Aleksandra Kurzak DESIRE

DESIRE

Roberto Alagna CARUSO 1873

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt an almost visceral love and admiration for Enrico Caruso,” writes Alagna. He honours his legendary predecessor with a selection of repertoire drawn from Caruso’s own recording career, which stretched from 1902 to 1920. Alagna’s aim was to celebrate Caruso, while retaining his own vocal identity: “I respected the Caruso ‘style’ when making this recording, just as one would respect a composer’s style.”

Accompanied by the ORCHESTRE NATIONAL D’ÎLE-DE-FRANCE and joined for two numbers by soprano ALEKSANDRA KURZAK and for one by bass RAFAŁ SIWEK, Roberto Alagna worked with his longstanding accomplice, conductor, pianist and arranger YVAN CASSAR. Together, they committed to find a way into Caruso’s world, as accurately as possible. Theyrecorded not only in the original languages and keys that Caruso used in his recordings but also tried to match his tempos, his variations, his breaths… They even did everything to recreate the original orchestrations, for instance by including heavier brass, in order to reproduce the atmosphere of the early recordings.

The music chosen is a journey back in time through Caruso’s eclectic repertoire. It showcases his personality, blended with Alagna’s own favorites, “so the programme reflects me too,” Alagna explains. The album opens with Lucio Dalla’s “Caruso” – a modern song– then turns the clock back to finish with the earliest records. The selection offers many surprises and stretches from Handel and Pergolesi to verismo composers including Cilea and Leoncavallo, contemporaries of Caruso who wrote music for him. Puccini is represented by “Vecchia zimarra”, the bass Colline’s aria from La bohème which – as legend has it – Caruso once sang on stage standing in for an ailing colleague in perfect subterfuge.

“Caruso is part of my life, part of my roots even,” writes Alagna. “My great-grandparents knew him in New York. I feel as if I’d known him”. This recording has brought the two tenors closer still: “I was so immersed in the sound of Caruso that I started hearing his voice instead of mine inside my head during the sessions.”

Enrico Caruso was born in 1873. Almost a century later, in 1963, it was Roberto Alagna’s turn to come into the world. “His voice has been with me ever since,” Alagna adds. “The singers of the past have left us their legacy. I hope this recording will help younger generations to discover or rediscover Caruso’s unique artistry. That way his flame will burn forever.”

Aleksandra Kurzak / Roberto Alagna MASSENET La Navarraise

With his red-blooded, action-packed opera La Navarraise, Massenet provided a French response to the Italian-driven vogue for verismo in the 1890s. This recording of this rarely-performed work stars Roberto Alagna as the Spanish solider Araquil and Aleksandra Kurzak as Anita, the titular girl from Navarre who is prepared to kill for love. Alberto Veronesi conducts the Opera Orchestra of New York.

Roberto Alagna / Aleksandra Kurzak PUCCINI IN LOVE

Puccini In Love is the first album by award winning operatic tenor superstar Roberto Alagna and his wife, soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. Puccini In Love showcases some of Puccini’s most emotive and passionate operatic work. The album features some of Puccini’s greatest love duets including Madama Butterfly, Manon Lesca and La Bohème as well as lesser-known duets such as Il Tabarro and La Rondine. Both Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra are accomplished opera singers and Puccini In love showcases the exceptional talent, musicality and charisma that makes Alagna and Kurzak the golden couple of the opera world.

Warsaw Philharmonic / Jacek Kaspszyk SZYMANOWSKI

The new album by the Warsaw Philharmonic features music by eminent Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. His Litany to the Virgin Mary, Stabat Mater and Song of the Night were written between 1914 and 1933, which is considered to have been the most fruitful period in his creative life. 

Litany to the Virgin Mary to a poem by Jerzy Liebert (1904-1931) – a poet known for his love of lyrical verse on philosophical and religious subjects – is a piece which Szymanowski began to compose in 1930.  

Stabat Mater, completed in 1926, was officially commissioned from Szymanowski by the Polish art collector Bronisław Krystall to commemorate his wife’s death. The work was inspired, however, by a tragic event that affected Szymanowski’s family. Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater holds a special place in the history of Polish music after Chopin. It exerted a powerful impact even on eminent composers working fifty years later, wrote Marcin Gmys, PhD, professor of Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

The last work on this CD is Symphony No. 3 Song of the Night for solo voice, mixed choir and orchestra (1914-1916) – a whole new world of musical imagination, whose protagonist and speaker is an artist – at first unable to express his own feelings.

The performers are Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir under the baton of the Philharmonic’s artistic director, Jacek Kaspszyk, as well as outstanding soloists: Aleksandra Kurzak, Agnieszka Rehlis, Artur Ruciński, and Dmitry Korchak. (Warner Classics)