CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd - Chandos
CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd - Chandos
CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd - Chandos
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<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> Book Cover.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:23 pm Page 1<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong><br />
GREAT OPERATIC ARIAS<br />
DIANA MONTAGUE 2<br />
GREAT OPERATIC ARIAS<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong>DOS<br />
O PERA<br />
IN<br />
ENGLISH<br />
PETERMOORES FOUNDATION
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 2<br />
Diana Montague at the<br />
recording sessions<br />
Bill Cooper<br />
Great<br />
Operatic<br />
Arias<br />
with<br />
Diana Montague<br />
3
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 4<br />
1<br />
Time<br />
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)<br />
from The Marriage of Figaro<br />
Cherubino’s Aria (Non so più)<br />
‘Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills me’ 3:07 [p. 44]<br />
Page<br />
6<br />
Time<br />
from Atalanta<br />
Meleagro’s aria (Care selve)<br />
‘Noble forests, sombre and shady’ 2:05 [p. 46]<br />
Alastair Young harpsichord • Susanne Beer cello<br />
Page<br />
2<br />
3<br />
4<br />
from The Clemency of Titus<br />
Sextus’s Aria (Parto, parto)<br />
‘Send me, but, my beloved’ 6:39 [p. 44]<br />
Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714–1787)<br />
from Iphigenia in Tauris<br />
Priestesses’ Chorus and Iphigenia’s Aria (O malheureuse Iphigénie!)<br />
‘Farewell, beloved homeland’ –<br />
‘No hope remains in my affliction’ 4:56 [p. 45]<br />
with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir<br />
Iphigenia’s Aria (Je t’implore et je tremble)<br />
‘I implore thee and tremble’ 3:36 [p. 45]<br />
7<br />
8<br />
9<br />
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso’s Trio (Soave sia il vento)<br />
‘Blow gently, you breezes’ 3:33 [p. 46]<br />
with Orla Boylan soprano • Alan Opie baritone<br />
Dorabella’s Recitative and Aria (Smanie implacabili)<br />
‘Ah! Leave me now’ –<br />
‘Torture and agony’ 3:39 [p. 46]<br />
Dorabella and Fiordiligi’s Duet (Prenderò quel brunettino)<br />
‘I will take the handsome, dark one’ 3:07 [p. 46]<br />
with Orla Boylan soprano<br />
5<br />
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)<br />
from Alcina<br />
Ruggiero’s aria (Verdi prati)<br />
‘Verdant pastures, leafy woodlands’ 4:18 [p. 45]<br />
10<br />
11<br />
Concert Arias<br />
‘Banished, rejected, God save me!’ 4:50 [p. 47]<br />
(Vado, ma dove?)<br />
‘Who knows what feeling’ 3:16 [p. 47]<br />
(Chi sa qual sia)<br />
4 5
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12<br />
13<br />
Time<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Guglielmo and Dorabella’s Duet (Il core vi dono)<br />
‘My heart here I give you’ 4:39 [p. 47]<br />
with Alan Opie baritone<br />
Richard Heuberger (1850–1914)<br />
from The Opera Ball<br />
Henri and Hortense’s Duet (Gehen wir ins Chambre séparée)<br />
‘This is the clock’ –<br />
‘In a cosy chambre séparée’ 5:46 [p. 48]<br />
with Helen Williams soprano<br />
Page<br />
16<br />
17<br />
Time<br />
Charles Gounod (1818–1893)<br />
from Faust<br />
Siébel’s Romance (Si le bonheur à sourire t’invite)<br />
‘When happy days’ 2:49 [p. 51]<br />
Philharmonia Orchestra • David Parry<br />
from The Merry Widow<br />
Valencienne and Camille’s Duet (Wie eine Rosenknospe)<br />
‘Calm down, my friend!’ –<br />
‘Just as the sun awakens’ 6:55 [p. 52]<br />
with Bruce Ford tenor<br />
Page<br />
14<br />
Alexander Borodin (1833–1887)<br />
from Prince Igor<br />
Song of the Polovtsian Maiden<br />
‘Tender flower, starved of water’ 5:57 [p. 50]<br />
with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir<br />
18<br />
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749)<br />
(formerly attrib. J.S. Bach)<br />
(Bist du bei mir)<br />
‘If you are near’ 2:54 [p. 53]<br />
Alastair Young harpsichord • Susanne Beer cello<br />
TT 75:01<br />
15<br />
Johann Strauss II (1825–1899)<br />
from Die Fledermaus (The Bat)<br />
Orlofsky’s Aria (Chacun à son goût)<br />
‘Three score and ten’ 2:46 [p. 51]<br />
Diana Montague mezzo-soprano<br />
Geoffrey Mitchell Choir<br />
London Philharmonic Orchestra<br />
Peter Schoeman leader<br />
Walter Weller<br />
6<br />
7
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 8<br />
The term Zwischenfach (between types) is used<br />
in Germany and elsewhere graphically to<br />
describe the kind of voice possessed by Diana<br />
