Bernstein: Glitter and be gay (from Candide) (Cunegonde's scene)

The multi-faceted German coloratura soprano, who has been described as “the Meryl Streep of classical music” shows her vocal and dramatic range with this collection of arias from the 19th and 20th centuries. The repertoire ranges from Rossini and Verdi to Stravinsky and Bernstein, from comedy to tragedy and covers four languages: German, Italian, French and English. It includes Zerbinetta’s marathon coloratura aria from Ariadne auf Naxos, one of the operas which spearheaded Damrau’s international career.

“Damrau has … strong opinions on the use of coloratura for dramatic effect,” wrote Opera News in an interview with the soprano. “Unlike some singers of previous generations, who were encouraged to cut back on the vocal garni by conductors who found the flourishes suspect, Damrau employs embellishments to emphasize the impact of language ….What's more, her Italian diction is superb, something that cannot always be said for Central and Eastern European artists. ‘Oh, I'm so glad to hear that,’ she says, ‘because I have a facility for languages, and I work very hard to communicate well.’ Whether Rosina [in Il barbiere di Siviglia] is expressing delight over Almaviva's furtive caress or anger over his imagined betrayal, Damrau deploys her clarity of speech to vivid effect; she points out that in ‘Una voce poco fa’,’ [featured on this recital] the word vipera is key — the girl knows full well she can be a viper. Later on, the bite she puts into the word traditore, for example, cuts to the quick.”

When Damrau performed Rosina at the Met, The New York Times wrote that: “the lovely German coloratura Diana Damrau was absolutely dazzling here. Interpolating extra-high roulades into the music, she brought her bright, clear and very sizable voice to the role, singing with impeccable accuracy and delightful impishness. This Rosina was no innocent. You immediately believed her when she explained in the touchstone aria ‘Una voce poca fa’ that though for the most part she is a docile and obedient thing, when crossed in love she becomes a viper.”

Donizetti also appears in this recital, with an aria from Linda di Chamounix. Damrau took on the challenge of following Natalie Dessay as Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met. “Ms. Damrau dispatched the passage-work, trills and top notes with aplomb,” wrote the New York Times. “Her sound was warm, plush and clear ... That Ms. Damrau executed the Mad Scene’s spiraling vocal roulades so accurately and held sustained tones with such penetrating steadiness lent a quality of eerie control to Lucia’s madness. And her gleaming top notes filled the house.”

“Diana Damrau is the most thrilling high soprano of our day.” The Observer

“The point with Damrau ... is that she’s fearless, impressively unpredictable, and about as far as possible from being a ‘production line’ soprano.” Classic FM magazine

In five spectacular coloratura scenes from the 19th and 20th centuries, Natalie Dessay goes beyond the edge of sanity and touches the limits of vocal virtuosity.

“You’d be mad to miss it” proclaimed the striking poster for the opening poduction of the 2007-2008 season at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. The image on the poster was of French soprano Natalie Dessay, waif-like and wild-eyed, in a wedding dress and in character as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, opera’s quintessential mad heroine.

This collection features Dessay in five scenes of coloratura madness – or near-madness -- by two Italian composers, two French composers, and one (satirising) American.

Soprano characters who go insane are quite a feature of 19th-century opera, providing composers with an opportunity to write virtuosic and often adventurous music to express the wanderings of the poor heroine’s mind.

Here, Dessay sings the French version of the Bride of Lammermoor’s famous post-nuptial scene. Lucie di Lammermoor was performed in Paris in 1839, four years after the opera’s Italian premiere in Naples. Dessay first sang the Italian version on stage in Chicago in 2004. As Opera News wrote: “The French coloratura … was in superb form, her instantly recognizable timbre focused and delivered with just enough bite to keep things interesting. The voice acquires a distinctive shimmer above the staff, and it coursed through the elaborate filigree with precision and spontaneity, exhibiting liquid trills and a lovely diminuendo. Dramatically, the soprano created a tightly wound, febrile presence at her first entrance, a fragile slip of a girl overwhelmed by the dominating men around her. … The cadenza was quite heartrending … ‘Spargi d’amaro pianto’ was capped with a fully voiced, gleaming interpolation in alt, bringing a highly individual performance to a triumphant conclusion.”

Donizetti’s heroine is driven to murder, but Elvira, the bride-to-be at the centre of Bellin’s I puritani, premiered in Paris in 1835, is no particular danger to anyone; her insanity is only temporary and the opera ends happily. Her mad scene, a more conventional operatic construction than Lucia’s, features one of Bellini’s loveliest fine-spun melodies.

Nor is madness terminal in Meyerbeer’s Dinorah (1859), set in rural Brittany and notable for featuring a (silent) supporting role for a pet goat. The heroine’s delicious ‘Ombre légère’ is the opera’s greatest hit and here Dessay performs the extraordinary feat of singing a stratospheric A flat above top C.

Far more tragic in its implications is the mad scene of Ophélie from Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet (1868), described by London’s Observer as “a fiendish set-piece which … Natalie Dessay carries off with wondrous aplomb”. Poor Ophelia strays through a number of contrasting sections before a vertiginous suicidal finale. Dessay has performed Ophélie in London, Barcelona (available on an EMI Classics DVD) and Toulouse; she returns to the role in Spring 2010 at the Metropolitan Opera.

Fast-forwarding nearly 100 years Dessay takes on Cunégonde in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, based on Voltaire’s satirical novel and first staged on Broadway in 1956. This is not quite a mad scene: it starts off with Cunégonde bemoaning her descent into vice, but she cheers up at thoughts of her life of luxury, her near-hysterical coloratura reflecting the bubbles in her champagne and the sparkle of her jewels. Recorded live at the EMI centenary concert at Glyndebourne, this performance was welcomed by Gramophone as an “hilarious performance, with Dessay dazzling in the lightest of coloratura”.