Friederike Reumann

Around 40,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, the upper Danube region was settled by anatomically modern humans. Traces of their daily life have been found at several cave sites in the south of modern Germany, including fragments of perforated bird bones and mammoth ivory. Representing the oldest evidence of musical creation worldwide, these prehistoric flutes – two from caves at Geissenklösterle, one from Hohle Fels, and a slightly later, more fully preserved find from Isturitz cave in the French Pyrenees – have been reconstructed in the modern era.

Soprano Diana Damrau, dazzling in the operas of Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi and Richard Strauss, also has operetta in her blood. With this album she tours three capital cities of operetta – Vienna, Berlin and Paris – and covers nearly seven decades of musical history. En route she relishes the romance, wit and melodies of numbers by such composers Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Robert Stolz, Paul Abraham, André Messager, Henri Christiné, Oscar Straus and Francis Lopez. Her star guest is tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conducting the Münchner Rundfunkorchester is Ernst Theis, as expert in operetta as he is in symphonic repertoire. “For me, operetta is the most all-embracing genre of music theatre,” says Damrau, “Its indulgence, its yearning, its joyousness and its comedy all touch the heart and show the positive side of life … It rarely fails to work its magic on audiences.”

The amazing soprano Lucia Popp largely owes her success to her unforgettable roles in the grand German Romantic repertoire by Richard Strauus & Richard Wagner. She was also known to be a brilliant performer of lighter lyrical works, with which such composers as Franz Lehár, Johann Strauss or Carl Zeller triumphed at the Theater an der Wien or the Wiener Staatsoper, ultimately entertaining the Austrian high society to a great degree. This exquisite collection of Viennese bonbons is accompanied by Sir Neville Marriner, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with the Ambrosian Opera Chorus featured in choral excerpts from The Merry Widow, Giuditta or Casanova.

At its time Rinaldo created a sensation; it premiered on 24 February 1711 and was staged more than any other Handel opera during his lifetime. The renowned German baroque ensemble lautten compagney Berlin under the musical direction of Wolfgang Katschner, whose great passion applies to music theatre in a historically informed performance practice, presents an adorable interpretation of Handel’s fi rst opera in London on this CD.