Montague. For voices such as hers the<br />
possibilities are almost limitless as this varied<br />
and eclectic recital confirms. She possesses a<br />
high mezzo able, as was that of a distant<br />
nineteenth-century predecessor, Pauline<br />
Viardot, and others since, to encompass roles<br />
intended for a normal mezzo, but also many<br />
others usually the province of sopranos. These<br />
possibilities extend right from roles in Baroque<br />
opera to those in operetta – as this disc vividly<br />
and satisfactorily illustrates, as does the progress<br />
of her career.<br />
As was the case in the first volume of arias she<br />
recorded for <strong>Chandos</strong> (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010), Montague<br />
is also a most convincing advocate of opera in<br />
English. She deploys her trim, appealing voice to<br />
make the most of a text in the vernacular,<br />
inflecting every word and phrase with a specific<br />
meaning. She also has the inestimable advantage<br />
of being born with and developed a timbre that<br />
palpitates with the music in hand. That gives<br />
everything she sings a peculiarly eloquent or,<br />
where appropriate, witty accent.<br />
Great Operatic Arias<br />
For much of this recital she displays her<br />
exceptional gifts as an interpreter of Handel,<br />
Gluck and Mozart. Their operas cover the<br />
period when at first the castrato was in the<br />
ascendant, taking many of the leading male<br />
roles in Handel’s operas. Later when that<br />
artificially created breed was being phased out<br />
it became common for the roles of young men<br />
to be taken by women, again with voices of<br />
Montague’s type. It is a tradition that carried<br />
on into the nineteenth and twentieth<br />
centuries, eg Octavian and the Composer in<br />
respectively Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier<br />
and Ariadne on Naxos, and is demonstrated in<br />
this recital by Orlofsky in the other Strauss’s<br />
Die Fledermaus and by Siébel in Faust.<br />
The earliest among the choices here are two<br />
well-known and affecting arias from Handel’s<br />
operas, both originally sung by castratos.<br />
‘Verdant pastures’ (track<br />
5<br />
) is sung in Alcina,<br />
by Ruggiero, originally taken by the castrato<br />
Carestini. He has been enchanted by the<br />
sorceress Alcina and fallen in love with her.<br />
The spell is removed in Act II, but Ruggiero is<br />
rather reluctant to leave the glorious pastures<br />
which he hymns in this justly famous aria.<br />
Its seemingly simple melody clothes his<br />
ambivalent feelings.<br />
It was often Handel’s custom to open an<br />
opera with a reflective arioso (vide ‘Ombra mai<br />
fu’ in Xerxes). The same happens in Atalanta,<br />
where the hero Meleagro sings the simple,<br />
elegiac ‘Noble forests’ (track<br />
6<br />
), in which he<br />
greets the beauties of nature. As a pendant to<br />
these Handel pieces, we have the simple,<br />
sincere song ‘If you are near’ (track<br />
18<br />
), once<br />
thought to be by J.S. Bach, now assigned to his<br />
contemporary Stölzel. Whoever may be the<br />
composer, the piece is a delight.<br />
Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris is perhaps the<br />
most telling and dramatically consistent operas<br />
of his mature period, the last and greatest of the<br />
serious works he wrote for Paris. Its eponymous<br />
heroine is a truly tragic figure whose fate is<br />
expressed – such is Gluck’s genius – at once<br />
with classical restraint and emotional depth.<br />
Diana Montague has already recorded the opera<br />
complete in French under John Eliot Gardiner.<br />
Here, singing in her native tongue, she is, if<br />
possible, even more moving and urgent in her<br />
portrayal of the daughter of Agamemnon, now<br />
a Priestess of Diana on the island of Tauris.<br />
Her Act II lament, ‘No hope remains in my<br />
affliction’ (track<br />
3<br />
), is an outpouring of despair<br />
and loneliness with a melodic cut and harmonic<br />
progression unique to Gluck. In the later<br />
‘I implore thee and tremble’ (track<br />
4<br />
) from<br />
Act IV she deplores her fate at being forced to<br />
make a blood sacrifice in tones that capture in a<br />
peculiarly Gluckian way the horror of her<br />
situation. In both pieces Gluck evinces deep<br />
compassion for his heroine, an emotion<br />
reflected in Montague’s singing of them.<br />
In Mozart’s time, the castrato was<br />
(mercifully) a dying breed, although the<br />
composer still cast roles in his opera seria for<br />
that voice (see below). In any case, it would<br />
