Julia Lezhneva

The vocal sensation everyone’s talking about – Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva – makes her Decca solo debut with a celebratory disc of motets from Vivaldi, Handel, Porpora and Mozart, partnered by one of the world’s leading early music ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico, conducted by Giovanni Antonini.

Praised for her “pure tone” (Opernwelt) and “flawless technique” (Guardian), Lezhneva’s career has skyrocketed since her brief but extraordinary appearance at the 2010 Classical BRIT Awards in London, at the invitation of her mentor, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. “Few young singers have been as widely celebrated so early in their careers as Kiri Te Kanawa’s protegé, the . . . Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva”, wrote The Independent. Dame Kiri recently added her voice to the critical consensus, observing that “from time time to time a really outstanding talent appears and I believe that Julia Lezhneva is just that. The brilliance of her voice and technique are extremely impressive.”

Virgin Classics present the world-premiere recording of L’Oracolo in Messenia, an opera prepared by Vivaldi for Vienna and now reconstructed by Fabio Biondi. Biondi leads this triumphant performance, which opened the 2011 Resonanzen festival in the Austrian capital with a high-powered cast including Ann Hallenberg, Vivica Genaux and rising soprano Julia Lezhneva.

Vivaldi revised L’Oracolo in Messenia for Vienna in 1740 after its premiere in 1738 in Venice and now Vivaldi expert Fabio Biondi has reconstructed the work from literary and musical sources – notably a libretto recently discovered at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This musicological feat follows the example Biondi set with two other Vivaldi operas recorded for Virgin Classics, Bajazet and Ercole sul Termodonte.

Vivaldi hoped for performances of the work in Vienna during Carnival in1741, but in October 1740 the Austrian Emperor, Charles VI, died suddenly and Austria’s theatres were closed for a year of mourning; so Vivaldi’s plans came to nothing and he himself died in Vienna in 1741, alone and poor. L’ Oracolo in Messenia was finally staged in the city in 1742 at the city’s Kärntnertor Theatre, starring Anna Girò, Vivaldi’s favourite prima donna, as Queen Merope.

Appropriately enough, this recording was made in Vienna. It captures the opening performance of the 20th season of the prestigious Resonanzen festival of early music, which takes place at the city’s Konzerthaus. The impressive cast comprises soprano Julia Lezhneva, mezzo sopranos Ann Hallenberg (as Queen Merope), Vivica Genaux, Romina Basso and Franziska Gottwald, counter tenor Xavier Sabata and tenor Magnus Staveland. Fabio Biondi leads his own ensemble, Europa Galante, from the violin. The performance was greeted with a standing ovation and the media were lavish in their praise; indeed the Wiener Zeitung said that: “the festival could not have launched its 20th anniversary in more triumphant fashion”.

The baroque woman was confined to a strictly domestic role. She was either saintly (mother of Christ and the subject of religious allegory as in Handel’s Trionfo del tempo e del disinganno), a diva, a queen (Poppea, Cleopatra) or the inevitable victim in classical tragedies like Semiramis, Berenice, Rodelinda and Agrippina.

'Ladies sing Baroque' is shaped as a nod to those ladies who have enchanted jazz, but composed of music from two centuries earlier: hymns to emotion, the tunes that disturb for eternity! Monteverdi's invention of opera, Vivaldi's music for the Pieta, Pergolesi and Bach bring the drama and emotion found in temples and churches. Highlights include the final duet from 'L'Incorronazione di Poppea' and Bach's sublime 'Erbarme dich' whilst two Canadians with strong characters, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Karina Gauvin, successfully evoke the legendary association of Marilyn Horne and Montserrat Caballé.

A star is born! The Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva is the vocal revelation that everyone is talking about. Still only 21, a protégée of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the winner of several major awards, Lezhneva makes her solo recital debut with a programme of arias by Rossini, a composer of whom is particularly fond. She is accompanied by the Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by its new artistic director Marc Minkowski.

In 2007 Julia Lezhneva won the prestigious Elena Obraztsova International Competition for Young Opera Singers in St Petersburg, for which the judges included Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig and Eva Marton. She has sung opposite Juan Diego Flórez at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and made her UK debut, aged 19, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, also performing Rossini. Her London debut, introduced by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, came at the 2010 Classical Brit Awards singing Elena’s Final Rondo from Rossini’s La Donna del Lago in the Royal Albert Hall.

In October 2010 she confirmed her status as one of the world’s most exciting talents by winning the First International Opera Competition held at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris. Her performance in the recent Naïve recording of Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in Villa, conducted by Giovanni Antonini, has been praised to the skies by the international press. Her debut solo concerts at the 2010 Salzburg Festival with the Mozarteum Orchestra and Marc Minkowski likewise achieved extraordinary success. Minkowski has followed the young singer’s career closely; it was he who invited her in 2009 to take part in Bach’s B minor Mass, her first recording, and in summer 2011 she will sing the part of Fiordiligi under his baton in a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Salzburg. Despite her youth, Julia Lezhneva has a huge and extremely varied repertoire, ranging from the Baroque and bel canto styles to Romantic and contemporary music.

