JAPANDIS.HTM

This section of the website OPERADIS contains "Discographies" which were generated by CLOR of the operas written by the composers listed below.

Under contruction - there may be ERRORS!
Recent additions

Opera Composers

Sadao Bekku (1922- )

Ikuma Dan (1924-2001)

Walther Giger (1952- )

Kyoko Hagi (1956- )

Hikaru Hayashi (1931- )

Teizo Matsumura (1929- )

Toshiro Mayuzumi (1929-1997)

Minoru Miki (1930- )

Akira Miyoshi (1933- )

Roh Ogura (1916-1990)

Shigeaki Saegusa (1942- )

Osamu Shimizu (1911-1986)

Koscak Yamada (1886-1965)

Opera Composers

About CLOR

CLOR is an Indexed Electronic Catalogue (IEC) on CD-ROM in which it is intended to list all recordings that are or have been commercially available of "complete" operas or of extended excerpts of operas longer than about 20 minutes, i.e. as long or longer than one LP-side. Audio and video recordings are included and the term "opera" is taken to include operettas, opéra-bouffes, G&S, zarzuelas and a few musicals as well as works normally described as operas. Although more than 14,000 recordings of over 3100 operas are listed in CLOR it is far from being complete and, of course, never will be.

All the software is purpose-written, so the search-engine is completely integrated with the catalogue, and thus there should be no "false-hits"

The following information about each recording is included, when known, title, composer, year of first performance, date of recording, orchestra, chorus, language of performance, singers and the roles they perform, catalogue numbers and the years of issue in the various formats, and references to reviews in the main Western European languages.

There are composer, title, conductor, singer, and singer-with-singer indexes by which information can be retrieved by the use of three-letter codes (the first three letters of the name or title), as well as two "browse modes" in which composers and titles are listed alphabetically. In addition, the user is presented with a series of "ordered lists". Thus, the recordings on file in which a particular singer appears may be listed in alphabetical or inverse alphabetical order of composer, title, or conductor, or in order or inverse order of the year of the recording. Also, the recordings in which the singer appears with any other singer may be listed similarly. In this way the user gets an overall view of what recordings are on file before opening the file for any particular recording.

CLOR will print many of the lists and documents that it displays on the screen provided that WORDPAD or NOTEPAD is installed on the user's computer. It is also possible to send these lists and documents to wordpad as an ANSI-encoded text file so that the user can edit them and save them in another format with a name of his or her choice. Many of the lists and documents that CLOR produces may be converted into HTML-format. Thus, it will produce opera, singer and conductor "discographies" in HTML. The "discographies" on this web-site were generated in this way.

If you are interested in Opera "Discographies" you may also find Carlo Marinelli's "Opera Discography Encylopaedia" (ODE) http://www.carlomarinelli.it or the discography in the Opera Data Base (ODB) http://www.operadatabase.com of interest or if you prefer the printed page try "Recent International Opera Discography" Vol.23; compiled by Charles H. Parsons and published by the Edwin Mellen Press http://www.mellenpress.com

Sources

The sources used depend on the place of origin of the record and the year in which it was issued. The following is a generalized list to which there will be exceptions:

Post 1945 - Western Europe and North America

By far the largest number of recordings listed in CLOR fall into this category, and my major source of information on records issued by the "regular" record companies is reviews in specialist magazines. References to these are always given. This information is backed up when ever possible by examination of the records themselves, either those in my own collection (marked *) or in other sources (marked ~). Further information is obtained from the catalogues of Record Companies and Dealers, in both hardcopy and on the internet, and from advertisments (referenced). This applies especially to recordings issued by so-called "pirate-" and "bootleg-" organizations which are seldom reviewed in magazines. As explained below, I always attempt to check the authenticity of these recordings.

Pre 1945 - Western Europe and North America

The major source of information for these records is the catalogues of Record Companies and their archives, as well as books derived from these. Some information has also been obtained from reviews in magazines that were published before the 2nd-World War (e.g. The Gramophone, The American Music Lover, the predecessor of the American Record Guide)

Eastern Europe

The major source is the catalogues of Record Companies such as Melodiya and Hungaroton. These generally give much more information than the catalogues of the major Western Record Companies. This is backed up by an examination of the records themselves whenever possible and occasionally with information found in advertisments and in dealers' catalogues.

Japan

The major sources are Japanese record catalogues, the two editions of Masatoshi Nozaki's book "Opera Disc Collection", reviews in the Japanese magazine "Grand Opera", and whenever possible, the records themselves, as Nozaki's book, excellent as it is, contains very little information on Western style operas by Japanese composers.

"Live-Pirate or Bootleg" Recordings

Whenever possible I check that the claimed work was performed in the claimed location at the claimed time with the claimed cast. The sources that I use for this are contemporary reviews of the original performance, the lists of performances in Opera Houses, and the chronologies of performances by singers and conductors.

Acknowledgements

I thank the following for providing me with information for inclusion in CLOR

Tom Peel

David Mason

Richard Fairman

Calvin M. Goodwin

and Ms. Kyoko Kato of the International House of Japan for help with the transcription of some Japanese names

clor.clor@ntlworld.com - to contact the compiler, Brian Capon, and report errors and omissions.

Return to top

http://www.digits.com