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** 1/2 WEILL: “The Seven Deadly Sins;” Symphony No. 2. Teresa Stratas, soprano; Orchestre de l’Opera National de Lyon; Kent Nagano, conductor; others. (Erato)

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This may not be must-have material for everybody, but if you like Weill, you will want this recording--if you don’t already have the video of Peter Sellars’ version of “The Seven Deadly Sins,” that is. This disc couples the 1993 live recording for Sellar’s production, replete with extraneous thumpings from the stage, with a 1996 take on the Second Symphony. Stratas is a vocally seductive Anna, altogether more engaging than some of the more Germanic, more bizarrely decadent approaches to the part, and Nagano leads a remarkably supple account of this underappreciated score--as he did locally at the 1996 Ojai Festival with this orchestra. A relatively minor work, the Second Symphony--even as characterful as Nagano makes it--is probably not worth the price of admission by itself.

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

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