Mozart: The Complete Operas/Various (Box) [Box set]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Audio CD (August 4, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 44
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B001TH28EY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,540 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

LIMITED EDITION BOX SET INCLUDING OVER 44 CDS! A unique collection of the COMPLETE operatic works of Mozart! This set ranges from the fascinating works of his teenage years to the profound late masterpieces. Operas known and loved all over the world such as Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte as well as rare discoveries including L'oca del Cairo and Die garterin aus liebe. These award-winning recordings feature a galaxy of great Mozart singers such as Kiri te Kanawa, Frederica von Stade, Janet Baker, Mirella Freni, Edita Gruberova, Edith Mathis, Peter Schreier, Hermann Prey, Thomas Allen and many more.

Contains: Le Nozze Di Figaro Wixell * Norman * Freni Don Giovanni Wixell * Arroyo * Te Kanawa * Burrows Così Fan Tutte Caballé * Baker * Gedda * Ganzarolli La Clemenza Di Tito Burrows * Baker * Popp * von Stade Die Zauberflöte Price * Schreier * Moll * Serra Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail Eda-Pierre * Burrows * Lloyd Idomeneo, Re Di Creta Araiza * Hendricks * Alexander * Hollweg La Finta Semplice Hendricks * Murray * Blochwitz * Schmidt Mitridate, Re Di Ponto Hollweg * Auger * Gruberova * Cotrubas Ascanio In Alba Baltsa * Mathis * Schreier * Auger Il Sogno Di Scipione Schreier * Popp * Gruberova Lucio Silla Schreier * Varady * Auger * Mathis La Finta Giardiniera Moser * Fassbender * Conwell Il Re Pastore Hadley * McNair * Ahnsjo L'oca Del Cairo Fischer-Dieskau * Schreier * Wiens Lo Sposo Deluso Palmer * Rolfe Johnson * Tear * Cotrubas Bastien Und Bastienne Orieschnig * Nigl * Busch Die Garterin Aus Liebe Donath * Hellweg * Norman Zaide Mathis * Schreier * Wixell Der Schauspieldirektor Cotrubas * Welting * Rolfe Johnson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MOZART'S EARLY OPERAS ARE GROSSLY UNDERVALUED, January 31, 2010

By 

Roo.Bookaroo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mozart: The Complete Operas/Various (Box) (Audio CD)

This set of the best vocal music created by an incomparable genius is a feast for the ear. This is an epoch-making compilation that is going to revolutionize the public perception and appreciation of Mozart's phenomenal opera production.

Contrary to some reviewers' claim, one of the exciting features of this superb collection is that it includes complete and brilliant performances of Mozart's early operas: the delightful German opera Bastien und Bastienne, K 50 (by a boy Mozart of 12); plus the seven "early Italian Operas": La Finta Semplice, K 51, Mitridate, K 87, Ascanio in Alba, K 111, Il Sogno di Scipione, K 126, Lucio Silla, K 135, Il Re Pastore, K 208, and the extraordinary La Finta Giardiniera, K 196.
All of them have until recently been universally ignored by the contemporary music world.

What's missing in this set is the Latin opera Apollo & Hyacinthus, K 38, and the German cantata Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebotes, K 35. From age 11 to 19, Mozart wrote no fewer than nine operas, plus a magnificent, gripping, "oratorio", La Betulia Liberata, K 118, which, musically, must be included in his operatic productions.
These three missing operas are rightly included in the Deutsche Grammophon DVD set of Mozart-22 Complete Operas (33 disks in all. A lot of time is needed to get to know Mozart in depth!). These three early operas can be found in the Philips audio box No.11 of the Compact edition of 2000, called "Litanies, Vespers, Oratorios, Cantatas, Masonic Music", which includes as a bonus, Davide Penitente, K 469.

Finally, the Decca set also fails to include Acis & Galatea, K 566, which is a 1788 arrangement of the original Haendel's 1718 English opera, a charming "pastoral" opera, in a genre already explored by Mozart in Bastien & Bastienne, Ascanio in Alba, and Il Re Pastore. Although called again "oratorio", Acis & Galatea is a full-fledged stageable opera, and the first entry in the New Grove Book of Operas, by the much regretted expert Stanley Sadie. But Mozart's re-arrangement is in German, no longer in the original English, and completely re-orchestrated.
As a special annex, this Haendel/Mozart work could well be added to a complete set of Mozart's German operas. Peter Schreier's 1983 version of this charming pastoral opera on Orfeo is highly recommended as an adjunct to the Decca set to make it even more complete.

