Various Artists - Shakespeare in Music - Music inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare

No other dramatist has been the source of inspiration for so much music as William Shakespeare. This 10-CD compilation presents music by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Liszt and Prokofiev based around many of the Bard's greatest theatre works, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth and King Lear.

Amongst several popular works featured in this set are Prokofiev's suite to the ballet Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture: Romeo and Juliet, Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream and the complete operas Falstaff and Macbeth by Verdi. Other highlights include Shakespeare texts set to the music by Henry Purcell sung by the inimitable Alfred Deller and his consort.

The recordings were made between 1950 and 2011, and feature a host of great names such as the conductors Herbert von Karajan, Sir Adrian Boult, Georg Solti and Ferenc Fricsay, renowned orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic, the pianist Clara Haskil, as well as a line-up of star singers Tito Gobbi, Anna Moffo, Rita Streich, Carlo Bergonzi and Leonie Rysanek.