This week two solo recital albums make up the new releases. One comes from one of the greatest living sopranos and the other arrives from one of the great baroque interpreters of our time.

There will also be a box set of recordings by a legendary mezzo-sopranos as well as an electronic opera.

Anja Harteros 

Warner Classics releases Anja Harteros’ solo album featuring Romantic songs for voice and orchestra. The album conducted by Valery Gergiev and featuring the Münchner Philharmoniker features Berg’s “Seven Early Songs,” Wagner’s “Wesendonck-Lieder,” and Mahler’s “Rückert-Lieder.”

Passion 

Véronique Gens releases a new recital album featuring the French baroque repertoire. In her new recording, Gens tackles some of the great tragic heroines of Jean-Baptiste Lully and his younger contemporaries Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Pascal Collasse and the still-younger Henry Desmarets. The Ensemble Les Surprises led by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, and Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles accompanies the soprano. Alpha releases the album.

Beyond the Music 

Sony Classical releases the first release of Marian Anderson’s complete recorded legacy for RCA Victor. The boxed set will showcase the first-ever complete release of her legendary Farewell Recital at Constitution Hall in 1964 and all recordings have been meticulously restored and remastered from the original analog masters. The 228-page coffee-table book contains numerous photos and facsimiles, a new essay by Raymond Arsenault, and full discographical notes.

iGirl

Irish label Silverdoor will release the “iGirl,” a new electronic opera by composer Roger Doyle. The work was written by Roger Doyle in collaboration with playwright Marina Carr. Doyle composed his second electronic opera “iGirl,” in a two-act series of 24 tableaux and the work is inhabited by mythological and historical characters including, Joan of Arc, Antigone, Jocasta, and Oedipus, as well as two narrators. 

Doyle noted, “There is no live orchestra. The singers are hand-picked as I wanted trained non-traditional classical singers i.e., vocalists who sing with little or no vibrato. The score makes use of new music software creating, at times, an epic virtual orchestra, and at other times is heavily percussive evoking ancient and modern worlds. ‘iGirl’ explores female grief, sorrow and sacrifice, and explores themes which are highly relevant in contemporary society, culture and politics.”