Many of the recordings in the Decca set, especially the early operas, are musically complete - unlike the furious cuts in arias and recitatives perpetrated by, for instance, somebody like Harnoncourt & Co. - and have become de facto reference recordings.
Also remarkable: This is the only set with the two versions of the magnificent La Finta Giardiniera, in Italian and in German (Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe), both K 196, and most of the music of the monumental Idomeneo, K 366.

A note of caution: The Decca set gives us the music, but not the libretti, in order to keep the price at a democratic level. Libretti are indispensable to fully appreciate the music which follows the action on the stage and the feelings expressed by the beautiful arias. Synopses of action and indexes of tracks and arias are a great help, but not enough.
The missing libretti for the Decca set can be found online through Google: Karadar has been showing complete libretti of all operas, but only in the original language (Latin, Italian, or German), which is a good beginning.
Translations can be found in the booklets of individual CD boxes (which often means buying an additional version of a given opera. This enables us to start enjoying the fun game of comparing versions and singers, an entertainment which can last a lifetime).

A good companion to this Decca set is the series of the articles published in Wikipedia on each opera, and on "The List of Operas by Mozart", offering synopses, analyses, and background information, including valuable links to scores and libretti available on the Web, and to key books and commentaries.
There are some books as well: for instance, the Metropolitan Opera Book of Mozart Operas, covering only seven late operas, with original libretti and English translations.
Hopefully, with the release of this Decca set, the Metropolitan Opera Guild will now decide that the time is ripe to publish a book of the complete libretti with English translations of all of Mozart's operas (and please, make sure to include the libretti of Apollo & Hyacinthus, Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebotes, La Betulia Liberata and Acis und Galatea.)

Note also that all the full scores of the operas can be found at the Web site of DME, the Digital Mozart Edition, which has put online all the works already published by NMA, the indispensable Neue Mozart Ausgabe (New Mozart Edition, with a good Wikipedia article).
This comprehensive site contains interesting photocopies of original documents and pages of Mozart's autograph scores. The DME (and the NMA) are the fundamental sources of research for any study of Mozart' life and works. No separate texts of the libretti are offered on the DME site, all shown integrated within the scores themselves.

It is so easy and fashionable to pooh-pooh Mozart's early operas and dismiss them as "immature" works, and claim that nobody would find any pleasure listening to such embryonic juvenilia. I have to utterly disagree with this glib dismissing (affecting also his other early music, totally ignored as well).
Can we listen all our lives only to Don Giovanni, K 527, or Die Zauberflöte, K 620, over and over again - although we could imagine worse fates - and never explore the vast range of Mozart's production? Overexposure can kill the strongest affection.
Most people know only the famous five, so-called "mature" operas: the exciting Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Seraglio), K 384 of 1782, plus the last group of four all produced in the last five years of Mozart's life (1786-1791) -- Le Nozze di Figaro, K 492; Don Giovanni, K 527; Cosi Fan Tutte, K 588; Die Zauberflöte, K 620 -- and nothing else. La Clemenza di Tito, K 621, is royally ignored, as an anachronistic backward return to obsolete, dead and buried, and boring opera seria.
But after an overdose of Sarastro in the Flute, it is a delightful refreshing experience to reconnect with the youthful Bastien & Bastienne, K 50, and Colas's entrancing "Diggy, Daggy" spoof on magical incantation.

Mozart did become even more grandiose and complex in the second half of the 1780s, (although never losing his sense of fun, whimsy, and irrepressible gaiety, without which Mozart would no longer be Mozart) but, more vitally, his luck was that he was able to use taut, exciting, satirical, even cynical, and stage-worthy libretti, mostly by Da Ponte, on contemporary subjects. All which made them extremely popular with modern audiences. This is through these five works that most people encounter Mozart's opera music.
But we're not on a desert island, stranded with these five recordings. The earlier operas of his youth are unknown and grossly undervalued, as they have not become popular mostly because of their stodgy, conventional librettos of 18th-century formal court entertainment. They pose quite a challenge to effective (and expensive) staging able to excite the visual interest of a modern popular audience. DVDs can succeed in rendering these stilted librettos alive.

