Miah Persson

Mozart's genius in setting to music Da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks Così fan tutte as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful production for the Glyndebourne Festival in 2006, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be 'shockingly traditional', while Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.

Haydn composed more than twenty operas, mainly for the sumptuous theatre at Eszterháza, the palace of his long-time employers, the princes of Esterházy. Even so, his work in the operatic field remains largely neglected. This disc focuses on an even more closely guarded secret: the so-called 'insertion arias' that Haydn wrote for inclusion in operas by other composers. The rarely, if at all, recorded music includes Haydn's three contributions to La Circe, an opera pasticcio which combined music by several composers, and six of the surviving insertion arias. Among these is Infelice sventurata, written for an opera by Cimarosa, and one of Haydn's finest arias, here movingly performed by Miah Persson. The Swedish soprano shares the greater part of the programme with the Swiss tenor Bernard Richter.

Rinaldo, Handel's first Italian opera, is still arguably his best Italian opera. Or, to put it another way, Handel found what worked – hair-raising arias, affecting harmonies, colorful orchestrations, wild special effects, and a story that his English audiences would accept as a compliment to their own magnificence – and he stuck with it until the English were sick of Italian operas. Handel's Rinaldo works wonderfully well in this recording directed by Rene Jacobs. Jacobs makes the drama work, making one believe in the unlikely coincidences that constitute its plot. He makes the theatrical effects work, making one believe in Handel's monumental thunder that precedes the arrival of the evil queen.

David McVicar’s spellbinding production of Le nozze di Figaro is set in 1830s post-revolution France, where the inexorable unravelling of an old order has produced acute feelings of loss. In the relationship between Finley’s suave, dashingly self-absorbed Count and Röschmann’s passionately dignified Countess, which lies at the tragic heart of the opera, the sexy ease between a feisty Figaro (Erwin Schrott) and a sassy Susanna (Miah Persson) is starkly absent, the tenacious spark between Marcellina (Graciela Araya) and Bartolo (Jonathan Veira) suggesting what might be rekindled.

This Così fan tutte enchanted the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus audience when recorded in concert in 2012, with Nézet-Séguin inspiring his stellar cast to feats of vocal derring-do. An enthusiastic advocate of Mozart s music, Rolando Villazón takes on the lead tenor role. Das Opernglas hailed his debut as Ferrando, calling him ideal for the role we have not heard a more beautiful, better sung and deeper felt Un aura amorosa in a long time. Starring a thrilling cast of both young and experienced Mozart opera stars including accomplished soprano Mojca Erdmann as Despina, acclaimed Mozartian soprano Miah Persson and prize-winning young American mezzo Angela Brower as the emotionally manipulated sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Also joining this crème-de-la-crème cast are distinguished Mozart bass-baritone Adam Plachetka as Guglielmo and Italian buffo baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Alfonso.

The classy interpretation of Mozart's Così fan tutte concluded Claus Guth's Mozart-Da Ponte opera trilogy at the Salzburg Festival. Hosted in the intimate surroundings of the Haus für Mozart, the comic tale of fi ancée-swapping is fl irtatiously retold by a dynamic cast and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Adam Fischer. Guth's imaginative production maintains the opera's musical drama and humour in a contemporary setting, where young men test their lovers in an entertaining game of seduction and temptation.

Mozart's genius in setting to music Da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks Così fan tutte as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful production for the Glyndebourne Festival in 2006, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be 'shockingly traditional', while Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.