Wagner: Allmächt’ge Jungfrau! (from Tannhäuser) (Elisabeth's Prayer)

2013 sees a series of Wagner reissues on Eloquence from complete operas and highlights to Wagner singer portraits and even an audiobook!

This is a 31-year retrospective (1956 – 1987) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring fourteen extracts from nine operas with seven great singers. Wagner’s heroines make for some of the most pivotal moments in his operas and this anthology highlights almost every aspect of his women – suspicious and inflexible (Fricka, here taken from a recital recording by Regina Resnik), redeeming (Elisabeth and Brünnhilde), passionate (Sieglinde), transfigured (Isolde). We hear the great voices of Joan Sutherland (who sang a number of Wagnerian roles before establishing her incomparable reputation in the bel canto repertoire), her idol, Kirsten Flagstad (here singing Kundry), Flagstad’s Scandinavian successor Birgit Nilsson (in two of the greatest opera scenes – Isolde’s Liebstod and Brünnhilde’s Immolation), and at the start of this recording, the splendidly Italianate singing of Susan Dunn as Elisabeth and Sieglinde. The illuminating notes on the music and the singers are by Wagner scholar Peter Bassett and the booklet includes a photo gallery of the singers.

If anyone may lay claim to the title of prima donna assoluta of the late 20th century, it is surely Jessye Norman. She is one of the great communicators. Whether in the intimate setting of the Wigmore Hall in London, or the huge space of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, she can give each listener the sense that her song is directed straight at them. Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1945. She studied at Howard University, the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Michigan. In 1968 she won the Munich International Music Competition, and this led to an invitation to sing in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper, where she made her debut as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser. After that her career blossomed and she went on to conquer the world’s greatest opera houses including La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan in New York. One of her greatest triumphs in New York was in 1982, in Robert Wilson's Great Day in the Morning, and in 1989 she was invited to sing the Marseillaise for the 14 July celebrations in the Place de la Concorde.

The music on these CDs presents a cross-section of Jessye Norman's repertory, in German and French opera, in Lieder and mélodie, in oratorio and even operetta. Since Wagner's Tannhäuser provided Jessye Norman with her first stage role, it is appropriate to begin with two arias from that opera. Senta's ballad from Der fliegende Holländer tells the story of the Flying Dutchman, who is condemned to sail the seas for eternity unless he can find a woman who will remain faithful unto death. The Wesendonck- Lieder were composed by Wagner in 1857–8 as a tribute to Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his friend Otto; particularly in 'Im Treibhaus' and 'Träume', they look forward to Tristan und Isolde. The three Schubert songs, and the solo from Brahms's German Requiem, bring the German part of the programme to a rapturous conclusion.

From Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann Jessye Norman sings the role of Giulietta, a Venetian courtesan, who ruins the hero, Hoffmann, by urging him to take part in a duel, and then in a symbolic gesture demands from him the ultimate sacrifice – the gift of his reflection. 'The face that launched a thousand ships' – Helen of Troy in La Belle Hélène – is another kind of temptress, and shows the full extent of Norman's comic gifts. In the song cycles by Ravel and Poulenc we glimpse a different side of the artist. La Fraîcheur et le feu was composed in 1950 for the baritone Pierre Bernac, Poulenc's greatest interpreter; in the 1960s, Bernac gave many master-classes covering the whole world of French song, and Jessye Norman was one of his students. The poems set are entitled Vue donne vie (‘Sight gives life'), but Poulenc asked the author, Paul Eluard, to give him a new title for the song-cycle. 'Unis la fraîcheur et le feu' is the opening line of the fifth song: 'Unite the coolness and the fire'. That is exactly what Jessye Norman has always done, and – in Bernac's words – she has done it with 'profound humanity'.

The Dutch soprano Gré Brouwenstijn has long been held in the highest esteem within her own country, and within a circle of vocal connoisseurs, for the fearless vibrancy of her approach to the great hochdramatisch soprano roles, without ever compromising the standards and ideals of vocal beauty: hers is a voice of great strength and flexibility, fully able to meet the challenge of projecting both the scale and drama of Wagner’s heroines while also inhabiting their more intimate confessions.

Brouwenstijn made precious few recordings – most of what is left to us now derives from private tapes or radio archives of live performances – but this compilation of two studio sessions (from 1954 and 1956) catches her in her vocal prime. The big numbers from Wagner’s early dramas (Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer) are included, as well as Wagner’s own leaping-off points in Beethoven (‘Ah, perfido!’) and Weber (Der Freischütz). To finish, there’s a selection of mature Verdi, including ‘Tu che la vanità’ (Don Carlo) and ‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ (La forza del destino). This is an unmissable release for anyone in love with the art of the soprano voice.

Includes appreciation of Brouwenstijn by the writer and opera director Mike Ashman.

Legendary soprano Kirsten Flagstad is featured on this super budget re-issue in 10 songs by Grieg, Dido’s lament from Purcell’s most famous opera and Wagnerian scenes from Tannhauser, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung .

With this release the Tactus label launches a new series in cooperation with the Loreto Study Centre. Although the majority of the recordings will concentrate on the music of Italian composers, this first volume presents music by Richard Wagner arranged by the British organist Edwin Henry Lemare. Included are the Preludes to the first Acts of Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, and Die Meistersinger, as well as selections from Tannhäuser and Parsifal.

Born in Saronno, Italy Giulio Mercati’s repertoire ranges from Renaissance music to the organ virtuoso literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, particularly the works of César Franck, Max Reger and Julius Reubke. He has performed alongside many of Europe’s leading ensembles including the internationally renowned “I Barocchisti” and its musical director Diego Fasolis.

Edwin Henry Lamare was born in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight in 1866. During his lifetime he became well-known for editing a series of brilliant transcriptions for organ, including the pieces by Wagner featured here.

Transfiguration is acclaimed star soprano Camilla Nylund’s much-awaited first album of arias.

This CD portrays the lyric-dramatic soprano with famous arias and scenes from operas by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, including the grueling final scenes from Tristan und Isolde and from Salome.

The featured arias reflect the lyrical and dramatic facets of Camilla Nylund’s current roles at such venues as Staatsoper Dresden, Vienna State Opera, and Bayreuther Festspiele.

The Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra is led by their chief conductor Hannu Lintu.

CD booklet also includes full libretti.

Hillevi Martinpelto sings ten arias by a variety of composers from Verdi to Wagner. All of the arias have been performed by the soprano on various opera stages in Sweden, and here she showcases her favourites in a new disc for Swedish Society.

We were delighted when the internationally renowned soprano Christine Brewer agreed to record some of her favourite repertoire pieces on her first recital disc for Chandos in 2005. No surprise that it was a huge success – so we were even more delighted when she returned to record this second volume – repertoire which you would never hear in a single concert or operatic performance, but here capturing Brewer’s glorious range, wonderfully supported by Judith Howarth, Timothy Robinson and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by David Parry.

Christine Brewer’s earlier recital (CHAN3127) introduced into this series the dramatic soprano voice and included in its programme, as does its successor, arias from Gluck’s Alceste and Wagner’s Tannhäuser. In a previous age both operas were sung by Kirsten Flagstad, by general consent the greatest heroic-dramatic soprano of all. Christine Brewer now adds one of the most formidable challenges in the repertoire, Leonore’s solo in Act I of Beethoven’s Fidelio. Otherwise, the two significant extensions are in time, backward to Handel and forward to Britten and Menotti.