Search - Soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre, Russian State Choir :: Aleko

Rachmaninoff is not thought of as an opera composer, and, indeed, his output for the lyric stage comprises only these three short operas. All one- acters, they each come in at an hour or a little more; and sometimes their brevity--as in the case of Francesca da Rimini--precludes the full development of the story's possibilities. But all still display Rachmaninoff's compositional and melodic gifts, and are well worth hearing. This set, recorded in the early 1990s in Moscow, has reasonably good sound engineering and competent, if not particularly noteworthy, casts. --Sarah Bryan Miller