Harry Bicket

Soprano Lucy Crowe joins The English Concert led by Harry Bicket in this dazzling programme of Handel arias and cantatas dating from his 1706-10 sojourn in Italy, where he was affectionately dubbed ‘the dear Saxon’. 2nd in the 2005 Kathleen Ferrier and a Wigmore Young Artist, Lucy Crowe made her debuts with Scottish Opera as Sophie in 'Der Rosenkavalier' and ENO as Poppea in 'Agrippina', both to great critical acclaim.

Other opera engagements include Susanna for Opera North, Drusilla in 'The Coronation of Poppea' for English National Opera and Nanetta in Verdi's 'Falstaff' for Scottish Opera. She made her debut at Covent Garden as Belinda in 'Dido and Aeneas' in 2009 and in the same year Sophie in 'Der Rosenkavalier', a role subsequently taken to the Bavarian State opera, and the Deutsche Oper, Berlin.

This year she made her US opera debut at the Chicago Lyric Opera, and 'The Fairy Queen' with William Christie at Glyndebourne.

Since her early success in Glyndebourne’s now famous production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Danielle de Niese has become most closely associated with the music of the Baroque. The New York Times commented: “A voice seductive enough to woo gods as well as mortals”.

With her third solo album, Danielle de Niese embodies the Beauty of the Baroque with an album of arias from the English, German, and Italian traditions, accompanied by the leading European Baroque orchestra, The English Concert, under Harry Bicket. Many popular arias feature, including Handel’s, ‘Ombra mai fu’, and highlights from JS Bach’s Cantatas are contrasted with much loved solo songs by Purcell and Dowland.

Decca’s star countertenor Andreas Scholl joins Danielle de Niese for duets including the ravishing duet “Pur ti miro” from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea.

Winner of the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Award and the 2007 Cardiff Song Prize, soprano Elizabeth Watts, makes her harmonia mundi début in a luminous programme of Bach cantatas and arias, deftly supported by The English Concert, led by Harry Bicket.

With a voice described by International Record Review as “one of the most beautiful Britain has produced in a generation”, Elizabeth Watts is now securely established as “one of the brightest new talents” (The Independent). After training as a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, Elizabeth went on to study archaeology at Sheffield University before attending the Royal College of Music in London. Her many prizes include the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Prize (UK), the 2007 Outstanding Young Artist Award at the Cannes MIDEM Classique Awards and the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize at the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. A former ‘BBC New Generation Artist’, she was invited to become an Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre in 2010. Now equally in demand as a recitalist, opera singer, and concert artist, she has already appeared at many of the world’s leading musical centres and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, London, Wigmore Hall, Welsh National Opera, the BBC Proms, Santa Fe Opera, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, and has upcoming engagements throughout Europe from Amsterdam to Zurich.

Internationally renowned conductor Harry Bicket is especially noted for his interpretation of Baroque and Classical repertoire. In 2007 he became Artistic Director of The English Concert, which he has led on tours in the UK, USA, Europe and the Middle East.

He has won high praise world wide for his work in opera, including at The Royal Opera Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival, Opera North, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona. He made his debut at The Metropolitan Opera in 2004 in a new production of Rodelinda with Renée Fleming and David Daniels, and returned to conduct Giulio Cesare in 2006 and La clemenza di Tito in 2008.

Future projects with The English Concert include a recording featuring Lucy Crowe for harmonia mundi.

Following the enormous success of the album OPERA 2009, EMI Classics is releasing OPERA 2010. Great voices of today and legendary singers of the past, from the EMI and Virgin Classics catalogue: the home of opera.

With 40 tracks, and over 2½ hours of operatic arias and duets, this double album features the best and most popular names in opera from the catalogues of both Virgin Classics and EMI Classics, ranging from the newest arrivals on the operatic scene, as well as many present day superstars, to iconic legends. This is an unmissable collection of the best in opera that will have a wide appeal.

Present day superstars include Angela Gheorghiu, Natalie Dessay, Sarah Brightman, Barbara Hendricks, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jessye Norman, Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Rolando Villazón, Roberto Alagna and Bryn Terfel.

Rising new artists are strongly represented by Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Elina Garanca, Vivica Genaux, Véronique Gens, Patrizia Ciofi, Philippe Jaroussky, Jonas Kaufmann, David Daniels, Max Emanuel Cencic and Laurent Naouri.

The programme also contains tracks by some of the world’s greatest singers of the past such as Victoria de los Angeles, Teresa Berganza, Mirella Freni, Lucia Popp and Franco Corelli as well as the legendary Luciano Pavarotti and the unique Maria Callas.

All the most popular operatic composers are represented, from Baroque masters like Vivaldi, Rameau and Handel, through Gluck and Mozart to Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea and Gershwin, as well as French favourites Gounod, Massenet and Offenbach.

“It seems that, in the years around 1720, when people went to the opera to hear a castrato idol or an adored soprano, they would play cards, pay court to their neighbours and savour sorbets during the recitatives – even during the so-called arias of action, which they enjoyed less than the ornamented reprises of the showpiece arias. With this intractable and hedonistic audience in mind (so different from people like us, of course), thirteen star singers came together to concoct this festive piece, constructed and presented in three acts like a true dramma per musica, but with no explicit story and no concrete characters: in other words, an imaginary opera formed of passion and music.” Ivan A. Alexandre

This album marks the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death with creativity, erudition and maybe a touch of audacity. Far more than a compilation album, it selects individual numbers from 11 operas and two oratorios by Handel and reassembles them in a sequence that respects the potent formula elaborated in the composer’s 38 works for the operatic stage.

While there is no specific narrative, the listener will be drawn in by the dramatic logic of a balanced succession of numbers, including some ‘greatest hits.

It has been a several years since David Daniels’ last recital for Virgin Classics – in 2004 the renowned countertenor explored Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’Eté - and his most recent recital of Baroque works, the critically acclaimed Oratorio Arias by Handel, dates back to 2002.

For this new release, Daniels returns to sacred works of the Baroque era with this programme of sacred arias and cantatas by Bach. He lends his beautiful countertenor voice and immense musicianship to this programme of famous cantatas, namely “Ich habe genug”, and arias from Bach’s Mass in B minor and the Saint Matthew’s and Saint John’s Passions. The programme was recorded in London in September 2007.

Accompanying David Daniels, Harry Bicket conducts The English Concert, considered to be one of the finest chamber orchestras for interpretations of Baroque and Classical music. Harry Bicket, the ensemble’s new musical director, is renowned worldwide for his performances of Baroque opera with many of the leading singers of the age, and forthcoming TEC seasons will include exciting collaborations with Sara Mingardo, Jonathan Lemalu, David Daniels, Anna-Caterina Antonacci, Mark Padmore and others.

“Beyond a forgivable desire to rehabilitate the Handel tenor, I have tried in this recording to represent one essential but fugitive quality of Handel’s - his protean nature, his ability to recreate himself while remaining essentially the same.” Ian Bostridge