Welcome, the Merry Wives of Windsor is a beautiful, tuneful, if light
opera, very popular in my native Germany.  You can get a very good
recording (Helen Donath, Karl Ridderbusch, Wolfgang Brendel u.a. Chor des
Bayerischen Rundfunks, Sinfonie Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Rafael
Kubelik) for about $10 (19.95 DM) from www.zweitausendeins.de, a German
distributor who has a lot of fabulous deals, including a number of other
hard-to-get, but very worthwile German operas such as The three Pintos
(Weber/Mahler) or the Barber of Baghdad (Cornelius).

May I add that, having lurked on this list for about four weeks, I find
your discussions very interesting and stimulating.

Kind regards, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg