In War & Peace: Harmony Through Music

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Though the top of her voice is wiry under pressure, her coloratura is tightly sprung, her diction is flawless, and her phrasing of the often underrated poetry is sympathetic and sophisticated…Il... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2016, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 4th Nov 2016
Catalogue No: 9029592846
Label: Erato
Length: 79 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

November 2016

Editor's Choice
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2016
Gramophone Awards

2017

Winner - Recital
ECHO Klassik Awards

2017

Winner
Grammy Awards

60th Awards (2017)

Nominee - Classical Solo Vocal Album
Opera

January 2017

Recording of the Month

Excerpt, Handel: Jephtha

Work length5:12

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Some dire event hangs o'er our heads... Scenes of horror, scenes of woe" (Storgè)

Track length5:12

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Excerpt, Leo: Andromaca

Work length7:15

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Prendi quel ferro, o barbaro!" (Andromaca)

Track length7:15

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Excerpt, Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Work length4:47

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Vani sono i lamenti... Svegliatevi nel core" (Sesto)

Track length4:47

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Excerpt, Purcell: The Indian Queen, Z630

Work length4:05

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"They tell us that you mighty powers above" (Orazia)

Track length4:05

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Excerpt, Handel: Agrippina

Work length6:44

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), Magdalena Karolak (oboe)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Pensieri, voi mi tormentate" (Agrippina)

Track length6:44

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Excerpt, Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Work length5:03

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Thy hand, Belinda... When I am laid in earth" (Dido)

Track length5:03

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Excerpt, Handel: Rinaldo

Work length5:32

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Lascia ch'io pianga" (Almirena)

Track length5:32

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Excerpt, Purcell: Bonduca or The British Heroine - incidental music, Z574

Work length3:17

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Oh! Lead me to some peaceful gloom" (Bonvica)

Track length3:17

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Excerpt, Handel: Rinaldo

Work length5:36

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), Anna Fusek (recorder)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Augelletti che cantate" (Almirena)

Track length5:36

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Excerpt, Jommelli: Attilio Regolo

Work length7:13

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Sprezza il furor del vento" (Regolo)

Track length7:13

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Excerpt, Purcell: The Indian Queen, Z630

Work length1:30

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Why should men quarrel?" (Girl)

Track length1:30

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Excerpt, Jommelli: Attilio Regolo

Work length6:08

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Par che di giubilo" (Attilia)

Track length6:08

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Excerpt, Handel: Susanna, HWV66

Work length8:21

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Lead me, oh lead me to some cool retreat.... Crystal streams in murmurs flowing" (Susanna)

Track length8:21

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Excerpt, Monteverdi: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

Work length2:20

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Illustratevi, o cieli" (Penelope)

Track length2:20

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Excerpt, Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Work length6:00

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Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Il Pomo d'Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev

"Da tempeste il legno infranto" (Cleopatra)

Track length6:00

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About
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About

Interview, Joyce DiDonato on 'In War and Peace'

3rd November 2016

The great American mezzo answers our questions, on camera, about her 'most personal project to date'.

Video Interview, Joyce DiDonato on 'In War and Peace'

3rd November 2016

The great American mezzo answers our questions about her 'most personal project to date'.

“Perhaps my most personal project to date,” is how American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato describes In War and Peace: Harmony through Music. Her ambitions for this collection of arias from Baroque operas are substantial. Surrounded as we are by instability, she hopes it will help us find an answer to a vitally important question: “In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?”

Her aim is to “steer conversation and discourse … to help all of us find peace in our lives in a dynamic way … As I have tried to convey in this selection of music, the power to bravely tip the scales towards peace lies firmly within every single one of us.”

DiDonato, an opera singer who certainly does not live in an ivory tower, was motivated to assemble the programme after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. She had been planning an exploratory album with an emphasis on rare arias, but in the light of the tragic events she rethought her approach, giving it wider and deeper implications.