have seemed odd to cast the priapic youth<br />
Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro) with<br />
such a singer. Instead, Mozart chose a soprano,<br />
but the lighter singers in that category can<br />
sound too girlish. Montague’s high mezzo, on<br />
the other hand, is entirely appropriate for the<br />
palpitating youth, whose realisation of his<br />
burgeoning manhood is perfectly encapsulated<br />
in his Act I aria, ‘Is it pain, is it pleasure that<br />
fills me’ (track<br />
1<br />
). Mozart here exploits the<br />
ability of the middle range of the voice to<br />
project the warmth and immediacy of<br />
Cherubino’s feelings. This was one of<br />
Montague’s earliest roles in her successful<br />
career at Covent Garden. She looked and sang<br />
the role to near-perfection, so this souvenir of<br />
that performance is most welcome.<br />
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Although Dorabella in Così fan tutte is a<br />
very different kind of character from<br />
Cherubino, the voice range for the two is<br />
much the same and, in the same way, it has<br />
been cast over the years with both sopranos<br />
and mezzos. In any case in Mozart’s times,<br />
these stark differences between types hardly<br />
existed. Once again, Montague’s voice seems<br />
the ideal answer, poised between the two.<br />
We hear her first in the mock-heroics of<br />
‘Torture and agony’ (track<br />
8<br />
) in which<br />
Mozart makes one of his impressionable<br />
heroines rail against the fate that has<br />
supposedly taken her loved one from her.<br />
Indeed this outburst of seemingly sincere<br />
passion is almost Gluckian in its force.<br />
Next we catch Dorabella, with her sister<br />
Fiordiligi, singing the matchless trio of farewell<br />
in the company of cynical old Don Alfonso,<br />
‘Blow gently, you breezes’ (track<br />
7<br />
). As is<br />
Mozart’s way, especially in this work, he makes<br />
a moment of repose and thought timelessly<br />
beautiful, even though a character, such as<br />
Alfonso here, may be having very different<br />
thoughts.<br />
In Act II, Fiordiligi, the more steadfast of<br />
the sisters, and Dorabella – having decided to<br />
have a fling with their ‘new’ men – sing a<br />
delightful duet in which each makes her<br />
choice, ‘I will take the handsome, dark one’<br />
(track<br />
9<br />
). Its intertwining of the two voices is<br />
truly sisterly in character.<br />
In the duet, ‘My heart here I give you’<br />
(track<br />
12<br />
), as in the trio above, Dorabella’s<br />
fresh love is genuinely expressed, yet we also<br />
feel that Guglielmo, in spite of himself, is<br />
falling in love with the ‘wrong’ woman, the<br />
music is so seductively beguiling. That is<br />
Mozart’s genius. Alan Opie, who has sung<br />
both Guglielmo and Alfonso for English<br />
National Opera, easily encompasses both roles<br />
in these excerpts and Orla Boylan has just the<br />
right voice for Fiordiligi.<br />
In his final opera, The Clemency of Titus,<br />
Mozart again wrote, as I have already inferred,<br />
a role for a castrato, the part of Sextus, where<br />
the vulnerable young man is entirely in thrall<br />
to Vitellia. Peaked that Emperor Titus has not<br />
chosen her as his Empress, she persuades<br />
Sextus to go and murder his best friend, Titus.<br />
All Sextus’s contrary feelings are expounded in<br />
the extended, two-part aria, ‘Send me, but, my<br />
beloved, never reject me in anger’ (track<br />
2<br />
).<br />
In it Mozart gives us the character of the<br />
upright, perplexed young man. Again this is<br />
a role that can be distributed to either a<br />
soprano or mezzo, its tessitura lying between<br />
the two.<br />
In addition to his operas, Mozart wrote<br />
extensively for the solo voice in arias with<br />
orchestra of which we have two excellent<br />
examples here. They are particularly<br />
appropriate to Montague as both were written<br />
for Louise Villeneuve, the first Dorabella, for<br />
insertion in Vicente Martin’s Il burbero di buon<br />
cuore, an opera to a text by Da Ponte, based<br />
on a Goldoni play. They stand side by side in<br />
the Köchel catalogue as K. 582 and 583. The<br />
latter and much more substantial is ‘Banished,<br />
rejected’ (track<br />
10<br />
), written in Mozart’s most<br />
high-flown, deeply felt manner. The other,<br />
‘Who knows what feeling’ (track<br />
11<br />
), is a<br />
slight but charming piece.<br />
A hundred years or so later we find<br />
ourselves in an entirely different world, that of<br />
native Russian opera as represented by<br />
