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Anna Netrebko: a diva in demand

We caught up with the star soprano backstage in Paris and discovered why she doesn’t want to do “stupid intellectual stuff”. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

October 3, 2017
CD and Other Review

Review: Heroines of Love and Loss (Ruby Hughes, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann, Jonas Nordberg)

Are the heroines of the title the female narrators of these songs and arias, or are they the composers – women including Claudia Sesa, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini and Lucrezia Vizzana – who surmounted impossible challenges to give voice to their music? They are, of course, both, and it’s a combination that makes for a charged programme. A natural storyteller never afraid to paint period music in rich hues, soprano Ruby Hughes delights in the expressive details of Strozzi’s arioso-like L’Eraclito Amoroso and Lagrime mie. Both are closer to opera than chamber music, the latter opening in a prescient clatter of chromatics. If Hughes takes risks, they only match those of the music. Sesa and Vizzana represent the women confined to convents, for whom music was a rare emotional and expressive outlet. Sesa’s Occhi io vissi di voi has all the erotic spirituality of Teresa of Avila’s writings – a love-song clothed in vestments, and while Vizzana’s O Magnum Mysterium is more restrained, the contrast of the chromatic wounds of the verse to the consonant balm of the Alleluia is a poignant as it is sophisticated. Leavening the vocal music with a thoughtful selection of instrumental works, Jonas Nordberg and Mime…

September 29, 2017
CD and Other Review

Review: Perfido! (Sophie Bevan, The Mozartists/Ian Page)

The young English soprano Sophie Bevan brings plenty of drama and panache – as well as a yearning tenderness – to a delightful programme of concert arias, including the three written for the Czech diva Josefa Dušek, two by Mozart and the other by a young Beethoven. Over a generous 70 minutes Haydn is well represented by Scena di Berenice and his beautiful Petrach sonnet setting, Solo e pensoso. But it’s the four Mozart pieces and Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido, the album’s closer, which show us why Bevan won the 2010 Critics’ Circle award for Exceptional Young Talent. One of the highlights is the lovely duet with The Mozartists’ oboist Rachel Chaplin in the cavatina from Mozart’s Ah, lo previdi. Bevan is a talent to watch. She’s perfectly suited to this material, admirably backed by the period instruments of The Mozartists.  This is the first recording by the offshoot of Ian Page’s acclaimed Classical Opera, with whom Bevan has recorded whole operas as well as appearing with them regularly in concerts. The 34-year-old has also performed at Covent Garden, English and Welsh National Operas and Glyndebourne as well as in Europe. Perfido! was recorded in a church in Kilburn, London. It has…

September 29, 2017
CD and Other Review

Review: Stravaganza D’Amore! (Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon)

Ten years ago in Paris Raphaël Pichon founded Pygmalion, a superb ensemble of period specialists, and since then they have steadily built a fine discography; their Bach Masses on the Alpha label have garnered raves as have their Rameau, but this latest release should raise their stock considerably. In order to bring to life the genesis of opera, Pichon has contrived the sort of spectacle that the Medici court was famed for at the end of the 16th century. We all know the story of the Florentine Camerata, though few examples of their experiments are extant, but we do have the intermedi of Peri, Malvezzi, Marenzio and others along with the fragments of operas by Peri, Caccini and Gagliano. Recreating a grand wedding festivity, two mini-operas on the stories of Apollo and Orpheus are bookended by celebrations of love and marriage. From the tenor’s opening cry of Stravaganza D’amore, joined by choirs, sackbuts, cornetti and a lavish continuo with every imaginable plucked instrument, I was hooked and listened through both discs entranced. The soloists are splendid. Sophie Junker produces a gorgeous sound; her O che felice giorno by Caccini, an early highlight. Renato Dolcini raises a smile with Brunelli’s witty…

September 29, 2017