Wagner: Die Walkure

Featuring a front-line cast (Rysanek, Frick, Suthaus, Hotter, Nilsson, etc) that sends Wagner aficionados into states of reverie at the prospect of listening once again to the authoritative, superlative singing casts one could assemble in the 1950s, this amazing performance of the second opera in the Nibelungen tetralogy also proves that conductor Herbert von Karajan live was, like the singers, in a class of his own in the 1950's as well. His few surviving Wagner recordings, from this period, like this La Scala 1958 Die Wälkure, are a must for every Wagner connoisseur.