Offenbach: Elle a fui, la tourterelle (from Les Contes d' Hoffmann)

The glamorous soprano Kiri Te Kanawa was born in 1944 in Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. After winning a number of major vocal competitions in Australia, she came to London in 1966 to study singing at the London Opera Centre, where she trained for three years. Then in 1970 she was accepted by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden as a junior member of the company. Her big break came in 1971, when she was chosen to sing the Countess in a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.. It was something of a gamble for the Covent Garden management to cast an inexperienced singer in such an important role, but on the opening night Kiri’s performance stole the show.

After the Covent Garden Nozze di Figaro, an international career was assured. With a carefully chosen repertoire that included the principal soprano roles of Mozart, as well as a number of Verdi, Puccini and Richard Strauss heroines, Kiri went on to triumph in the major opera houses of the world. She first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1979 and became a regular and much-loved performer at Glyndebourne, a venue for which she has a particularly strong affection, and in 1981 Kiri was chosen to sing at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral, an event seen by a world-wide television audience estimated at more than 600 million people

Not surprisingly, her vibrant but creamy voice, together with her attractive stage presence, made her an ideal interpreter of the main Richard Strauss roles, and it was not long before she was singing the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, a part with which she scored a particular success. After a number of popular Italian and French arias, Kiriis heard in this programme in the Marschallin's Act I monologue, 'Da geht er hin', as well as in arias from several other German operas, including Wagner's Tannhäuser, Der Freischutz by Weber and Korngold's unjustly neglected romantic masterpiece Die tote Stadt. As a brief reminder of Kiri's achievements on the concert stage, the first CD closes with three orchestral songs by the French composers Ravel and Duparc, all of which show off the lustrous beauty of her voice to full advantage.

In addition to opera and so-called serious music however, Kiri is also a great enthusiast for the lighter repertoire, including folk music and the songs of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. When performing this material, she uses the warm, lower part of her rich voice to give idiomatic performances of songs by some of America's greatest composers of popular music, such as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Also heard here are Franz Gruber's familiar Christmas carol 'Silent Night' and a number of traditional British folk songs. These are followed by two Maori songs, in which Kiri is joined by a group of Maori singers and a number of specialist musicians who together capture the authentic style of these fascinating pieces.

The ravishing Australian soprano Cheryl Barker has an important career in many major opera houses – English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera and The Royal Opera Covent Garden among them – and concert halls. She is widely celebrated for her riveting performances. Pure Diva: is her very personal tribute to her teacher, the great Dame Joan Hammond, a disc, Barker says, “that feels as if it’s been a long time coming”.

The orchestral scenes are high drama from the first note to the last reverberation. Cheryl’s glorious lyric soprano rides the wave of Guillaume Tourniaire’s orchestral texture in grand operatic scenes, arias and songs made famous by Hammond. They include Tatyana’s Letter Scene, Dido's Lament, Desdemona’s Willow Song, and other arias by Verdi, Dvořák, Korngold, and Offenbach. Cheryl’s visceral portrayals of these operatic heroines convey the full emotional depth of these multi-dimensional characters in extremis.

The tributes with piano accompaniment (by Timothy Young) provide a contrast to the preceding drama, encore pieces beloved of Joan Hammond, the biggest selling recording artist during the war. Her recording of The Green Hills o’ Somerset became a best seller and Cheryl includes it as a homage here. The delightful rarity Shadows is a song written for Hammond by the Australian composer Ronald Settle.

Illuminating CD notes are by the late and great vocal commentator John Steane who was an insightful witness to Dame Joan Hammond (1912-96) and all the great singers of her era and those that followed.

Cheryl Barker’s relationship with Melba Recordings stretches back almost to the label’s beginning: Puccini=Passions (MR301085) was her acclaimed 2003 collection of arias with Richard Bonynge conducting Orchestra Victoria.

A 20 year career as a soprano saw her perform mainly in Berlin, Cologne and Frankfurt.

However she appeared at Glyndebourne, Bayreuth and noted concert venues around the world.

Her appearances as Desdemona in Barcelona,Vienna and Tokyo, to say nothing of her Trovatore Leonora in Washington, have shown very clearly that the lirico spinto soprano, Krassimira Stoyanova has succeeded in filling a gap on the international stage.

Stoyanova, who will also shortly be heard in the METDon Giovanni, is at home in more than just Italian repertory: a good half of the arias featured in this, her first operatic recital, are devoted to French repertoire, including Rachel in La juive - the part in which she made her international breakthrough. With its guitar accompaniment, the coloratura aria from Il Guarany is one of the rarer arias here, completing a lively portrait of this versatile and expressive performer.