Donizetti: Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête! (from La Fille du Régiment)

With a Negro spiritual, spectacular bel canto, romantic song and comic opera, Lawrence Brownlee unveils the breadth of his repertoire and the lyric tenor voice that has won acclaim at the New York's Metropolitan Opera (for his 'agility, elegance and Rossinian style) and farther afield.

One of the most sought-after bel canto tenors on the international scene.

Includes songs by Duparc, Donizetti, Liszt (3 Petrach Sonnets), Rossini, Ginastera and American contemporary composer Ben Moore.

DVD+CD

Recorded live in concert in Barcelona, this DVD features Pavarotti performing in front of an international audience held spellbound as his dazzling, excitingly powerful voice fills the auditorium. The set also includes a bonus CD of 20 unforgettable live performances celebrating over 25 years of Pavarotti’s legendary career.

This DVD+CD set provides an opportunity to see and hear one of the greatest tenors the world has ever known. The concert covers a wide range of musical offerings, from very well-known works to lesser-known arias and sonnets. Viewers are introduced to Pavarotti through behind-the-scenes interviews and outtakes from the original concert recording that give rare insight into the planning and hard work that go into the creation of such a production.

“Michael Spyres has a lovely, liquid tenor, all honey for love duets and some metal for cries of outraged honor.” John Yohalem, from Opera Today

You may well be hard-pressed to name a classic opera that lacks a love-story – or a tenor as the main romantic hero. Accordingly, emerging American tenor Michael Spyres has come up with a fresh and fascinating pretext for A Fool for Love: his new collection of tenor arias on Delos.

Michael has carefully selected thirteen mostly well-known arias by composers ranging from Mozart to Stravinsky, encompassing a staggering array of love-related circumstances and emotions. He then sequenced them so as to tell the love-story of a single romantic protagonist. The album’s booklet contains a two-act “plot synopsis,” in which each segment of our hero’s story is indexed to the corresponding aria.

As Michael puts it in his booklet introduction, “What I seek to present to you in this album is a fanciful musical story of a typical war-torn couple, and their struggle to cope with the raptures and ravages of this intangible enigma called love.”

Michael, a Missouri native, completed his studies at the Vienna Conservatory, and is already well-known to European audiences for his critically-acclaimed work in recital, oratorio, and opera. He has appeared at such distinguished houses as Milan’s La Scala and Deutsche Oper Berlin, and worked with conductors like Ricardo Muti and John Eliot Gardner.

Blessed with a supremely versatile instrument, Michael has successfully performed the music of composers from Bach to Wagner, encompassing music of many periods and styles: Baroque, Classical, Bel Canto, and Verismo. He has recorded Rossini’s La Gazzetta, Otello, and Le Siège de Corinthe for Naxos.

Born in Modena, a small town in northern Italy, Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) was the son of a baker and amateur tenor. He grew up surrounded by his father’s recordings of the day’s leading opera singers - including Giuseppe Di Stefano, Jan Kiepura, and Enrico Caruso - and he went on to become one of the most popular vocalists of all time. This 2-CD set includes arias from Verdi’s Rigoletto, Puccini’s Turandot, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Massenet’s Manon, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.