Rossini: Tanti affetti in tal momento (from La donna del lago)

A star is born! The Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva is the vocal revelation that everyone is talking about. Still only 21, a protégée of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the winner of several major awards, Lezhneva makes her solo recital debut with a programme of arias by Rossini, a composer of whom is particularly fond. She is accompanied by the Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by its new artistic director Marc Minkowski.

In 2007 Julia Lezhneva won the prestigious Elena Obraztsova International Competition for Young Opera Singers in St Petersburg, for which the judges included Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig and Eva Marton. She has sung opposite Juan Diego Flórez at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and made her UK debut, aged 19, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, also performing Rossini. Her London debut, introduced by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, came at the 2010 Classical Brit Awards singing Elena’s Final Rondo from Rossini’s La Donna del Lago in the Royal Albert Hall.

In October 2010 she confirmed her status as one of the world’s most exciting talents by winning the First International Opera Competition held at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris. Her performance in the recent Naïve recording of Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in Villa, conducted by Giovanni Antonini, has been praised to the skies by the international press. Her debut solo concerts at the 2010 Salzburg Festival with the Mozarteum Orchestra and Marc Minkowski likewise achieved extraordinary success. Minkowski has followed the young singer’s career closely; it was he who invited her in 2009 to take part in Bach’s B minor Mass, her first recording, and in summer 2011 she will sing the part of Fiordiligi under his baton in a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Salzburg. Despite her youth, Julia Lezhneva has a huge and extremely varied repertoire, ranging from the Baroque and bel canto styles to Romantic and contemporary music.

“A superstar in the Rossini repertory” Chicago Tribune

After the success of her first Virgin Classics recital – Furore, arias by Handel – Joyce DiDonato turns to the composer whose heroines first brought her to international stardom: Gioacchino Rossini.

“Is Joyce DiDonato the world's best Rossini singer?”, asked the New York magazine Opera News after the American mezzo sang the finale of La Cenerentola at Carnegie Hall in January 2009. “That title certainly seemed hers by sovereign right,” it continued; “Her phrasing was silky, her timbre rich and glowing, and her ornaments were impeccably stylish and utterly beguiling. Most impressive was DiDonato's combination of immaculate technical control with an air of wild, unstoppable joy. This was truly a moment to treasure from an artist who is at the very top of her game.”

If La Cenerentola does not appear in this new recital, recorded in Rome in June, her other signature Rossini role holds a place of honour: she has been described by the UK’s Sunday Times as “the world’s reigning Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia”. In 2009 alone she sings the role in Vienna, London (to be recorded for DVD by Virgin Classics) and New York, and the role has also taken her to Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Houston, San Francisco, Bologna and Rossini’s birthplace, Pesaro.

Rossini’s two best-known comic operas proved essential in building the Kansas-born singer’s reputation over the last decade, but this recital focuses primarily on his serious works – although the tragic tensions do not perhaps run as consistently high as in DiDonato’s first Virgin Classics recital: Furore, the Handel programme released last year and described by The Daily Telegraph as “an exhilarating roller-coaster of a recital from a charismatic singing-actress”.

This Rossini programme includes two arias from La donna del lago, which DiDonato is scheduled to sing over the coming seasons in Geneva, Paris, Milan and London. She takes the role of Elena, written for a soprano, but a great success in the 1980s for DiDonato’s idol, fellow high mezzo Frederica von Stade. The other arias on the CD were also all composed for soprano: they come from Otello, Semiramide, Armida, Maometto II and Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra. DiDonato proved that she can triumph in music written for soprano with her recent complete recording of Handel’s Alcina and her debut last year in the role of Mozart’s Donna Elvira; the performances at London’s Royal Opera House prompted The Guardian to describe her as “the real star … singing her first Elvira and nailing even the topmost notes,” while The Daily Telegraph praised her performance in a similar vein: “The star of the show was … Joyce DiDonato, who sang Elvira with a style, sensitivity and bravura that outclassed everyone else on stage.”

To return to Rossini and Rosina, the role for DiDonato’s debut at the Vienna State Opera in April 2009, the Wiener Zeitung had this to say: “She tossed off crystal-clear coloratura, presented a dark, secure low register, a confidently nuanced mid-range, bright and voluminous high notes – in short, everything that makes for great, modern bel canto style. She appears undaunted by the role's many technically tricky passages, and even more: she sang musically challenging variations on every repeated phrase, shaped every single bar with brio, and presented a psychologically multi-faceted characterisation with wildly joyful abandon.”

The great American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne celebrated her her 70th birthday in January 2004 and that year also marked 50 years since her professional debut.

Horne’s debut in 1954 was in in Los Angeles. That same year her name and voice was brought to many more people than could ever hear her in the opera house through the 1954 film Carmen Jones in which she sang the dubbed voice of Dorothy Dandridge. Her Covent Garden debut was as Marie in Wozzeck (sung in English at that time) in 1964 – she had made her San Francisco debut in 1960 with the same role. It was with Joan Sutherland that Marilyn Horne found the perfect vocal partner and their performances in the great bel canto operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti took the opera world by storm in the 1960s and early 1970s.

By the time she retired in 1998, Marilyn Horne’s long and distinguished career embraced an enormous variety of operatic roles, as well as a wide variety of solo song ranging from Schubert, Schumann and Mahler through to modern American songs. Such a wide repertory was due to the sheer range of her voice and its remarkable flexibility, a voice that could sustain long lines of melody as well as negotiate the most florid vocal pyrotechnics.

Marilyn Horne participated in a number of complete opera recordings (among them classic recordings of Norma and Semiramide with Joan Sutherland) for Decca and also made ten recital programmes.

The complete recitals are now reissued in their entirety as a Collector Edition on 11 CDs and preserve the original sequence of music as presented on vinyl; the original LP cover art is reproduced for the CD sleeves.