Berger has long been a favourite among specialist record collectors, with the unforced ease of her high register, her musicality, and her perennial vocal youthfulness. These outstanding qualities marked her forty-year career and made her a model for present-day lyric-coloraturas. This release in the Naxos Historical series presents a fine crosssection of the repertoire through which Erna Berger established herself as a favourite coloratura soprano in both Europe and America. Her incomparable qualities as a Mozart singer may be heard in arias from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Die Zauberflöte, and Idomeneo. Her power as a singing actress are fully evident in the excerpts from operas by Verdi and Puccini, while her stylish lighter side is demonstrated in arias from opera by Auber, Flotow, Donizetti and above all in Johann Strauss’s immortal Die Fledermaus, in which Berger was an unforgettable Adele.