Strauss, R: Sein wir wieder gut (from Ariadne auf Naxos) (Composer's Aria)

The acclaimed soprano Christine Schäfer is making her label debut for Sony Classical with a highly unconventional aria album. The arias she has recorded range in time from Handel to Messiaen, and in style from virtuosic belcanto to the drama of Verdi and the serenity of Richard Strauss.

Christine Schäfer’s first-ever recital of operatic arias is a carefully composed musical essay that combines popular and lesser-known works. This highly personal programme is no selection of greatest hits, but a journey of adventure in search of musical beauty. In the manner of a resounding essay Schäfer takes well-known but intentionally diverse pieces from the Baroque period to the present and relates them to each other in unexpected ways. Seductive as they are on their own, in this changed context each seems to have been illuminated anew.

The orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin under Julien Salemkour is the singer’s artistic counterpart and peer, and can shine in a variety of roles.

Joyce DiDonato celebrates the rich dramatic variety of the mezzo-soprano voice in this collection of arias for different characters – of both sexes – from a single opera, or from different operatic treatments of the same story.

Joyce DiDonato’s capacity for characterisation is as astounding as the range and flexibility of her voice. As her Virgin Classics recitals of Handel and Rossini have proven, she can charm and touch as a good girl, seduce and seethe as a bad girl, and slip believably into the trousers of a hero. As Opera News said of the Rossini disc, ‘Colbran, The Muse’: “With her sure sense of line and colour, DiDonato takes possession of the repertory, mining every musical and vocal gesture to inhabit each character confidently … Her theatrical sense is magnificent. Musically and dramatically, the disc is perfection.”

This new collection showcases DiDonato’s multi-faceted art – and the wealth of opportunities open to a mezzo-soprano – by presenting her as different characters, both male and female, from the same opera or from different musical treatments of the same story.

As DiDonato explains: “This recital celebrates the vast and fabulous world of the mezzo-soprano. Aside from the obvious Toscas or Cio-Cio Sans, I've never regretted the length of my vocal cords!

I have the privilege and unmitigated joy of playing boys and young men, as well as girls and grown women … It’s an exploration of the human palette of emotions.

“I wanted to find a way to show this duality on disc, while highlighting some of the composers I'm most passionate about, such as Mozart, Bellini, Berlioz, Rossini, and Massenet. In exploring this idea, the possibility became clear for telling different sides of some of the most familiar tales which have served as inspiration for operatic legends: Cinderella, Faust, Romeo and Juliet … I've always thought of myself as a storyteller, and with this particular disc, I can showcase that side of me as never before. I'm ready to play!”

The programme features several roles that DiDonato has sung on stage – such as Rossini’s Cenerentola (it was the character’s gentle, then exuberant ‘Nacqui all’affanno’ that launched her international career at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition, and subsequently at La Scala), Bellini’s Romeo and Mozart’s Cherubino. The ‘flip sides’ of those characters are roles that have not featured in her repertoire: the Prince from Massenet’s Cendrillon (a lavish treatment of the Cinderella story more likely to bring DiDonato in the title role – as at Santa Fe in 2006 and, in 2011, at Covent Garden); the Nurse from Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, and both Chérubin (from Massenet’s ‘sequel’ to Le nozze di Figaro) and Susanna. The Figaro connection continues with an excerpt from Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rosina, of course, later becomes Countess Almaviva), while other operas on the programme, from the Renaissance to late Romanticism, include La clemenza di Tito (Sesto and Vitellia), Faust, La Damnation de Faust, Mefistofele, Orphée et Eurydice, Orfeo and Orphée aux Enfers.

Accompanying Joyce DiDonato in this tour de force is the Orchestre de l'Opéra National de Lyon under the company’s Principal Conductor Kazushi Ono, another artist who successfully embraces an extraordinary diversity of musical idioms.

As John von Rhein wrote in Gramophone: “In complete control vocally, Joyce DiDonato is … consumed by the character. She embodies whomever she’s playing and whatever emotional situation she is evoking.”

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.

The celebrated soprano Susan Chilcott died five years ago after becoming one of the mainstays of La Monnaie. She made her debut there in 1994 under most extraordinary circumstances when she agreed to replace at very short notice an ailing colleague in the demanding role of Peter Grimes’ Ellen. Susan Chilcott appeared in the world’s major opera houses: the Met, Covent Garden, Garnier, Bastille, the Amsterdam Opera. At La Monnaie she took part in many productions under Antonio Pappano’s baton. Highlights of these productions are featured on this CD. This release is a tribute to a singer whose sad and early death robbed the operatic stage of a unique and extraordinary talent.

Live Recordings 1955 - 1994. The wide-ranging repertory in which Christa Ludwig appeared at the Vienna State Opera, often surprising her audiences over a period of many years, is central to the present set of three CDs issued to mark her 80th birthday. It begins with her Cherubino from Le nozze di Figaro and her Composer from Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, both of which she sang at the Salzburg Festival soon after her Vienna State Opera début in 1955. Another of her early roles in Vienna was Dorabella, while Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola was a lyric mezzo-soprano part that she sang only infrequently but to which she brought a stupendous coloratura technique. Her increasingly dramatic roles are represented by excerpts from Fidelio, Wozzeck,Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Verdi's Macbeth, which also demonstrate the astute use of her resources in those roles that extend well into the soprano register, without ever sacrificing any quality or intensity. Under Leonard Bernstein, the subdued melancholy of her Marschallin is even more overwhelming than it was in the studio. No less impressive is the way in which Christa Ludwig was able to forge a successful working relationship with each of the very different conductors with whom she appeared, be it Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado or the conductor of the most recent New Year's Day Concert from Vienna, Georges Prêtre.Throughout her career, she retained a company spirit, happy to appear in smaller roles and, towards the end of her career, in character parts, including Klytämnestra in Elektra, the role in which she bade farewell to the stage in 1994.This final appearance - almost 40 years after her Viennese début - also brings to an end our musical tribute to Christa Ludwig, recalling an altogether exceptional career by this honorary member of the Vienna State Opera.