Over and Under-Recorded Operas

[Superhorn]

  Certain famous operas have been recorded many,many times over the years, but others which is are still part of the standard repertoire have not received very many studio recordings , and more of them would be welcome .
   For example, of the Verdi operas, Rigoletto,La Traviata, Il Trovatore ,Aida , are very well-represented in the catalogues, but Simon Boccanegra, Ernani,Nabucco, Attila etc are not .The only studio recordings of Boccanegra I know of are by Abbado,Solti, Gabriele Santini , and Giuseppe Patane , while La Traviata has been conducted on recordings by Bonynge, Maazel, the late Carlos Kleiber, levine, Muti, Serafin, Pritchard, Molinari-Pradelli , Ceccato,
Pretre, Monteux, Previtali, Mehta,Votto and others, plus live ones by Toscanini, Solti, Giulini, Carlo Rizzi etc.
   For Puccini,  La Boheme,Tosca and Madama Butterfly have been done by Maazel, Mehta, Levine,Sinopoli,Chailly, Mehta, Leinsdorf,Patane, Beecham, Schippers, Barbirolli, Karajan, Rahbari, Conlon, Serafin, Colin Davis, Rostropovich,
Erede, DeSabata, Pretre, Fabriitis, Nagano, Pappano, Solti, etc.
    But La Fanciulla Del West has only Mehta, Capuana, Matacic, Slatkin , and Maazel live .
   Studio recordings of Wagner are not exactly thick on the ground, but  Der Fliegenda Hollander , with Klemperer,Solti, Karajan, Konwitschny, Dorati, Sinopoli, Fricsay, David Parry (in English ) , Dohnanyi, Pinchas Steinberg, Levine, Barenboim,  has more than Tannhauser , with Solti, Haitink, Otto Gerdes, Sinopoli, Konwitschny ,Barenboim and an ancient Robert Heger one from Munich.
   Tristan&Isolde has more  Die Meistersinger . Tristan : Solti, Goodall, Karajan, Fiurtwangler, Carlos Kleiber,
Segerstam, Barenboim, Pappano, Vs Meistersinger: Jochum,Solti, Knappertsbusch, Sawallisch,Karajan,
Kempe.  These are studio versions.  Solti, Kna, Karajan etc also have live ones.
    Can any here think of other examples of over and  under-recorded operas ?

[Wendell_E]

  Certain famous operas have been recorded many,many times over the years, but others which is are still part of the standard repertoire have not received very many studio recordings , and more of them would be welcome .

For the "underrecorded" ones you list, for Verdi and Puccini at least, at least part of the reason is that the less-recorded ones really aren't "part of the standard repertoire".  They may be on the edges of that repetroire, but the more frequently-recorded works you list are central to it.  At the Met, where Fanciulla premiered, it's only racked up 104 performances.  Butterfly's had 830,  Tosca 919 and Bohème 1239.  I imagine the statistics for other major houses would be similar, and a similar comparison could be made with the Verdi operas. 

As for Wagner, I don't see eight Tristans vs. six Meistersingers being that much of a difference.  If I'm doing such comparisons, I'd probably do commercial vs. pirate, as opposed to studio vs. live, in any case.

Fanciulla's my favorite Puccini opera, by a wide margin.  I'm thrilled that my local Mobile [Alabama] Opera will be doing it next season, and I'll probably go to both performances.  I've never seen it live, but have lost count of how many live peformances I've seen of Puccini's "big three".

[springrite]

Fanciulla's my favorite Puccini opera, by a wide margin.  I'm thrilled that my local Mobile [Alabama] Opera will be doing it next season, and I'll probably go to both performances.  I've never seen it live, but have lost count of how many live peformances I've seen of Puccini's "big three".

You will love it! I saw it LIVE a couple of times, both times with Domingo. It is so much better LIVE, and to be perfectly honest, La Boheme LIVE is not that much of an enhancement over RECORDED, but Fanciulla certainly is!