Aleksandra Kurzak

"Puccini In Love" is the first album by the award winning operatic tenor superstar Roberto Alagna and his wife, soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. Together they are the golden couple of the opera world. The album features some of Puccini’s greatest love duets including Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Manon Lescaut as well as lesser known duets including Il Tabarro and La Rondine. Puccini in Love showcases some of Puccini’s most emotional and passionate operatic work. Puccini’s command of melody is truly unique to his time and combined with his orchestration creates cinematic and passionate compositions. Roberto Alagna has transcended genre’s through his music—not only is he an opera superstar but he has crossed over into other genre’s of music making his work easily accessible to many types of audiences. Aleksandra and Roberto have performed at some of the greatest opera houses across the world including The Royal Opera House in London, The Metropolitan Opera and La Scala.

Arvo Pärt is one of the greatest and most performed of living composers. Slow and meditative, often religious, reflecting his mystical experiences, Pärt’s works are unmistakeable. Here Morphing Chamber Orchestra, under its artistic director Tomasz Wabnic, performs some of the Estonian composer’s finest instrumental works, Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel and Summa, together with one of his vocal masterpieces, the Stabat Mater, presented here in a new arrangement, sung by three of today’s greatest operatic voices, Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. Several shorter pieces, marvels of poetry and purity, sung by Andreas Scholl, complete this programme.

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.

Superstar tenor, Roberto Alagna, returns with his sensational new album Caruso. Caruso 1873 is Alagna’s tribute to the Neapolitan singer who Alagna considers to be the greatest tenor of all time. Alagna honours his legendary predecessor with a selection of repertoire drawn from Caruso’s own recording career, which stretched from 1902 to 1920. Alagna is accompanied by the critically acclaimed Orchestre National D’ile-de-France, singers Aleksandra Kurzak and Rafal Siwek and conductor, pianist and arranger, yvan Cassar. The music chosen is a journey back in time through Caruso’s eclectic repertoire. It showcases his personality and is blended with Alagna’s own favourites. The album 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 (1873—1921) was an Italian operatic tenor. Caruso was one of the first major singing talents to be commercially recorded.