Georges Bizet

Nino Machaidze’s new recording for Sony Classical, “Arias & Scenes”, looks further ahead to the new roles she will sing in the future. Machaidze is joined by Orchestre national de France and their resident Maestro Daniele Gatti.

French repertoire has become a major part of Machaidze’s career and is represented in this recital with arias by Massenet, Bizet and Ambroise Thomas. Machaidze debuted the role of Thaïs last year alongside Plácido Domingo in the lead role of Athanaël in Seville. She will debut at the Vienna State Opera this June in the role of Juliette with Plácido Domingo conducting and Piotr Beczala as Roméo.

Since her momentous breakthrough replacing Anna Netrebko as Juliette alongside Rolando Villazon’s Roméo in Salzburg’s 2008 production of Roméo et Juliette (Gounod), Nino’s career has taken off.

In an astonishingly short amount of time she debuted at many of the world’s major opera houses, in the lead heroine-roles alongside some of the greatest singers of our time, including Plácido Domingo (Thaïs) , Vittorio Grigolo (Roméo et Juliette at both La Scala and LA Opera) and Juan-Diego Flórez (I Puritani) among others.

Alain Vanzo was born in Monaco in April 1928 and was apparently a gifted musician from an early age. From an inauspicious start, he was eventually heard by a singing teacher who recognised his talents, and from that point on, he was lucky enough to be integrated into the French music scene where he triumphed in various performances.

He made his debut at the Pera and the Opera-Comique in 1957, going on to sing the Duke of Mantua that same year.

He became known and respected as a lyric tenor and matured towards a more robust tenor, culminating in him taking on Werther at aged 40 and Don Jose at aged 45. By the time he reached the age of 48, and after his performance of Faust in 1976 in the US, he had become a star and this disc shows exactly why he was so well respected.

The Art of Magdalena Kožená is an anthology of her finest performances, documenting both the range of her voice and the breadth of repertoire to which she can bring authority, from early baroque of Monteverdi and Strozzi to sacred arias by Bach, opera arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Gounod, Bizet and Auber, as well as orchestral songs by Mahler. To all she brings an absorbing emotional depth and maturity of her interpretative abilities.

Unique to Kožená are the songs rooted in Bohemia and Moravia by Dvořak and Janáček. She still feels closely connected to her Czech roots. “It’s music that stays in your body forever”.

This is Magdalena’s own selection of her favourite songs and arias, sung in French, Italian and German as well as in her mother tongue.

28-page Booklet, including new liner notes from Nick Kimberley.

Sir Neville Marriner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Alongside his recordings of Baroque and Classical repertoire, he has also made a name for himself as an interpreter of Romantic orchestral music, as this compilation shows: it contains popular works from the highly colourful French and Russian repertoire, including new discoveries like Tchaikovsky's Barcarole, which can certainly hold a candle to the famous work of the same name by Offenbach, and the Berceuse by opera composer Benjamin Godard.

Bizet’s masterpiece sung in German by an all German cast, led by mezzo diva Christa Ludwig as Carmen, Rudolf Schock as the fiery Don José and macho-like Hermann Prey as Escamillo. A true highlight in the legendary Electrola Collection series of opera sung in German!

Nicolai Gedda, the most recorded tenor in history, is an exceptionally versatile artist who has excelled in a wide variety of operatic roles as well as in the art song. With a magnificent lyric tenor voice and extraordinary range, Gedda makes the notorious top D at the end of ‘Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire’ sound positively effortless. This collection offers a wealth of repertoire that has helped to cement Gedda’s reputation as one of the greatest tenors of his generation.