Victoria

Feted for his Savoy operas with librettist W. S. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan also regularly produced music for important royal or national occasions. In 1897, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, he was commissioned to write a ballet for the Alhambra Theatre in London. Conforming closely to the theatre’s established style, this single-act ballet was a spectacular pageant, featuring "speciality" dances, startling dramatic effects and grand "tableaux", notably military ones. Significant research and reconstruction of the score has made this recording possible.

Die erste Trio-Aufnahme von Victoria Shereshevskaya (Mezzosopran), Alexandra Soumm (Violine) und Rémi Geniet (Klavier) enthält Werke, die in ihrer Atmosphäre weit voneinander entfernt sind, aber alle von einem universellen Gedankengut geprägt sind, das russische, indische und französische Dichter, volkstümliche und gelehrte Musik miteinander verbindet, und ist ein Album von einzigartiger Farb- und Ausdrucksvielfalt.

Many of us have an image of Queen Victoria as a dour, restrictive woman. But, as Dr. Kate Williams explores in ‘Young Victoria’, the reality is very different. Based on her research, ‘Young Victoria’ will show the hidden story of behind the Queen who brought us into the modern age – and how she saved the very institution of monarchy itself.

Legendary prima donnas often have an epithet - whether la Divina, la Stupenda or la Superba. The Catalan singer Victoria de los Angeles, who celebrated her 100th birthday on November 1, 2023.

Following the freshness and vigour of their quincentenary portrait celebration of Robert Fayrfax, Ensemble Pro Victoria’s second Delphian album brings a similar boldness of approach to a wider-ranging collection, charting some rarely explored territory from a time of great religious, societal and musical change.

Her smiling face, her generosity and her simplicity have won the hearts of all those who have seen this great singer from afar or close up; a singer who could never be mistaken for a diva. No caprices, no bouts of rage, no outrageous demands: she simply sang. It was the Geneva International Music Competition, which she won with such great success in 1947, that propelled the young Spanish singer to the front of the world stage.

"I wanted you to get the humidity of it, the heat, the ways we reach to the pits of hell and the heights of heaven," South Carolina native Adia Victoria has said of her third album. "I wanted this record to encapsulate the extremes of the South." Mission accomplished; listening to A Southern Gothic, there is no escaping that uneasy—truly, haunted—feeling of so much beauty and so much menace all in one place. The singer-songwriter gets right to it with "Magnolia Blues": "I'm going back South/ Down to Carolina/ I'm gonna plant myself/ Under a magnolia/ I'm gonna let that dirt/ Do its work." The magnolia tree is both a symbol of deep-South femininity and strength as well as horror, given its association with lynchings.