Smetana Dalibor

In William Blake’s aphorism, “exuberance is beauty, prudence an ugly old maid courted by incapacity”. And there in a nutshell you have a literary pointer to Smetana’s engaging character. Brilliant, picturesque and nationalistic, all the music on this superb disc pays colourful tribute to “the father of Bohemian music”. Even the most familiar pages from The Bartered Bride (once mistakenly appearing in an American newspaper as The Buttered Broad) come up fresh as paint, the BBC Philharmonic’s immaculate virtuosity as musicianly and refined as it is sparkling.

Lucia Popp (born Lucia Poppová) entered the Academy in Bratislava primarily to study drama. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano but her musical lessons developed a high upper register to such a degree that her professional debut was as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte in Bratislava. In 1963 Otto Klemperer heard her and she duly recorded this role with him in 1971. Also in 1963 Herbert von Karajan invited her to join the State Opera in Vienna where her first role was Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.

Acclaimed throughout the world's great opera houses, American soprano Renee Fleming enjoys particular success in roles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when glorious vocal writing and opulent orchestrations took the art of opera to new heights. In studying and performing this passionately lyrical music, Fleming became increasingly fascinated with her predecessors-sopranos of a golden age who made this intensely emotional music their own. Homage: The age of the Diva is a tribute to these iconic sopranos and their signature arias.

Šárka, opus 51, is an opera in three acts by Zdeněk Fibich to a Czech libretto by Anežka Schulzová, his student and lover. Fibich composed the full score over the period of 8 September 1896 to 10 March 1897.

Andris Nelsons, Kristine Opolais, and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig form a Dvorák sound from the middle, singing the melodies that the composer concealed in all of the layers of his music with tender, warm, soft colors. Nelsons’ tempos remain calm and relaxed, allowing the omnipresent beauty of Dvorák’s music to unfold and flood the Gewandhaus. This is the first DVD and Blu-ray release of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the baton of its new music director Andris Nelsons. Recorded at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, May 2017.