Massenet: Allons! Il le faut pour lui-même!... Adieu, notre petite table (from Manon)

In her debut for Haenssler, the talented young soprano Juliane Banse is joined by Christoph Poppen. She has selected a highly intelligent recital including arias by Weber, Tchaikovsky, Massenet, Mozart and Puccini. She has distinguished herself not only for the beauty of her singing, but for the depth of her characterisations and deep empathy with the emotional world of the women she is portraying.

Celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Opera de Montreal with a stunning two disc set (at the price of one), the Directors said about this release: “Our great annual celebration of opera gives us the opportunity to present a magnificent showcase of Canadian talent. Brought together on the same stage are some of our finest voices who, along with the Orchestre Metropolitain conducted by Alain Trudel, perform some of the most beautiful arias and ensembles in the repertoire.”

If opera enthusiasts had to choose a singer as the quintessential coloratura soprano, the name of Edita Gruberova would be bound to come up. To the delight of her audiences, she has spent the last four decades exploring every corner of the coloratura repertory. The fact that throughout this period she has retained her timbre, flexibility and an upper range extending above top C is due to two factors: her sovereign technique and her intelligent choice of repertoire.

After making her professional début with a provincial company in her native Slovakia, Gruberova joined the Vienna State Opera, which remains her artistic home to this day. This new compilation of high points from Orfeo's Wiener Staatsoper Live series showcases her earliest decisive successes in the sort of lighter coloratura roles often sung by soubrettes: Norina in 'Don Pasquale' and above all Zerbinetta in 'Ariadne auf Naxos', a role to which she returned for 35 years. Lucia stayed for 30 years, allowing her to cast a powerful spell on audiences not only in Vienna but all over the world.

Starting with Lucia and with three of Mozart’s soprano roles, Donna Anna, Konstanze and Giunia in the rarely heard 'Lucio Silla', she began to develop in the direction of dramatic coloratura roles, a development that finally enabled her to tackle Bellini’s 'Norma'. Between these two extremes, Edita Gruberova’s career contains many other milestones that may all be enjoyed in this portrait from Vienna. Roles represented here include the titular heroine of Verdi’s 'La traviata' (with Alfredo Kraus as one of her many world-class partners), the flighty Manon in Massenet’s opera of the same name – one of only a handful of excursions into the French repertory – and her irresistible Adele in Johann Strauss’ operetta, 'Die Fledermaus'.

Central to the second half of Edita Gruberova’s 40-year reign at the Vienna State Opera are leading roles in bel canto operas, operas which without her be even more of a rarity: Elvira in 'I Puritani' and four of Donizetti’s dramatic coloratura roles, Elisabetta in 'Roberto Devereux' plus Maria Stuarda, Linda di Chamounix and, most recently, Lucrezia Borgia.

“One of the most delicate, sighing, judiciously used women’s voices one might ever hear.” That was the verdict of the tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, writing in his fascinating study of the leading singers of his time, Voci parallele (Bologna ed. 1977). “Licia Albanese,” he says, “would move on stage purposefully, with precision, painting her tones with careful control of her means and a clear perception of their end”. Audiences were captivated by an effect of modesty, simplicity and tenderness but behind that effect was a solid mastery of her art. He, the senior artist, is full of admiration. But he has a warning: we should not suppose that these fixed, fossilised, mummified objects we call records can convey the individuality, the true character of such singers. So: caveat emptor. Lauri-Volpi had his own way of putting things (that adjective ‘sighing’ surprises us, not so much in itself as in its placing, second among the primary characteristics of the singer he is describing, and one may well object that records, however ‘fixed’, can at least sing to us, which is more than fossils and mummies can do). There is still something in what he says. He is thinking of Albanese’s particular kind of art: that delicate, ‘sighing’ quality which he hears inwardly, summoned up in a memory that is visual as well as aural and which is scarcely to be ‘fixed’, held still. Its essence lies in the moving, breathing individual. He speaks of her strong intuitive faculties. She knew what she was going to do next, vocally and dramatically – but what the audience experienced was the sense of an assured spontaneity. In the theatre you felt that her singing and her movements might take any number of forms: in a recording it will always take one. The living being is caught, pinned-down, captured; and that’s not the way she was.

Extract from the booklet note John Steane, 2008

Soprano Lucia Popp (1939-1993) was one of the most acclaimed singers of her generation. In this four-CD set she is heard in arias from operas by Weber, Mozart, Lortzing, Puccini, Verdi, Massenet and Monteverdi, songs by Brahms, Mahler, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Kodaly, Janacek, and sacred music by Telemann and Bach.

After making her debut at the Vienna State Opera in the modest role of Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro, Lucia Popp worked with all the great conductors of her day including Leonard Bernstein, Sir George Solti, Rafael Kubelik, Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Bernard Haitink and Carlos Kleiber. The State Operas of Vienna and Munich honoured Lucia Popp with the title of Kammersängerin and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra awarded her the “Silver Rose”. In 2007 she was placed 7th on BBC Music Magazine's list ‘20 All-time Best Sopranos’ based on a poll of 21 British critics and BBC presenters.

Leontyne Price is simply one of the best sopranos of all time. Hailed as the “Stradivarius of singers” she had a unique, unmistakable and unforgettable voice which graced the stage of the Met an astonishing 164 times throughout her career.

The Leontyne Price catalogue is divided into two “Complete Collections”; Song and Spiritual Albums and Operatic Recital Albums. These collections are housed in original LP design cardboard slipcases and presented in a hardback boxset.