LATEST ADDITIONS

The recently-released Audirvana Plus 3 has become the first desktop music player for MacOS to include an integrated MQA Core decoder. To quote the press release, issued jointly by London-based MQA and Paris-based Audirvana, Audirvana's MQA Core decoder "enables the first origami 'unfold' and also authenticates the file using a blue or green light to confirm that the sound is identical to that of the source material."

Aside from the overnight sensation (after a career of more than a decade) of Beverly Sills at the New York City Opera as Cleopatra in Julius Caesar, the 1966–1967 opera "news" in New York was the Metropolitan Opera, newly opened at Lincoln Center. The 10 broadcasts included here feature some singers who still have no equals. In addition to seven starrily cast favorite operas and the premiere of Marvin David Levy's fine Mourning Becomes Electra, there were Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, composed to inaugurate the new house; the Met premiere of Richard Strauss's 1919 masterpiece, Die Frau ohne Schatten; and the first production in 20 years of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, with the incomparable Jon Vickers essaying the title role for the first time.

Last week at Seattle retailer Definitive Audio's 12th Music Matters, I got to watch one of Michael Fremer's legendary vinyl presentations. (If you have not witnessed Magic Mikey in action—he will be reprising his dem at AXPONA in April—it is truly a must-see!) In this video, Mikey demonstrates the difference between record pressings by playing three different pressings of Nina Simone's debut album Little Girl Blue: the 1958 original; a Pure Pleasure reissue; and the Analogue Productions reissue.