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Anima Rara, the debut recital album from Ermonela Jaho, explores music championed by Rosina Storchio, one of the most charismatic lyric sopranos of the verismo era. Jaho sings arias from operas including Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Leoncavallo’s La bohème, Giordano’s Siberia, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Verdi’s La traviata, accompanied by the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana led by young Italian conductor Andrea Battistoni. Known for performances of searing intensity and emotional truth, Jaho has been described as ‘the world’s most acclaimed soprano’ (The Economist) and ‘one of the great verismo interpreters’ (The Guardian).

Like Lucia di Lammermoor and Elvira (I puritani), Amina, the gentle heroine of La sonnambula,was a role that had become associated with light-voiced coloratura sopranos. Callas brought both a new substance and subtlety to the role when Luchino Visconti staged it for her at La Scala in 1955. This recording was made two years later, when the production was revived.

Relentlessly pursued by Fate, Leonora in La forza del destino is a haunted heroine whose passions and fears are expressed on a grand scale. Callas’s stage experience of Forza was limited to her early career in Italy – in fact, Leonora was her first Verdi role – but, as Lord Harewood, founder of Opera magazine, observed, her recorded assumption exhibited ‘an unparalleled musical sensibility and imagination and a grasp of the musico-dramatic picture which is unique’. She took her place in a powerful cast conducted by her mentor Tullio Serafin.

With the present disc, Pascal Rophé and his Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire pay tribute to their great countryman, Claude Debussy – but not with the standard orchestral fare. Debussy Orchestrated paints a portrait of a light-hearted composer, seen through the eyes of two of his collaborators, Henri Büsser and André Caplet, who transferred the works recorded here from the keyboard to the orchestra. In Petite Suite, composed for piano four hands in 1899, Debussy makes allusions to Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, the poet who so often inspired him.

I discovered Rachmaninov’s ‘Vespers’ singing in a choir, and the work made a genuine emotional impact on me! This music gives off an impression of naturalness and ‘simplicity’, yet in fact its architecture is complex and innovative for its time in the quasi-orchestral treatment of the voices. I wanted to place the work in a liturgical context that I conceived by drawing my inspiration from the Orthodox ceremonies I have been lucky enough to attend in Russia and Romania. The special characteristic and the beauty of this Vigil service (which in the Orthodox churches includes both Vespers and Matins) is that it accompanies the prayers of the faithful from dusk until sunrise.

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in its compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss’s Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach’s Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss’s suite.

Les Fetes grecques et romaines, Colin de Blamont's first opera, was a resounding success from the moment it premiered in 1723. A synthesis between the nobility of the tragedie lyrique created by Lully and the more playful tone, with its choreographed divertissements, of the opera-ballet created by Campra, its libretto brings to life the best-known festivals of ancient History. The eloquent Alcibiades distinguishes himself at the Olympic Games, Mark Antony and Cleopatra celebrate the intoxicating Bacchanalia, and the poet Tibullus passionately courts his beloved Delia at the Saturnalia… Valentin Tournet helps us rediscover this masterpiece of the Age of Enlightenment, which for far too long has been overshadowed by its famous contemporaries.

For Bernard Labadie, Le Chemin de Noël is the realization of a great dream inspired by the tradition of the annual Christmas concerts at the Chapel of King’s College in Cambridge, England. Named after the beloved annual concerts that Labadie has conducted in Quebec since 2016, Le Chemin de Noël is the conductor’s deeply personal reflection on the meaning on Christmas.

Michael Praetorius in the Context of his Italian Contemporaries: Michael Praetorius was anything but a cosmopolitan, rather he lived and worked within a manageable radius of the German-speaking area.

With this new recording, Decca has pretty much sewn up the market on three generations of outstanding Bohèmes. Tebaldi and Bergonzi represent the 1950s, Freni and Pavarotti represent the 70s, and now Gheorghiu and Alagna take us into the new millennium with a recording that ranks among the very best.