Julia

In her second solo collection, Julia's voice dances between hopeful and weary, defeated and desperately alive. Composed in California, refined in France and sculpted in Australia and India, as the summer turned to fall in New York City, they poured through her hands to the ears and hands of Producer Thomas Bartlett who has worked with Doveman, Antony & the Johnsons and The National and is currently producing upcoming record by Glen Hansard. Bartlett expertly creates living and breathing sounds along with the most understatedly talented musicians on 'By The Horns'. The sessions were co-produced by Patrick Dillett, equally known for his work recording powerful female vocalists like Mary J Blige and Mariah Carey, and as a producer for David Byrne and Arto Lindsay and mixed Julia's first solo album 'The Memory Machine'. 'By The Horns' signals a great transition; an introduction of Julia Stone as a singular artist of her own voice, the birth of a mature voice of formidable strength and delicate insight, out of the shadow of past successes.

Orfeo honours Júlia Várady as one of the most important sopranos of the second half of the 20th century with the release of this 10-album boxed set "The Orfeo Recordings" on the occasion of her 80th anniversary on 1st September. A significant number of opera lovers and connoisseurs maintain that Maria Callas’ mantle ought to have passed to Júlia Várady, and that the (now eighty-year-old) Romanian-Hungarian-German soprano actually should, in her day, have ascended the international throne of the prima donna assoluta.

Julia Varady is a highly respected soprano who has had a major European career and considerable success elsewhere. She comes from a fabled part of Rumania that used to belong to Hungary and is home to most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarian population. She studied at the Conservatory in Cluj (formerly Klausenberg), then at the conservatory in the capital city of Bucharest. She returned to Cluj and in 1960 gained a contract with the Cluj Opera and quickly was given the leading roles in the lyric-dramatic repertory, including Judith in Bluebeard's Castle, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Butterfly in Madama Butterfly (after originally playing the short part of Kate Pinkerton), the Marriage of Figaro (in which she sang, at various times, all three soprano roles), Turandot (as Liù), Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. During this period she also made guest appearances at the National Opera of Bucharest and in Budapest, Hungary.