Ottone in villa is the second recording of a Vivaldi opera this year, and the first full opera recording ever done by leading Baroque music specialist Il Giardino Armonico and its music director Giovanni Antonini. They are joined by a cast including confirmed performers and rising stars such as Julia Lezhneva and Topi Lehtipuu. Ottone in Villa is the earliest opera by Vivaldi, and this is the world premiere of a complete recording of the work.

Il Giardino Armonico, founded in Milan in 1985 and directed by Giovanni Antonini, is one of today’s most admired and sought-after ensembles specialising in performance on period instruments. The ensemble has made many award winning recordings of instrumental works by Vivaldi and other seventeenth and eighteenth-century composers.

Long thought to be Vivaldi’s first opera, Ottone in villa (“Otho on vacation”) had its premier in 1713 in the small public theatre of Vicenza, the Teatro delle Garzerie. By this time Antonio Vivaldi was already a celebrated violin virtuoso and teacher at La Pietà. Ottone in villa bears witness to Vivaldi’s mastery in his first productive period (in 1711 he had published his Op. 3 concerti, L’estro armonico), and is a precious example of Venetian operatic culture. The drama is a satire of Imperial Rome’s high society, concentrating on amorous intrigues among an attractive group of young characters in a pastoral setting.

The Vivaldi Edition, a recording venture conceived by the Italian musicologist Alberto Basso (Istituto per I Beni Musicali in Piemonte) and the independent label Naïve, is one of the most ambitious recording projects of the twenty-first century. Its principal objective is to record the massive collection of Vivaldi autograph manuscripts preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria in Turin, some 450 works in all.

Last year, the esteemed conductor Marc Minkowski joined Naïve for a long-term collaboration during which period he will be recording the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart, among others. The first in this series of recordings featured the works of Georges Bizet performed on instruments of the period. It was a major international success, and was picked as an Editor’s Choice in the Gramophone and a Music Choice in the BBC Music Magazine.

Early in 1733 Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died. Five months of mourning followed, during which all public music-making was temporarily suspended. Bach used the opportunity to work on the composition of a Missa, a portion of the liturgy sung in Latin and common to both the Lutheran and Roman Catholic rites. His aim was to dedicate the work to the new sovereign Augustus III, a Catholic, and by doing so to hope to improve his own standing. The Missa was first performed in 1733 during the festival of the Oath of Allegiance to Augustus III. It consisted of settings of the Kyrie and Gloria that now comprise the first part of the Mass in B Minor. At what point Bach decided to expand the Missa into a full-blown setting of the Catholic Mass is not known. Some researchers believe that the Symbolum Nicenum (or the Credo) was composed between 1742 and 1745, but others think it predates the Missa and was first heard in 1732. The remaining parts (Sanctus, Osanna, Benedictus and Agnus Dei et Dona nobis pacem) were all added in the late 1740s. The Mass in B Minor did not assume its final form until Bach's last years, perhaps by 1748. It may be that Bach wished the Mass in B Minor to be regarded as a monument of his skill, for it is a work based much upon his earlier music, which he adapted and refined to meet a sacred purpose.

Handel’s ninth major opera for London, Alessandro was written as a showcase for the “Rival Queens”, the two famous Italian sopranos – Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni – whose supposed enmity, both personal and professional, not only generated good publicity for Handel’s latest opera but also added extra dramatic frisson to the two divas’ jealous clashes on stage.

Still something of a rarity even in this heyday of the Handel revival, Alessandro has only ever been recorded twice before over the past 30 years, and never previously with such a starry trio of singers in the three lead roles.

Marking the start of an exciting new partnership with the sensational Croatian counter-tenor Max Emanuel Cencic (and his company Parnassus Arts) that will involve both solo and ensemble recordings, this new recording stars Cenèiæ himself as Alexander the Great (a role originally sung by the legendary castrato Senesino), with acclaimed French Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin as the Scythian princess Lisaura, and the sensational young Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva – making her debut appearance as Decca’s latest exciting solo signing – in the role of Roxana, the Persian princess who finally wins the conqueror’s heart.

Recorded at the Megaron concert hall in Athens, this new recording of Handel’s classical epic features the period instruments of Armonia Atenea conducted by George Petrou, the brilliant young Baroque specialist whose previous recordings of Handel operas (Oreste, Arianna in Creta, Tamerlano, Giulio Cesare and the pasticcio Alessandro Severo) have won numerous international awards.