Ermonela Jaho / Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana / Andrea Battistoni ANIMA RARA

ANIMA RARA

 

Joseph Calleja / Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana / Ramón Tebar VERDI

Joseph Calleja, one of the world’s leading tenors, returns with his new album, Verdi. The album sees Calleja explore the light and dark in Verdi’s heroic tenor roles and features guest appearances from soprano Angela Gheorghiu and baritone Vittorio Vitelli.

Verdi has a special place in Calleja’s heart, having made his debut as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth when he was just 19. Verdi is his first new album in six years with his last solo album Amore having been released in 2013 along with his recording of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. This latest album marks a significant step into the Verdi repertoire for Calleja as he tackles new roles that he has yet to play on stage.

Among the arias on the new album are “Di quella pira” and “Ah! Si, ben mio…” from Il Trovatore, “Già nella notte densa” from Otello, and “Celeste Aida” from the opening scene of Verdi’s Egyptian opera. Each of the roles on this album celebrate the tenore robusto as the voice-type of an operatic hero and showcase Calleja’s powerful voice.

Calleja’s new album also reflects his flourishing live career. He is a regular performer at the world’s leading opera houses and will be performing in London for a month in the new year to sing Puccini’s Tosca at the Royal Opera House (January 15 – February 7) before heading to Berlin, Monte Carlo and Munich.

Born in Malta in 1978, Joseph Calleja began singing at the age of 16, first in his church choir and then in formal training with Maltese tenor Paul Asciak. One of his native land’s biggest celebrities, Calleja was selected to serve as Malta’s first cultural ambassador in 2012 and earlier this year he was named a brand ambassador for Air Malta. Calleja recently teamed up with Malta’s Bank of Valletta to form the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation which will serve to help children and families in need. Calleja is also the recipient of the 2014 International Opera Awards’ Readers’ Award.

Elīna Garanča / Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana / Roberto Abbado REVIVE

In Revive, her latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča explores the storms raging in the lives of some of the strong women of opera. A world-class performer approaching the peak of her form, she channels her experience and insight into a collection of arias drawn from the great Romantic repertoire, complete with captivating rarities and genuine showstoppers. Revive, released 04 November via Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company, charts the impassioned responses of characters blown off course or thrown into emotional turmoil by events beyond their control.

Bookended by arias from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Saint-Saëns’s Henri VIII, the album also takes in music from Leoncavallo’s La Bohème and Massenet’s Hérodiade, as well as celebrated set-pieces from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, Massenet’s Werther, Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, among others.

This breadth of repertoire bears witness to Elīna Garanča’s vocal versatility and range. Her programme choices amount to a projection of her personal passions and interests at the time of creating the recording. “I feel confident that at this moment I can approach the women in the opera literature who are strong, whom I understand, with whom I can share my own life experience,” she comments. “This has been the guideline in everything I do: I go onstage when I am confident that I understand why I’m going to present a character. I hope that everyone listening to this recording can find something particular: it’s enough if they can relate to only one aria.”

Revive casts light on powerful women to reveal their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Garanča’s strikingly individual interpretations arise from her empathy for each character and are underpinned by her admiration for their desire always to stand tall, even in moments of despair or apparent defeat.

“All these women are, I think, about exploring an inner world, about people finding themselves in a weak moment, for whatever reason – unhappy love, betrayal, losing power, saying goodbye to loved ones. In my everyday life, I’m everything: I can be jealous, I can be angry, I can be funny, I can be sad. Life is like a big colourful book. So the women on this album belong to a big colourful book.”

Revive was made in company with Roberto Abbado and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. Elīna Garanča welcomed a fresh opportunity to work with Abbado, and was delighted by the absolute focus shown by the orchestra throughout the sessions. The recording process allowed the singer to dig deep into dramatic roles destined to become part of her future work in the opera house, notably Mascagni’s Santuzza and Verdi’s Princess Eboli, two powerful roles she is preparing to perform for the first time onstage, at the Paris Opéra (in the autumn of 2016 and 2017, respectively).

