Opéra Magazine's 'pick of the month' recordings for June, July and August 2025

Once again, I simply forgot to post anything about June's 'pick of the month' in France's monthly Opéra Magazine. So here are their favourites for June, July and August.

In June, they chose the Palazzetto Bru Zane’s release, in one of its usual, lavish CD books with the usual, thorough documentation, of Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys. It features Nicolas Courjal, Kate Aldrich, Cyrille Dubois, Jérôme Boutillier, Christian Helmer, the Hungarian National Choir and Phil., all under Vashegyi, who ‘gives the most convincing reading that could be, the most varied in atmosphere, the most dramatically coherent. He is served by six soloists selected with the greatest care.’ 

With a little judicious clicking, you can find all the tracks in a playlist on YouTube.

Their choice in their July-August double issue is Warner’s 79-CD box of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s complete Lieder and song recordings, celebrating his 100th birthday. There are no surprises: all of the recordings have appeared before.

‘Christa Ludwig,’ they say, ‘reminded us that, in a post-war Germany in ruins, people went to Fischer-Dieskau’s recitals as if to church, seeking, through their beauty, some form of redemption of Germanic culture through Lieder.’