Angela Gheorghiu, Lawrence Brownlee & Daron Hagen Lead New CD/DVD Releases
By Francisco SalazarWelcome back for this week’s look at the latest CD and DVD releases in the opera world.
This week audiences will get to hear a new recording by one of the world’s most renowned soprano as well as the complete recordings of baroque masterpieces and some world premiere pieces.
Les Talens Lyriques perform Louise Bertin’s “Fausto”
Les Talens Lyriques and the Palazzetto Bru Zane join forces in an adventurous French operatic rediscovery of Louise Bertin’s work. The new recording stars Karine Deshayes, Karina Gauvin, Ante Jerkunica, Nico Darmanin, Marie Gautrot, Diana Axentii, and Thibault de Damas.
Platée
BelAir Classiques releases Paris Opera’s production of Rameau’s “Platée” featuring Lawrence Brownlee and Julie Fuchs. Marc Minkowski leads Les Musiciens du Louvre in a production by Laurent Pelly.
Médée
Alpha releases a new recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Médée” The new recording features Véronique Gens, Cyrille Dubois, Judith van Wanroij, and bass Thomas Dolié. Veteran baroque specialist Hervé Niquet led the Le Concert Spirituel.
A Te, Puccini
Signum Classics releases Angela Gheorghiu’s latest album which features 16 songs by Puccini. Vincenzo Scalera accompanies the soprano in an album that includes the newly discovered song called “Melanconia,” here given its very first recording.
Daron Hagen: The Art of Song
Naxos American Classics releases the new album which features a joint commission of the Brooklyn Art Song Society and Philadelphia-based Lyric Fest. The hour-long work, divided into four “life seasons,” sets 24 texts from two millennia’s worth of sources, from poets to politicians, Sappho to Donald J. Trump. Lyric Fest’s six vocalists are sopranos Gilda Lyons and Rebecca Myers, mezzos Elisa Sutherland and Meg Bragle, tenor James Reese, and baritone Steven Eddy, with pianist Laura Ward.
End of Days
BIS releases British soprano Ruby Hughes’s new album which offers an eclectic mix of songs. Accompanied by musicians of the Manchester Collective, she sings Dowland, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Mahler, and Tavener, among others.
Lauscht, ihr Liebenden!—Listen, Lovers!
BR Klassik releases “Barbara Strozzi’s Lauscht, ihr Liebenden!—Listen, Lovers!,” a German-language “audio biography” devised by Jörg Handstein, with German actress Wiebke Puls impersonating the seventeenth-century Italian composer.
César Franck – Les Béatitudes
Fuga Libera releases a new recording of César Franck’s Gospel-based oratorio “Les Béatitudes,” with Gergely Madaras leading the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and the Hungarian National Choir.