Seriously, if there's one perk to living in Italy, it's the mainstream availability of opera and classical that has more or less infiltrated popular culture. Which is why we're excited that daily newspaper Corriere della Sera has introduced a new series called, "La Grande Opera Lirica".
The initiative consists of 25 individual CD sets (with 2-3 CDs each) of opera's greatest works, which will drop every Monday from January 26, 2009 - July 13, 2009.
The first one was Verdi's La Traviata (out this past Monday), and is currently going for 1 cool euro. Every additional CD will go for 9.99 euro.
The series promises luminaries such as Callas, Pavarotti, Tebaldi, Caballé -- and conductors such as von Karajan, Furtwaengler, Prêtre, and Klemperer -- in 25 operas spanning from Fidelio to La Gioconda to Godunov.
Here are two of the advertisements below, where our dead composers have been outfitted with modern technology:
("With this Don Giovanni, even Mozart would ask for an encore.")
("Not even Verdi listened to a Traviata like this.")