In Savitri he makes use of modal styles bitonality austerity ofOrchestration in some places richness of texture in others and an ability to suggest Indian exoticism. The piece has a performance time of thirty minutes and has minimal staging requirements.

Bohemios was based on Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème the same source for the operas of both Puccini and Leoncavallo.At its première in 1904 the Chorus of bohemians in Bohemios received such a rapturous response from the audience that three encores were demanded. The piece was performed an average of nine hundred times per year in its first twenty years and a fully operatic version was later produced. Amadeo Vives was a composer conductor and teacher of music in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a choirmaster of renown and composer of many serious works as well as operettas and zarzuelas of which Bohemios was one of his best works. He broughtto zarzuela a raised standard of harmony Orchestration and taste and he suffered the frustrations of people of serious ambition whose lighter works are the most beloved and remembered.

Richard Wagner was inspired to take up the subject of the medieval 'Mastersingers' by his reading of Georg Gottfried Gervinus's 'History of the German National Poets'. By any purely artistic assessment Die Meistersinger is afinely crafted drama rich with dramatic and musical textures that showcase Wagner's creative gifts at their best. This edition of the Libretto is in the original German with an English translation by John Gutman.

Benvenuto Cellini, premiered in 1838, is inspired by the life of the legendary Florentine goldsmith and Renaissance figure. The premiere was a disatster yet even by Berlioz?s high standards it contains music of exceptional inventiveness and beauty. The work is challenging not least due to the three versions which exist: the original version (Paris 1) as Berlioz composed it the version premiered in Paris (Paris 2) after rehearsal and copied into an archival full score the Weimar version based on the revival in 1852 following changes suggested by Liszt Our edition offers a solution to the problem of publishing operas which have been heavily revised by their composers, so that any of its many versions may be adopted on stage today. Urtext of the New Berlioz Edition Full score (BA5441) and vocal score (French) with a supplementary libretto French-German (BA5441-90) available for sale Performance material (BA5441-72) available for hire

Crit. Ed. Fabrizio Della Seta. Par BELLINI VINCENZO. I PURITANI is the last work of Vincenzo Bellini: composed in nine months, from April 1834 to January 1835 (a gestation unusually long for that time), was performed for the first time in Paris, Théâtre Italien, 24 January 1835. The new Critical Edition is based on the autograph, on the libretto of the first performance and on four manuscript copies produced in the context of the Théâtre Italien in the first months of life of the work, three of which contain autographinterventions (these sources are now kept at the Biblioteca Comunale in Palermo, at the Museo Civico Belliniano in Catania, at the Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milano and at the Staatsbibliothek zur Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin). This edition presents for the first time all the music composed by Bellini, it restores the sections deleted before or after the first performance in Paris and returns the modified sections of the Naples version. It consists of three-score volumes -introduced by a detailed reconstruction of the historical context - and of a 'Apparati' volume with a description of the Sources and the Critical Commentary to the musical text. / Opéra-opérette / Répertoire / Opéra

The first performance of Messiah took place at the New Music Hall in Dublin on April 13 1742. It was received with huge acclaim the Dublin Journal proclaiming that 'Messiah was allowed by the greatest Judges to be thefinest Composition of Musick that ever was heard'. By the time of the composer's death in 1758 Messiah had already attained an iconic status it has never relinquished.

Facsimile of the autograph score from the National Archive of the Richard Wagner Foundation Bayreuth. Par WAGNER RICHARD. Knowledge, pity, redemption: Richard Wagner took up these major themes in “Parsifal”, the music drama that he completed 13 months before his death and referred to as his “most conciliatory work”. Already celebrated for its compositional technique and mystical sonorities at the premiere, its world of ideas has stimulated new debates and interpretations over and over again to the present day. Wagner wrote the autograph score almost entirely in violet ink, a colour he preferred to use in the final years of his life. He meticulously planned the layout of the pages and finally gave the autograph to his wife Cosima - it always remained in the family's possession as a guarded treasure. The facsimile edition in high-quality four-colour printing reproduces the extensive score in its original size. Act and bar numbers on every page facilitate its use without diminishing the overall bibliophile appearance. In an accompanying essay (Ger/Eng), Ulrich Konrad elucidates the special features of the work and the manuscript./ Répertoire / Opéra

Oratorio in two parts Rome 1707. Par HAENDEL GEORG FRIEDRICH. With his “La Bellezza ravveduta nel trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” (“Beauty Reformed in the Triumph of Time and Enlightenment”), HWV 46a, the 22-year-old Handel notched up one of his greatest successes in this genre right at the very beginning of his oratorio oeuvre. Composed in Rome in 1707, the work was for a long time known as “Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” (“The Triumph of Time and Enlightenment”). In keeping with the Halle Handel Edition, however, the title is that of the name given in the primary source. In many cases inspired by the melodically rich ideas of Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739), the work is unsurpassed by any other oratorio by Handel. At the end of an impressive sequence of truly captivating arias, duets and quartets, Bellezza’s reformation in favour of living a life pleasing to God is accompanied in incisive E major by her overwhelmingly beautiful, impossibly sad closing aria “Tu del ciel ministro eletto”, the consummate pinnacle of dramatic irony in Handel’s output. By virtue of its flawless dramatic structure as well – unlike many other oratorios and all operas of the Baroque period, the story never goes off at a tangent and all arias revolve around the dispute of the four dramatic personae – the oratorio has enjoyed long runs of widely acclaimed, mostly staged performances in the last few years./ Répertoire / Opéra

Opéra comique en un acte-Hardback full score; also available vocal score for sale (BA2293-90) & performance material for hire (BA2293). The fact that “op?ra comique” rooted in the folk art of the French vaudeville was brought to its high-point by Gluck a German composer working in Italian clearly demonstrates the close relationships and interconnections made in European musical life in the mid-18th century. With “L’Ile De Merlin Ou Le Monde Renvers?” Gluck created an enchanting buffo work which draws its charm not only from its colourful music with appealing details of instrumentation andcharacterisation but also from the juxtaposition of real mythological and fairy-tale figures as well as from the critical social undertones in the libretto. The new edition is based on the Gluck Complete Edition Series IV volume 1 edited by G?nter Hau?wald. Based on the Urtext of “Gluck Complete Works”. Original French text with singing German translation. Detailed foreword in the vocal score (Ger/Eng/Fr).