Wolfgang Sawallisch – The Warner Classics Edition - Complete Opera Recordings (31 CDs)

This 31CD-box brings together all the operatic recordings that the German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1956 to 1993 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics). Aged 11, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) heard a performance of Humperdinck's fairytale opera Hänsel und Gretel in his native Munich and, there and then, decided that he wanted to be the man in the orchestra pit who waved his arms and made things happen. It took him a while - war service as a radio operator and a spell as a prisoner of war delayed the inevitable - but by his late 20s he was conducting opera at Augsburg (starting with Hänsel und Gretel) and he had barely turned 30 when at Aachen he became the youngest Generalmusikdirektor in Germany. Opera recordings followed and his 1957 version of Richard Strauss's Capriccio is still regarded as the benchmark. Also in this box, along with more Strauss, perhaps the finest achievements of Sawallisch's other operatic hero, Wagner.

CD 1-2 Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
CD 3 Weber: Abu Hassan
CD 4 Schubert: Die Zwillingsbrüder
CD 5-6 Wagner: Das Rheingold
CD 7-9 Wagner: Die Walküre
CD 10-12 Wagner: Siegfried
CD 13-16 Wagner: Götterdammerung
CD 17-20 Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
CD 21-22 R. Strauss: Capriccio
CD 23-24 R. Strauss: Intermezzo
CD 25-27 R. Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten
CD 28-29 R. Strauss: Elektra
CD 30 Orff: Die Kluge
CD 31 Orff: Der Mond

Recorded 1956-1993