Best of the year.(opera recordings and performances)

COMPLETE PLEASURES: Top ten full-length opera recordings we reviewed in 2002 were Carol Vaness and Neil Shicoff in the Verdi rarity Aroldo (Philips); Bianca e Falliero, with Rossinians Majella Cullagh and Jennifer Larmore neatly paced by David Parry (Opera Rara); a blazing Friedenstag led by Giuseppe Sinopoli (DG); Marc Minkowski's gripping traversal of Handel's Hercules (Archiv); Charles Mackerras's all-star Edinburgh Festival Idomeneo (EMI); a piercing Orfeo ed Euridice, conducted by Rene Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi); a stylish, musically alert Semiramide under the baton of Marcello Panni (Nightingale); the Houston Grand Opera recording of Resurrection, by Tod Machover (Albany); Handelian Trevor Pinnock's top-drawer Tamerlano (AVIE); and Tobias Picker's eerie Therese Raquin, with the original Dallas Opera cast (Chandos).

RECITALS OF VIRTUE: A baker's dozen of the best: Barbara Bonney's While I Dream (Decca); David Daniels and Europa Galante in an all-Vivaldi program (Virgin Classics); an all-Schumann recital by Bernarda Fink (Harmonia Mundi); Renee Fleming's boldly styled Bel Canto (Decca); sensational Rossini Arias from Juan Diego Florez (Decca); Vivica Genaux in Arias for Farinelli (Harmonia Mundi); Susan Graham's intoxicating disc of French operetta arias, C'est ca la Vie, c'est ca l'Amour (Erato); Bach Arias from Angelika Kirchschlager (Sony); Audra McDonald's bracing Happy Songs (Nonesuch); Russian Arias, from the incomparable Ewa Podles (Delos); Patricia Petibon in French Baroque Arias (Virgin Classics); Thomas Quasthoff's Evening Star (DG); and Michael Schade's gallant Of Ladies and Love (Hyperion).

STAR TURNS: Ear-catching individual performances in 2002 were Cheryl Barker's Cio-Cio-San (Chandos); Ian Bostridge as Peter Quint (Virgin Classics); Patrizia Cigna as Rosalinda in Fioravanti's I Virtuosi Ambulanti (Bongiovanni); Edita Gruberova, Bernadette Manca di Nissa and Juan Diego Florez as Semiramide's Babylonians (Nightingale); Ferruccio Furlanetto as Verdi's Attila (Dynamic); Susan Graham in Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride (Orfeo); Yelda Kodalli as Aithra in Die Agyptische Helena (Dynamic); Jennifer Larmore as Estella in Pacini's Carlo di Borgogna (Opera Rara); Kurt Moll as Morosus (Koch); John Packard as Joe De Rocher in Dead Man Walking (Erato); Rene Pape as Tannhauser's Hermann (Teldec); and Andrew Shore's Falstaff (Chandos).

RESCUE SQUAD: Thomas Hampson ...