In War and Peace: Harmony through Music was recorded with Il Pomo d’Oro under its principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. The programme comprises 15 arias divided into two sections: ‘War’ and ‘Peace’. Both contain music by Purcell and Handel – including, to close ‘War’, Dido’s dignified, but searing lament from Dido and Aeneas and Almirena’s haunting and heartbreaking ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo. An excerpt from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse is included in ‘Peace’, which concludes with Cleopatra’s spirited and defiantly optimistic ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ from Giulio Cesare.

A further aria from Giulio Cesare is the bonus track for the album; it is Sesto’s touching apostrophe to hope, ‘Cara speme’, which Joyce DiDonato sings unforgettably on a floating whisper of breath.

In her search for peace and harmony, the American singer did not entirely desert her musicological quest, and the album also contains no fewer than three world premiere recordings: a ‘War’ aria from Andromaca by the Neapolitan composer Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), and two ‘Peace’ arias, from the operas Attila and Attilio Regolo, by another Neapolitan, Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774).

When Baroque opera was at its height, the highly stylised art form was famously described by the English writer Dr Samuel Johnson as “an exotic and irrational entertainment which has always been combated, and always has prevailed”. It is nearly three centuries since he made that judgement, but opera has continued to prevail – by impassioning performers and thrilling and moving audiences: nothing rivals it in giving intense, compelling expression to matters of life, love and death. Over recent decades, opera of the Baroque era has gained a new and vigorous life, with frequent revivals of works by such masters as Handel, Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Purcell, and the rediscovery of operas by composers who had fallen into obscurity.

Fuelled by these arias, Joyce DiDonato is fervently committed the cause of engaging the hearts and minds of music-lovers around the world. As she leads the way forward, long may opera – and peace – prevail.

Reviews

Christmas 2016

Though the top of her voice is wiry under pressure, her coloratura is tightly sprung, her diction is flawless, and her phrasing of the often underrated poetry is sympathetic and sophisticated…Il Pomo d’Oro plays with Handelian zip under its new director, Maxim Emelyanychev

4th November 2016

DiDonato kicks up a storm in the war arias and soothes the spirit with lambent tone when she turns to peace.

The American mezzo is at the peak of her career. This disc is worth hearing for her radiant singing in Handel’s Susanna alone.

November 2016

In War & Peace’ finds DiDonato back on Baroque ground for the first time in a while, and it’s a joyful musical homecoming. ...Drama, as ever with DiDonato, is everything. Ornamentation serves narrative first, ego second.

30th October 2016

DiDonato brings technical security and a variety of tonal colours to each aria. Il Pomo d’Oro offer bristling accompaniment under principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. Purists may quibble here and there, but it’s hard to resist DiDonato’s heartfelt message.

4th November 2016

DiDonato is always a force to be reckoned with and there is plenty of dramatic gusto here, as well as vocal fireworks...I found her at her most fiery and persuasive — the same goes for the orchestra — in the three world-premiere recordings, taken from Niccolò Jommelli’s Attilio Régolo and Leonardo Leo’s Andromaca.

16th November 2016

[In 'Lascia ch’io pianga'] she washes just enough color out of her voice to achieve a purity that enhances the composer’s signature formula of gut-wrenching despair set to music of extraordinary beauty...DiDonato also can rage with the best, hurling words like knives in an aria from Leonardo Leo’s long-forgotten “Andromaca.”

Opera Now January 2017

[DiDonato is] a singer not afraid to let simplicity speak for itself…she takes her programme beyond the obvious binary opposition into a series of contrasts and emotional conflicts…[her] vocal attack is fearless, her range of vocal colours immense – not many singers would risk such extremes of dynamics and manipulation of vibrato without sounding mannered, but somehow she pulls it off

Videos

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Joyce DiDonato speaks exclusively to Presto Classical about the characters portrayed on this disc, how she developed the project, and working with Il Pomo d'Oro.

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Joyce DiDonato speaks exclusively to Presto Classical about the #TalkPeace initiative.

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In War & Peace

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Contents

Interview, Joyce DiDonato on 'In War and Peace'

Video Interview, Joyce DiDonato on 'In War and Peace'

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