Borodin’s Prince Igor. In the opening scene of<br />
Act II, a group of Polovtsian maidens sings a<br />
langourous song, ‘Tender flower, starved of<br />
water’ (track<br />
14<br />
), before their mistress,<br />
Konchakovna, daughter of Khan Konchak, the<br />
benevolent ruler who has taken Igor prisoner.<br />
The music, with its quasi-Oriental colour and<br />
feeling, provides a moment of repose in a tense<br />
drama. Borodin was skilled in marrying what<br />
he had learnt from Western music with more<br />
local influences. Faust, a work from the same<br />
era, is much more urbane and Western in its<br />
musical character, as is shown in Siébel’s<br />
charming song ‘When happy days’ (track<br />
16<br />
).<br />
Faust’s rival for Marguerite’s hand, he is<br />
doomed to failure.<br />
Meanwhile in Vienna much had changed in<br />
terms of ethos and musical character since<br />
Mozart’s time. Operetta was now all the rage.<br />
In his highly successful 1874 operetta, Die<br />
Fledermaus (The Bat), Johann Strauss was<br />
not-so-gently mocking the bourgeois society of<br />
the day in the Austrian capital. At the heart of<br />
the piece is the party given at the palace of<br />
Prince Orlofsky, a blasé youth who is bored<br />
with life and seeking to be amused. In his<br />
couplets near the start of Act II he declares his<br />
philosophy -- he wants everyone to drink with<br />
him and entertain him (‘Chacun à son goût’,<br />
track<br />
15<br />
). Strauss caught his character<br />
perfectly in a song that marries nonchalance<br />
and cynicism with a degree of gaucherie.<br />
Written for a mezzo it isn’t easy to sing. Much<br />
of it lies in a low register, but it also has<br />
repeated A flats. The kind of voice possessed<br />
by Montague is ideal for overcoming its<br />
difficulties.<br />
Richard Heuberger proved one of Strauss’s<br />
more successful followers with his Opera Ball<br />
first given in Vienna in 1898. Far and away<br />
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<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 12<br />
its most successful number is ‘In a cosy<br />
chambre séparée’, (track<br />
13<br />
), where the lovers<br />
Henri and Hortense meet for the first time in<br />
a theatre. He leads her into the chambre<br />
séparée, one of the theatre’s boxes set aside<br />
as a private room. He woos her in one of<br />
the most delectably seductive songs in all<br />
operetta.<br />
Even more successful in 1905 was Lehár’s<br />
Merry Widow. Its lyrical high point is the<br />
duet in Act II between the French aristocrat<br />
Camille de Rosillon and Valencienne, who is<br />
in fact wife of Baron Mirko, the Pontevedrin<br />
envoy in Paris. The illicit affair culminates in<br />
this piece, ‘Just as the sun awakens’ (track<br />
17<br />
).<br />
Valencienne begs Camille to desist from his<br />
ardent advances, but finally, to the kind of<br />
perfumed, erotically suggestive music of<br />
which the composer was pastmaster (‘See<br />
where the summer-house awaits’), she agrees<br />
to one last kiss in the summerhouse, which<br />
leads to all sorts of plot complications.<br />
Valencienne is another of those roles that lies<br />
between voice types, having been taken by<br />
both sopranos and high mezzos. Montague is<br />
here partnered by Bruce Ford’s elegantly<br />
persuasive tenor.<br />
© 2003 Alan Blyth<br />
Diana Montague<br />
was born in<br />
Winchester and<br />
studied at the<br />
Royal Northern<br />
College of Music.<br />
Since her debut as<br />
Zerlina with<br />
Glyndebourne<br />
Touring Opera<br />
she has appeared<br />
in venues such as<br />
the Royal Opera<br />
House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan<br />
Opera in New York, the Théâtre de la<br />
Monnaie in Brussels, the Opéra national de<br />
Paris-Bastille, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires<br />
and the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals.<br />
Her repertoire includes the major roles for<br />
mezzo-soprano in operas by Mozart, Gluck,<br />
Strauss, Rossini, Bellini and Berlioz, and her<br />
frequent concert engagements include<br />
performances under Sir Georg Solti, James<br />
Levine, Riccardo Muti, Sir John Eliot<br />
Gardiner, Seiji Ozawa, Jeffrey Tate and Sir<br />
Andrew Davis. Engagements have included<br />
Iphigénie en Tauride in Buenos Aires, Madrid<br />
and with Welsh National Opera; Le Comte Ory<br />
in Lausanne, Rome and Glyndebourne;<br />
Andromaca in Rossini’s Ermione at<br />
Glyndebourne; Proserpina in Monteverdi’s<br />
Orfeo in Amsterdam; Il ritorno d’Ulisse in<br />
