And the award for strangest album cover...

[ch1525]

...has to go to this CD!!!

[stenka razin]

Chad, your Supraphon cover is unreal ...........But, check out my strangest cover.........

Regards,
Mel

[ch1525]

That one is pretty great, too, Mel!

I can only imagine what the followup cover to the album I posted will be like? Perhaps a bed and cigarettes will be involved.

[piston]

Thankfully, the situation of album covers in classical music is not as bad as with a number of [desperate] genres:
http://www.urlesque.com/2009/02/24/the- ... tive-list/

As for sexual audacity in classical music, actual nudity scenes or illustrations of sexual decadence are mainly found in opera posters, not on album covers, for works such as Berg's Lulu or Weill's Seven Deadly Sins (or in calendars sold by the Royal Opera House of their artists posing in the nude). Pretty soon some of these posters will be too pornographic to be posted here.

[piston]

For the strangely macabre:
http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-1694145-1288449947.jpeg
Originally featured on a Melodiya/Angel album circa 1972. I'm not sure from which painting it was drawn. It was credited to a "photograph courtesy of Novosti Press Agency."

[Lance]

Hmm ... I could not get this to open up for me. Can you double-check it? (Grazie!)

For the strangely macabre:
http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-1694145-1288449947.jpeg
Originally featured on a Melodiya/Angel album circa 1972. I'm not sure from which painting it was drawn. It was credited to a "photograph courtesy of Novosti Press Agency."

[Lance]

That IS the most unusual cover I've seen in a long while. I'm trying to figure out just what the man in front of the lovely lady is attempting to do? Is he adjusting her necklace?

...has to go to this CD!!!

[piston]

Hmm ... I could not get this to open up for me. Can you double-check it? (Grazie!)

For the strangely macabre:
http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-1694145-1288449947.jpeg
Originally featured on a Melodiya/Angel album circa 1972. I'm not sure from which painting it was drawn. It was credited to a "photograph courtesy of Novosti Press Agency."

It does open for me. I'll try to post the image.

[Chalkperson]

I can't get it to open either, the CD Chad is posting about is actually very good...

[piston]

Must be a copyright instrument of sort. Oh. well.

[josé echenique]

If we´re talking album covers, the strangest, most grotesque and most hideous ever are DECCA´s early 60´s efforts. The original cover of Serafin´s La Bohéme with a coy and pathetic looking Renata Tebaldi, the Marihuana-dream tableau of Boito´s Mefistofele (has to be seen to be believed!) are classics, but numero uno for me, horrible and nightmarish is Solti´s Salomé. I have no idea why Nilsson accepted this picture, but, see it for yourselves:

[stenka razin]

If we´re talking album covers, the strangest, most grotesque and most hideous ever are DECCA´s early 60´s efforts. The original cover of Serafin´s La Bohéme with a coy and pathetic looking Renata Tebaldi, the Marihuana-dream tableau of Boito´s Mefistofele (has to be seen to be believed!) are classics, but numero uno for me, horrible and nightmarish is Solti´s Salomé. I have no idea why Nilsson accepted this picture, but, see it for yourselves:

jose, I was going to put up this Nilsson Salome cover art, but I thought the Parsifal cover far worse.


P.S. Nilsson's Salome with Solti is one of the greatest recorded performances of anything ever. So please disregard the ugly art work and please listen to this overwhelming Strauss opera on Decca. +

[dirkronk]

That IS the most unusual cover I've seen in a long while. I'm trying to figure out just what the man in front of the lovely lady is attempting to do? Is he adjusting her necklace?

Why, Lance...it's obvious! Pictured here is a simple, should we say "classic" case of bodice malfunction, which the gentleman is trying in the most kindly way to rectify! Nor is this a social situation confined to musicians and/or the upper classes of central and eastern Europe, as the CD label would imply. No, even here in the western hemisphere, this is apparently becoming a very common wardrobe problem and one that, for some reason, is impossible for the dress-wearer to correct for herself. Sad, really. Who can possibly understand the complexities of women's fashion? You'd think that designers would have solved this annoyance by now, wouldn't you? Yet I find that recently, whenever I'm dressed and out for the evening, I'm ALWAYS being stopped by comely young women in plunging-neckline gowns who implore me to make similar adjustments for them. Which, for some reason, seems to annoy my wife no end. Go figure.

Dirk, in his wildest dreams (and looking in vain for the "tongue in cheek" emoticon...meanwhile, I suppose this will have to do: )