Victoria de los Angeles

Arias by Wagner, Mozart, Gounod, Verdi, Mascagni and Puccini show off the ‘golden voice’ of Victoria de Los Angeles. Super budget price.

Victoria de los Angeles was born in Barcelona on 1 November 1923 into a musical family. She studied piano, guitar and singing at home, then at the Barcelona Conservatory. Her opera debut was as Mimì in La bohème, at Barcelona in 1941 and thereafter she quickly gained international fame. She was an artist who brought individuality and a sense of joy to everything she performed, so that the sense of expectation before her every appearance was fulfilled by the occasion itself.

Much of her charm and ease of communication derived from her Spanish background. The dark-hued good looks married to the warm, Mediterranean tints in her voice were indelibly – while at the same time almost imperceptibly – imprinted on the hearts and minds of her audiences. She had an instinctive ability to entrance the listener, which she undoubtedly did, by virtue of the natural quality of her art: something an artist is born with and cannot be learnt. At the same time, she had the technique and clarity of utterance that ensured an effortless communication with her audience.

This programme covers many of de los Angeles’s greatest stage roles including Mimì (La bohème), Cio- Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), Manon in Massenet’s opera of the same name and Wagner’s Elisabeth (Tannhäuser) and Elsa (Lohengrin), both of which she sang with great success at the start of her career. It also includes examples of her expertise in German and French songs, to which she always brought her own special charm.

However delightful her performance of non-Spanish repertory, it was de los Angeles’s interpretation of songs from her homeland that her audiences most eagerly awaited. Here her interpretations of Falla’s Amor brujo, the Montsalvatge negro songs – always treasurable in her live recitals – Valverde’s irresistible ‘Clavelitos!’ and two rousing songs by Nin are definitive. Add to that ‘Adios, Granada’, sung to her own guitar (an almost invariable encore), and the ‘Zapateado’ recorded at a memorable New York recital in 1972 with her compatriot Alicia de Larrocha, and this engrossing representation of a great singer’s art is complete.

Villa-Lobos's colourful and immediately ear-catching music is full of the rhythms and sounds of Brazil. The haunting soprano theme of the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras is one of the best-known melodies of all time, and the carnival atmosphere at the end of Momoprecóce is suffused with Brazilian sunshine.

One of the best-loved of all operas, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly was given its premiere at La Scala Milan in 1904, where it received a terrible reception. The chemistry of the collaborators should have ensured success - the librettists Luigi Illica and Guiseppe Giacosa had worked with the composer on La bohème and Tosca. Puccini withdrew the work and revised it thoroughly. When this version was presented to the public the adulation was extraordinary, and the work has been a central part of the operatic repertoire ever since. The story is a highly emotional one - of cynical colonial exploitation, blind love and infidelity, a potent mix fuelled by Puccini’s high-octane score.

The aria ‘Un bel di’ (One fine day) is the high point of the work where Butterfly, living in poverty with Pinkerton’s child and her maid Suzuki sings of her confidence that her handsome US Navy captain will return to her. He does eventually return, but not for Butterfly, with tragic consequences.

The mid-price collection presents some of the most important and admired recordings of the EMI Classics and Virgin Classics catalogue which make EMI 'The Home of Opera'. This performance of Les Contes d'Hoffmann was recorded in 1965 at the Salle Wagram, Paris.

Victoria de los Angeles, Tito Gobbi and Anna Maria Canali perform in the legendary 1958 recording of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. The one act opera, with libretto by Forzano, is the third of Il Trittico. Regis will issue a special box set of Il Trittico in Spring 2010.

Hector Berlioz was the author of the text to his choral work L’Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), he did not like to call it an Oratorio, and composed the music between 1850 and 1854. The years of composition were not happy for Berlioz, his father had died in 1848 and two years later his wife, the Irish actress Harriet Smithson (whose performances had revealed the genius of Shakespeare can caused him to compose so many works inspired by that great writer) became severely paralysed and died the same year as the work’s first performance. The work is in three parts with four major soloists, a Narrator (tenor), Mary (mezzo-soprano), Joseph (baritone) and Herod (bass-baritone) and a four part choir. André Cluytens’s recording dating from 1965/6 has become a classic and his admiration for the work is clear, bringing the best from the team four superb international soloists – Victoria de los Angeles, Nicolai Gedda, Roger Soyer and Ernest Blanc. The set is completed by the recording of the orchestral music from Roméo and Juliette that Carlo Maria Giulini made with his Chicago orchestra in 1969.

These are world premiere recordings. This CD is a homage to Joaquín Nin-Culmell on the occasion of his centenary by the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation. Victoria de los Ángeles performs songs by him and songs by his father. The young singers are supported by the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation.