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For years, "New From the Studios" has been the centerpiece of OPERA NEWS's annual look at what recording companies have in store--and in stores--for lovers of vocal music. In August 1992, we published "Boom or Bust," an article for which we posed a model under such a welter of new CD releases that she appeared to be drowning in them. This year, we dropped the feature: there weren't enough new recordings to make up a decent list; our model would have dived into a nearly empty pool.

There are a number of reasons for this drought. One is that there is a surfeit of excellent recordings of most mainstream operas and, thus, little need for another expensive perusal of a standard such as II Trovatore (which is, oddly, one of a minuscule number of complete operas being issued this fall by a major label--EMI, as it happens). Another reason is the growing popularity of DVD, the format in which some record companies plan to release their full-length opera titles. Finally, there is the chaos that beset most of the huge media companies that, almost by accident, swallowed the classical recording industry in their frenzied drive for market share. Consolidation did not produce the hoped-for profits, and as a consequence several CEO scalps were taken over the summer. But even before the current turmoil, narrow markets like that for classical recordings largely had been abandoned. Sales of 20,000 units--not bad for a classical recording--are absurdly small, uneconomic really, for a behemoth such as AOL/Time-Warner or Bertelsmann, so suddenly a label can disappear, its back lists abandoned because the last person who knew who Verdi was has been let go. Unconventional combinations such as the quirky pairing of Anne Sofie yon Otter and Elvis Costello or unusual repertory such as Ramon Vargas's exploration of arie antiche are imaginative efforts to reach a broader market. We have artides that describe yon Otter's and Vargas's spirited fight to beat the numbers. (See David J. Baker's cover story, ...