“I’m lucky enough to have a mezzo-soprano voice that has the potential for development,” she comments. “I started with Baroque, Mozart and bel canto repertoire, with a little bit more dramatic stuff, too. I have never done Verdi on the stage or really done verismo opera, so there’s something new for me. Now, I feel it is really time to explore further, so the repertoire that is coming now is a new Elīna with new, exciting challenges.” Verdi and verismo, she adds, offer fresh territory for rewarding exploration. “I’m very happy that I can embrace it. It feels right at this moment to move on and reach other mountains!”

Sonya Yoncheva / Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana / Frédéric Chaslin PARIS, MON AMOUR

A star was born when soprano Sonya Yoncheva made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Gilda in Rigoletto on November 21, 2013. The audience gave the Bulgarian singer a standing ovation and the New York Times hailed her "sumptuous, penetrating voice" that communicated all the "teeming emotion and sensual yearning" of Verdi's heroine. In the course of Yoncheva's quick rise to fame, French audiences have especially taken to her, and she to them. Her debut album as a Sony Classical exclusive artist, Paris, Mon Amour, reflects that love affair.

Sonya Yoncheva captured first prize in 2010 at the Operalia competition at Milan's La Scala, then began her love affair with France, starring first as Handel's Cleopatra at Versailles and then as Bizet's Leïla at the Opéra Comique. Then she burst on the scene in a really big way in Lucia di Lammermoor, her debut at the Bastille, after which the city of Paris acclaimed her in the 2014 Concert de Paris at the Eiffel Tower, an engagement she'll repeat in 2015. 

 Her brand-new album Paris, Mon Amour concentrates on French works of the Belle Époque (1871-1914) by famous composers like Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet and Charles Gounod along with undeservedly obscure works by Charles Lecocq and André Messager. The CD also includes Italian classics of the period by Verdi (La Traviata) and Puccini (La Bohème).

Domingo VERDI

The world-renowned tenor releases his first album of baritone arias “apparently unstoppable in his second career as conductor and baritone” The Telegraph. For the very first time, Plácido Domingo records a complete album of baritone repertoire and assembles Verdi´s most beloved baritone arias from Don Carlo, Rigoletto, La Traviata and Simon Boccangera among others.
Verdi played the largest part in Domingo´s long career. His debut as an opera singer was in the part of Borsa in Rigoletto. As he has sung 22 of Verdi tenor roles and has recorded all of Verdi's tenor arias, Domingo is now exploring the darker characters of Verdi’s opera.
In 2009 Plácido Domingo performed his first baritone title role as Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Opera House in London, which was soon followed by leading roles as Rigoletto, Francesco Foscari and Giorgio Germont from La Traviata. This year will see Domingo debut in the leading roles of Nabucco at the Metropolitan Opera New York and Conte di Luna from Il Trovatore at the State Opera in Berlin.
Considered to be THE Verdi tenor of his generation, Plácido Domingo presents now a new side of his vocal abilities, for which one may want to name him THE Verdi singer.
Plácido Domingo is accompanied by the Orquestra de la Comunítat Valencíana under the direction of conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.

Plácido Domingo about Verdi: “Verdi is a wellspring of great music, and every lyric singer is grateful to him. When you think of the musical distance that he travelled from his first opera, Oberto, in 1839, to Falstaff, in 1893, the evolution is almost incredible. The passion, the dramatic sense, the sensitivity to the voice – those qualities were there from the start. But the ability to develop individual characters in music, the refinement in orchestration, and the gradual transformation of Italian opera from a series of beautiful set-pieces into a logical, dramatic whole – this process of maturation seems almost miraculous. So for me 2013 must be a special celebration, a tribute, and an act of thanksgiving and love toward Giuseppe Verdi.”