I think that ‘insistence’ is a bit strong! I’d be content with ‘recommendation’.
And we may have a pistols-at-dawn scenario over your views expressed on Carlos Kleiber’s Beethoven Seven!
I ought to have commented that Erich Kleiber’s very early stereo Decca recording of ‘Figaro’ is one of the classics of the gramophone. I don’t know the Solti version, but Kleiber’s account is fabulous.
I think we are fortunate to have a number of great recordings of Figaro. For video, I just picked up a box set of ROH Blu-Ray videos (to go along with a much older set of Glyndebourne videos).
On laser disc, I used to have Peter Sellars’ circa 1980’s recording, which was set in Trump Tower.
Oops - getting off-topic.
Back in topic, I am afraid I am now going to spend hundreds on my fourth version of the Solti Ring. I know it’s probably at the point of diminishing returns, but I can’t help it! I do love those recordings!
P.S.
That Peter Sellers version of Figaro is hilarious and disturbing. Probably closer to what Mozart was going for, honestly!
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I am trying to work out how many times I have bought Solti’s ‘Ring’. I think only twice so far, the Teldec DMM vinyl set and the Decca CD box.
So my impending purchases will be only my third run at them. Not extravagant at all, and my son will get the Teldec set, lucky young man that he is. My greatly loved six-year-old granddaughter can be indoctrinated into the ways of Wagner from an early age.
I’m listening to the previous CDs for the first time. I tried following the translated dialogue before rather than just enjoying the music. Sounds mighty fine! The wood burner adds to the enjoyment!
Phil
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If you’re listening to the Solti set for the first time, you’re a very lucky chap! The last fifteen or so minutes of ‘Rheingold’ may be the most glorious combination of voices and orchestra ever caught on tape!
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And you can buy a Decca highlights CD (or hires download) which included the remastered last 15 mins. I agree with Graham that it’s great.
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That is a good plan! I have found opera videos to be quite effective at catching the attention of a young child. My 7-year-old daughter has loved Wagner since she about 4 and we watched the Metropolitan Opera’s HD video of Die Walkure with Bryn Terfel, Jonas Kaufman, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Deborah Voigt, etc. The new Robert LePage production. She giggled when the valkyries slid down the set off of their “horses” and started picking up bones on the stage. The best part is that she connected the fact that Wotan and Brunhilde were “daddy and daughter” and that she and I were spending that time together. We now regularly watch opera videos together (her favorites are Walkure, La Cenerentola, Cendrillion (of course she loves those two!), the Barber of Seville, Aida, Daughter of the Regiment, the Elixir of Love, Carmen and, especially, the Magic Flute), and I know she is the only child in her class who can talk about the Ring cycle!
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What a lovely account, lucky young lady!
But you’re missing a trick - you absolutely MUST let her hear Humperdinck’s ‘fairytale opera for children’, ‘Hænsel und Gretel’. Many good recordings exist, but see if you can track down a copy of the 1950s mono EMI recording made by a young Herbert von Karajan with the Philharmonia and a dream cast, including Schwarzkopf. (I often think that those early Philharmonia recordings were about the best recordings that HvK made, always beautifully produced by Schwarzkopf’s husband, Walter Legge.)
If you don’t know the music, it’s best thought of as a variant of Wagner’s ‘magic German opera’. I took my (then) young-ish son to an utterly magical performance at Glyndebourne some years ago, and he loved it.
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My then 5 year old daughter was completely won over by Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute in the mid 1980s, and watched it over and over again. I must have recorded it on VHS from a television broadcast. It felt a bit odd to me to hear the piece in Swedish, but of course that didn’t matter to her, who was hearing it for the first time.
I don’t know how well it may have worn by now, but at the time it was outstanding.
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It was an utterly magical film, shot in Drottningholm, if I’m remembering correctly. My late mother used to have it on LPs. I have no idea what happened to them.
I would be nervous about re-watching it now, some forty (?) years on, in case it was not the thing of wonder that I remember.
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I’ve said before that when videocassettes were the new thing, I asked myself is there a movie I’d like to own. The Magic Flute was the first that came to mind.
I now own the Criterion Blu-Ray.
By the way, they couldn’t shoot in Drottingholm because the equipment was too heavy. So they duplicated it.
Talking about children, A friend of mine has called his daughter Isold.
I wonder if she will ever meet a Tristan.
I’ve said the same to the girl and she did not understand yet 
Liebestod is such a beautiful work.
With a physical release on SACD what would be the value of a Bluray disc - having all operas on a single disc, perhaps?
Edit: it doesn’t look like this release includes a bluray.
I remember listening, absolutely transfixed, to a relay of ‘Tristan’ from Bayreuth in 1976, with Carlos Kleiber conducting. His Isolde was Catherina Ligendza, with Spas Wenkoff as Tristan, but none of his Bayreuth cast survived onto his DGG Dresden recording some years later.
Carlos Kleiber was, at that time, the hottest new conductor on the classical scene, with great things expected of him. His Dresden recording of ‘Der Freischùtz’ and his Vienna account of Beethoven’s Fifth had set the recording world alight, and so much seemed possible. His subsequent recordings were truly wonderful, but he just wasn’t willing or able to go on to do what was hoped for him. So sad.
In this day and age of hi-end streaming, maybe it’s not as big a deal, but I appreciated the convenience of having all of the operas on one Blu-Ray disc as part of the last remastered set (the big white box). Of course, for all of the fanfare that accompanied that release, it was just a Redbox CD set, so the Blu-Ray was also the only way to hear the 24-bit version.
I remember them as being black rather than white, but the libretti which came with that last remaster are invaluable in listening to this one, given that they are of LP album format and size. It’s nearly impossible to follow a Ring libretto in CD size, but an LP size allows for an odd snooze and a greater chance of picking up the thread again when attention wanders….
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