Flying Dutchman Anthology - Various Artists

Advantages: The ultimate operatic experience
Disadvantages: It's complicated, but so was Wagner

...to Cosima Liszt . No better way to start the Wagnerian journey. Listen to The Flying Dutchman, then to the more complex and powerful love story Tristan and Isolde. You will be enlightened as the earlier and lyrical work of the 'Dutchman' develops into the musical narrative of 'Tristan' with singing and orchestral accompaniment of equal importance, each with its own identity and the drama blending superbly around both aspects. Truly, opera of perfection. Secondly, social issues dealing with money and power. Although Wagner was a man who lived a life of luxury well beyond his financial resources, he remained a champion of the working classes who were being trampled on by big business in Germany and who corrupted life with power broking exercised through excessive wealth. So, next listen to the lyrical opera Tannhauser and then the only comedy he... Read review

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Advantages: A chance to hear early, live and unreleased recordings of songs and an insight to how
Disadvantages: Expensive, not designed for pleasure listening.

...collection, it follows in a very similar vein. These collections seem to becoming more popular these days in music with more such ones being released. What these such ‘Anthologies’ consist of is a mostly chronological collection of previously unreleased tracks of live performances, home recordings, demos, early takes, speech tracks and alternative and various tracks of the said artists. And the John Lennon Anthology is no different ~~Details~~ This set consists of 94 tracks on 4 CD's, a booklet and a nice box to keep them in. However at £34.99 which I think was what I paid for it when it was released in ‘98, you might find it a little to expensive, but not to worry as there was a single CD album called "Wonsaponatime", released at the same time which has selected tracks from the anthology. As I’ve said it made up of live recordings, demo... Read review

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Advantages: absolutely nothing
Disadvantages: awful singing, awful songs

...before I begin my abuse of this CD I want to make clear that I AM a wrestling fan so therefore am not simply dismissing it. Previous WWE entrance theme CD's, of which I have all bought, have been absolutely fantastic with high qualitys of music produced to a slick, effective standard. For me the greatest WWE CD was the WWE Anthology effort which was released in 2001 and covered the entire history of WWE entrance themes on a 3-CD set. This effort however, is a complete change from all previous efforts. 'Originals' is the WWE superstars themselves performing songs that were especially written for them, and to be quite honest, they do an awful job of it. I hope that wrestling fans don't believe that I have something against the sport, because as I said earlier, I am a fan who is giving an honest opinion on an appaling record. The only... Read review

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