Mind you, the same thing happened to Handel's operas, which got buried for good after their initial production. In the 18th century, opera goers and music lovers always craved for novelty - not unlike our taste for movies nowadays. Previous operas were immediately forgotten and replaced with new works. The composer was the only one who knew and could remember his previous operas.
It's only in the 20th century, with a new sense of historicity and the magical power of recording that an interest reappeared in the old forgotten operas of Handel and Mozart. Gradually Mozart's youth operas are finally being dusted off and resurrected, as well as Handel's operas, and their magnificent music rediscovered and appreciated.

The modern tendency to pile disdain on "opera seria" - "dramma per musica" on noble heroic subjects mostly drawn from classical antiquity (Ancient Greece and Rome) or biblical stories, and "festa teatrale" suitable for a royal or aristocratic celebration - didn't improve matters.
Even a grandiose opera such as Idomeneo, K 366, was ignored for two centuries and re-exhumed only recently when Pavarotti and Domingo proved it could make a superlative audience-pleaser, and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle dared to dress up the Homeric heroes in French Louis XIV costumes and wigs.
From Idomeneo, it's an easy step to give a new fresh listen to the earlier grand opera serias of Mozart and rediscover the enchanting music in the powerful Lucio Silla, K 135, and the remarkable Mitridate, K 87.

Opera is about singing. Mozart's music requires the very best voices to shine in its unique glow. And, in the Decca set, Hager, Schreier & Co do deliver world-class singers. For instance, Hager couldn't have found a better tenor than the superbly virile Werner Hollweg in the title role of Mitridate, facing five supreme sopranos: Auger, Gruberova, Baltsa, Cotrubas, Weidinger. In each one of the recordings, these magnificent voices make the whole difference.

When Mozart conducted the premiere of Mitridate, re di Ponto, K 87, in Milan on Dec. 26, 1770, just short of 15, a performance that lasted six hours (with ballet), music-loving Milanese erupted in shouts of "Evviva il maestrino!" The opera was performed a total of 22 times, a prodigious success for a new opera, rarely achieved in those days when Italy was... Read more ›

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How much is too much?, August 4, 2009

By 

Angus W. Grant (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mozart: The Complete Operas/Various (Box) (Audio CD)

These dirt cheap box sets continue to be released at an alarming rate and provide incredible bargains but are not necessarily essential purchases.

This set contains recordings that were all part of the Phillips Complete Mozart Edition (which was about the price of a small car I seem to remember) and they have appeared in several guises since. The backbone of the set is Davis' wonderful recordings of the mature operas which have stood the test of time excedingly well. The set is worth purchasing for these operas alone and will complement any recordings you already own. The list of tremendous singers from the 70's and 80's gives the set another bonus of being a fascinating record of Mozart singing during this period (things are very different now are they not?).

In that sense you can't go wrong but you need to consider that the early operas, while perhaps interesting as a demonstration of his developmentt as a dramatic composer, are not music you will be turning to frequently for enjoyment. Add this the problem that the set will not contain a printed libretto or essays to help you follow these immature works so they will probably sit in their cardborad sleeves for most of their life.

If that doesn't bother you you certainly won't regret gaining so many fine recordings at such a reasonable price.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great music but poorly packaged, April 12, 2011

By 

Stephen J. Rawlinson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mozart: Complete Operas (MP3 Download)

There is no greater composer than Mozart, and his operas are so beautiful. But unfortunately, the operas in this set are poorly packaged. I am having to build my own playlist of Die Zauberflöte. The songs are in the wrong order. They put the overture at the end and the songs within the act are in alphabetical order instead of the order in which they should be performed. I know very little about the earlier operas so will just enjoy the music without any idea of what is going on in them. The later operas are going to have to be organized into proper playlists, and that will take up my time. This is a great buy if you just want to enjoy incredibly beautiful music, but I don't understand why they messed up the order of the component songs.