Strauss, R: Mir ist die Ehre widerfahren (from Der Rosenkavalier) (Presentation of the Rose)

A glittering selection of operatic highlights and arias, featuring great composers and artists who are all celebrating significant anniversaries in 2013.

Strauss, says Natalie Dessay, is the key to her career, and this recital of Lieder, arias and scenes features two contrasting characters central to her stage repertoire: the innocent young Sophie from Der Rosenkavalier and the coquettish Zerbinetta, a role Natalie has made her own in Paris and at the Met, and whose dizzyingly stratospheric set piece opens this programme. Available for the first time in jewel case format.

Since the beginning of opera, the convention of the duet, in which two characters simultaneously express their feelings, has been one of the staple ploys of musical dramatists. Characters may join their voices in a unity of feeling, or in extreme disagreement, or in any one of the thousand shades in between; though in the examples we have here, all involving the combination of soprano and mezzo-soprano voices, the feelings expressed are held in common between the two singers.

The basis of this CD is a record of duets that the two sopranos made with Gerald Moore in London in 1955.

Elisabeth Grümmer became in 1946 a regular member of the Städtische Oper Berlin (now the Deutsche Oper), which was her primary professional association throughout her career, remaining with that major company through 1972. In April 1967 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York as Elsa in Lohengrin. Elisabeth Grümmer’s exquisite voice and admirable dramatic gifts made her an exemplary interpreter of the music of Mozart and Richard Strauss. She restricted herself to a rather small repertoire she made very much her own: Pamina, Donna Anna, Ilia, the Countess Almaviva, Agathe, Hänsel, Oktavian, the Marschallin, Countess Madeleine, Eva, Elsa, Elisabeth, Gutrune, Freia and Desdemona.