In this period of crisis for the recording industry, the arrival on the international market of a new label is rather good news. Especially when it is a label that wants to publish publications of quality, not just in terms of presentation but also interpretation.
Thus one heralds the birth of Melba Recordings and the Melba Foundation, named after the famous Australian soprano Nellie Melba and founded by Dame Joan Sutherland with the goal of emphasising Australian performers, particularly vocalists. Because not only does Australia have one of the most famous opera houses in the world (the Sydney Opera House), it can also pride itself on its singers.
It comes therefore as no surprise that one of the first great projects of Melba Recordings is the publication, in hybrid SACD (a world first), of the Wagner Ring cycle performed in 2004 by the State Opera of South Australia. The conductor (an excellent Asher Fisch, also director of the Israeli Opera) is Israeli and Wotan (John Bröcheler ...) is Dutch, with the remaining performers from Australasia and worthy of praise: Siegmund and Sieglinde (Stuart Skelton and Deborah Riedel), Hunding (the New Zealander Richard Green) and Fricka (Elizabeth Campbell) are voices waiting to be discovered, and Brünnhilde (Lisa Gasteen, who recently performed the role with Covent Garden) is already well known.
A complete success then, and packaged in a rather beautiful, elegant and illustrated case.