Over the past decades, I have collected data of complete recordings of Verdi operas and kept building
up a small collection. Frustrated with the incomplete data you find in many of the available discographies
(they either list only a few recordings, or only the most recent ones, or the ones of the editor's 'best
choice', or they give only the main characters of a cast etc.), I have decided in favour of presenting
complete casts, and in favour of as much information as I could collect with regard to record labels; I
therefore thought it reasonable to dedicate a whole screen page to each individual recording.
My experience is that unless you were on the spot and took your notes while a recording was made, you
can never really rely on dates and casts given by record companies; even the big ones will eventually
forget a name in a cast, or spell it incorrectly. I have therefore tried to check my data against as many
sources as I could lay hands on, the sources ranging from official programme booklets to printed discographies
and data published on the Internet. And again the experience is that you cannot rely on the published
material - with a few laudable exceptions as for example the discographies of Carlo Marinelli, or the Met
Archives, or the Scala Database.
Presently, the discography is a set of dynamic data tables (one table for each opera) which offer a number
of options to view the data. You may either choose an opera and then scan the recordings page by page, or
have a look at a list of several recordings and choose from them; or you may use the routine on the "Search"
page which offers search for an artist, or a performance date, or a place of performance or for whichever
string you type into the serach field. An asterisk after the recording date indicates that I own a copy myself.
I have tried my very best to be as reliable as possible, though I do not claim that my discography is better
than any other. If you notice a mistake, I will gladly correct it and mention your contribution under 'Sources'.
Any comment or suggestion is also welcome.
The whole website is still "work in progress". The databases have to be updated, the music pages have to be completed.
I have tried to meticulously indicate each source of the musical excerpts I use, if possible always asking for
permission to do so. After the sudden shutdown of OperaShare, it was even more difficult to trace the many downloads I use.
Please
send your emails to
busse(at)phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de,
or write to
W.G. Busse, Harzstraße 68, D - 42579 Heiligenhaus.