Saturday, September 26, 2009

Stupid Contes

Spent some time yesterday being driven demented trying to find the full track/performer details on the album Offenbach Anthologie vol.4, which is a collection of historical excerpts from Les Contes d'Hoffmann and was a free download from Classical.com a few weeks ago (I think it should still be free if you register). I know, I know, gift horses and all that, but Jesus I had to jump through some hoops to sort this thing out. The tracks aren't tagged, the artist details on the site are wrong, the tracks are listed in the wrong order, and some of the file names don't properly match the track name. Thank God for Google, through which I found the album with track details on Amazon.de. Now, that wasn't perfect either, because some of the track times were wrong, and unfortunately though there is an image of the back cover the resolution's not good enough to make out the track listing, but I got there in the end. So in case some other sad individual is out there Googling and trying to make head or tail of Classical.com's hopeless nightmare, here's the proper track listing, with as much artist information as I could get:
1 Entr'acte de l'acte III (Giuletta)  3.59
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Beecham
2 Drig! Drig! Drig! 2.48
Hippolyte Belhomme; David Devries; Louis Nansen; Henri Danges
3 Il était une fois à la cour d'Eisenach 2.39
Gaston Micheletti; Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Opera Comique/Gustav Cloez
4 Il etait une fois a la cour d'Eisenach (Es war einmal am Hofe von Eisenach) 4.22
Rudolf Schock; Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin/Artur Rother
5 C'est elle, elle sommeille 2.50
Miguel Villalba; Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Opera Comique/Gustav Cloez
6 J'ai des yeux 3.03
Andre Balbon
7 Les oiseaux dans la charmille 4.50
Janine Micheau; Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire Paris/Roger Desormiere
8 Les oiseaux dans la charmille (Phöbus stolz im Sonnenwagen) 4.28
Miliza Korjus; cond Franz Schonbaumsfeld
9 Belle nuit, oh nuit d'amour 3.03
Leila Ben Sedira; Marinette Fenoyer; cond Maurice Frigara
10 Belle nuit, oh nuit d'amour (Schöne Nacht, du Liebesnacht) 4.02
Margarete Teschemacher; Margarete Klose; Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin/Erich Orthmann
11 Amis, l'amour tendre 2.38
Otokar Marak
12 Allez, pour te livrer combat... Scintille diamant 3.36
Louis Richard; Bruxelles Orchestre Symphonique du Theatre de la Monnaie/Nils Grevillius
13 Allez, pour te livrer combat (Leuchte, heller Spiegel mir) 3.11
Joel Berglund; cond Nils Grevillius
14 Elle a fui, la tourterelle 3.15
Germaine Feraldy; cond Eugene Bigot
15 C'est une chanson d'amour 6.28
Gaston Micheletti; Emma Luart; Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Opera Comique/Gustav Cloez
16 C'est une chanson d'amour (Hörst du es tönen mit süßer Melodie) 3.19
Herbert Ernst Groh; Emmy Bettendorf; cond Frieder Weissmann
17 Tu ne chanteras plus? 8.18
Germaine Feraldy; Abby Richardson; Louis Guenot; cond Elie Cohen
18 Antonia, ciel, ecoute (Antonia, Himmel, so höre) 4.23
Margarete Teschemacher; Margarete Klose; Willy Domgraf-Fassbaender; Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin/Erich Orthmann
19 O Dieu, de quelle ivresse 2.11
Miguel Villalba; Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Opera Comique/Gustav Cloez
20 O Dieu, de quelle ivresse (O Gott, mit welchem Entzücken) 2.46
Rudolf Schock; Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin/Artur Rother
21 Musique de scène de l'épilogue - Entr'acte de l'acte II (Olympia) 3.03
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Beecham
(Note that there are several occasions where there are 2 versions of the one piece of music; in all cases, a performance in French precedes one in German). Now, how do these tracks correspond to the Classical.com tracks? To confuse us even further, Classical.com's file names all start with what you might think is the track number but isn't! And what's more, a bunch of them all start with 01. So the list below, matching the track order above, gives the initial digits of all the file names, plus a clarifying piece of text for all those whose initial digits are 01:

15
01 Drig! drig!
02
01 Il etait
11
09
03
01 Les oiseaux
04
01 Belle nuit
14
13
05
06
07
01 C'est une chanson
08
16
10
01 O Dieu
12

Mrs Nereffid's comment: "I hope after all this effort you actually like the album".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And did you?

I know Thomas Beecham is quoted as having said "I prefer Offenbach to Bach often", but I can't help feeling he was utterly wrong!

Nereffid said...

Unfortunately downloading something doesn't mean I immediately listen to it, especially if it's a freebie. I might get to it sometime this month! (But from the bits I listened to, I think I will enjoy it)