Sony Classical is pleased to offer lovers of great singing another ten complete opera sets from the RCA Victor/BMG, CBS/Sony and Eurodisc catalogues, with 3 titles (Rameau: Les Indes galantes, Ginastera: Bomarzo; Monteverdi: Ritorno d'Ulisse) remastered from the original tapes to sound better than ever. This latest release is especially diverse, embracing four centuries and rarities from two continents along with central works of the Italian and German repertoires. Many of these recordings are appearing on CD for the first time.

The first Latin American opera composer to be performed in Europe was Antônio Carlos Gomes. No less than Verdi hailed the Brazilian as a “truly musical genius”. The best known of Gomes’s operas is Il Guarany, premiered at La Scala, Milan in 1870. Now all but forgotten outside Gomes’s native country, Il Guarany is still a national treasure in Brazil. In 1994 Sony recorded the tragic opera complete in Bonn with Plácido Domingo as a Portuguese nobleman in 16th-century Brazil. Gramophone’s reviewer wrote: “The stars of this performance are Domingo in the title-role, ardent and committed, Verónica Villarroel on the most brilliantly stunning form I have heard her, and the capable and intelligent Carlos Álvarez. Both chorus and orchestra are excellent, and [conductor] John Neschling invests the whole with a real dramatic sense. Those who like full-blooded romantic opera should not miss this.”