Fast Tracks
February, 1997
Sales of classical music were down 19 percent last year, but not because of a lack of good opera CDs. Clearly the best of 1996 was Archiv's release of Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. Conductor John Eliot Gardiner leads a remarkable cast that includes soprano Sylvia McNair. Equally inspiring is mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt's performance in George Frideric Handel's Ariodante (Harmonia Mundi), sensitively directed by Nicholas McGegan. Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is probably the...
