Sonya Kraus Photoshoots

Gabriel Fauré considered Umberto Giordano’s Siberia to be one of the most interesting and singular works of the early 20th century. The opera’s tragic narrative follows Prince Alexis’s courtesan Stephana. She falls in love with an innocent soldier, Vassili, who is sent to Siberia for killing the Prince. Stephana gives up her life of luxury to follow him but cannot escape her past. With its intensely Russian atmosphere and passionately soaring melodies, Siberia was Giordano’s favorite among his operas. This acclaimed Fiorentino production was greeted with multiple ovations.

Recorded during the first Corona lockdown, Sonya Yoncheva's project emerged from silence with an urge for a "rebirth that our world desperately needs at present, something that it achieves by drawing on the very deepest recesses of the human psyche and on its origins in music and the arts". - SY

A mixture of utterly trad folk and country tunes with some hipsterish indie touches, The Black Dove is uneven, but it works more often than it doesn't. The songs sung by Sharron Kraus, a British folksinger whose voice bears comparison both to U.K. folk icons like June Tabor and American country singers like Gillian Welch, fit uneasily against those featuring Christian Kiefer's hushed bedroom-rock murmur. Imagine Norma Waterson collaborating with Elliott Smith and the parameters of the project's influences will become clear, as well as its flaws. However, the songs featuring Kraus are uniformly excellent, as are the atmospheric instrumental interludes between songs, which occasionally recall Dolly Collins' fantasias for harmonium on her albums with sister Shirley. Kiefer's whispery material, which works better on his solo records, simply sounds out of place in these surroundings.

In the imposing Arena di Verona, soprano Sonya Yoncheva and tenor Vittorio Grigolo present with dramatic and passionate synergy an evening of the most beautiful operatic love arias and duets in opera history. Passion that burns, consumes and sometimes kills is the central theme of this concert including arias from Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod as well as from Puccini´s Tosca, La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Verdi´s La traviata, all conducted by Plácido Domingo. Sonya Yoncheva has the full and vibrant timbre of a true lyrical soprano while Vittorio Grigolo, like Cavaradossi and Rodolfo, plays the cards of ardor and passion, with sweet and affectionate colors. An overall successful evening.

Joseph Martin Kraus has made one of the most impressive comebacks of any composer belonging to an age as distant as his is to the twenty-first century. Though two centuries would pass between his death in 1792 and the eventual revival of his music, within the space of roughly a decade Kraus' 200 or so surviving compositions have practically all been recorded. Carus Verlag in Stuttgart is publishing a critical edition of Kraus' chamber music that does not involve the piano, and in connection with that publication, the newly minted Salagon Quartett has recorded five of Kraus' 10 string quartets for Carus Verlag's in-house label. Six of Kraus' quartets appeared in an early print as his Opus 1 and four others exist in manuscript; in 1992, the Joseph Martin Kraus String Quartet was founded out of the ranks of Concerto Köln to record them all for Cavalli Records.

Twelve symphonies by Kraus have been preserved. Many more are mentioned in letters and notes by Kraus and others, but it is difficult to ascertain which of these have disappeared completely or which have perhaps been assimilated into works we know in some other form. Almost invariably his symphonies consist of three movements, without the traditional minuet. It is possible that Kraus found that its dance character did not suit the dignified style of his writing.

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) is often referred to as the Swedish Mozart by popular literature. His style was influenced by the Sturm und Drang movement that he got acquainted with in his early years; the dramatic contrast and passion characterising his music can be attributed to this inspiration. Although he is considered to be a composer of stage music, he also composed a large number of instrumental pieces especially for orchestra and chamber orchestra.