patria in Amsterdam and Sydney; Sesto in<br />
Madrid; the Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos) for<br />
Scottish Opera and in Lisbon; Meg Page<br />
(Falstaff ) for the reopening of the Royal Opera<br />
House Covent Garden; Octavian (Der<br />
Rosenkavalier) in Naples, Bilbao and at The<br />
Teatro Real in Madrid, and Marguerite in<br />
Vienna.<br />
Diana Montague’s many recordings include<br />
Monteverdi’s Orfeo, I Capuleti e i Montecchi,<br />
Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, Iphigénie en<br />
Tauride, for Opera Rara Rosmonda<br />
d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di Granata and Il crociato<br />
in Egitto, and, for <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation, Cavalleria rusticana, Octavian in<br />
Der Rosenkavalier (highlights), Faust, and a<br />
previous disc of Great Operatic Arias<br />
(<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010).<br />
Walter Weller was Music Director and<br />
Principal Conductor of the Royal Scottish<br />
National Orchestra between January 1992 and<br />
July 1997 and is now Conductor Emeritus.<br />
He also holds the title of Artistic Advisor and<br />
Principal Guest Conductor of the National<br />
Orchestra of Spain. He was Artistic Director<br />
of the Allgemeine<br />
Musikgesellschaft<br />
Basel, General Music<br />
Director of the Basel<br />
Theatre and Chief<br />
Conductor of the<br />
Basel Symphony<br />
Orchestra from<br />
September 1994<br />
until July 1997,<br />
Principal Conductor<br />
of the Royal<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra from 1980 to 1985,<br />
and Music Director and Artistic Director to<br />
the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic from 1977<br />
to 1980. At the age of twenty-one he was<br />
appointed leader of the Vienna Philharmonic<br />
Orchestra, an orchestra he went on to<br />
conduct.<br />
He is regularly invited as guest conductor<br />
by major orchestras throughout the world and<br />
has worked with the London Symphony<br />
Orchestra, London Philharmonic,<br />
Philharmonia Orchestra, Dresden<br />
Staatskapelle, RSO Berlin, Leipzig<br />
Gewandhaus, Philharmonie Hamburg, Israel<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris,<br />
Orchestre national de France, Orchestra del<br />
Teatro alla Scala Milan, Royal Concertgebouw<br />
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Orchestra, Radio Philharmonic Orchestra<br />
Holland, Tonhalle Zürich, Orchestre de la<br />
Suisse Romande, Swedish Radio, Stockholm<br />
Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic and<br />
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestras. In North<br />
America, he has worked with such orchestras<br />
as the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota,<br />
San Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit,<br />
Cincinnati and Toronto Symphony<br />
Orchestras, and the National Arts Centre<br />
Orchestra, Ottawa.<br />
Operatic engagements have included Der<br />
fliegende Holländer at La Scala, Ariadne on<br />
Naxos and The Flying Dutchman for English<br />
National Opera, Der Freischütz at Teatro<br />
Comunale, Bologna, Prince Igor for Berlin<br />
Staatskapelle, and Fidelio and Der Rosenkavalier<br />
for Scottish Opera. He has also undertaken<br />
concert performances at the Tivoli Festival. In<br />
his opening season with Basel, he conducted a<br />
highly successful production of Die Frau ohne<br />
Schatten. Other operas in concert have<br />
included Fidelio with the City of Birmingham<br />
Symphony Orchestra, Elektra and Der fliegende<br />
Holländer with the Royal Scottish National<br />
Orchestra, and Eugene Onegin in Copenhagen.<br />
Recordings include cycles of the Prokofiev<br />
and Rachmaninov Symphonies, Bartók’s<br />
Concerto for Orchestra, Janáček’s Lachian<br />
Dances, Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1<br />
Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, for <strong>Chandos</strong> the<br />
Beethoven Symphonies and piano concertos<br />
(with John Lill) and the Mendelssohn<br />
symphonies, and for <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation a disc of Viennese Operetta with<br />
Bruce Ford.<br />
Javier del Real<br />
Diana Montague as Octavian<br />
in the Teatro Real production<br />
of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier<br />
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Clive Barda<br />
Diana Montague (right) as<br />
Dorabella in San Francisco Opera’s<br />
production of Mozart’s<br />
Così fan tutte<br />
Diana Montague as Cherubino<br />
in The Royal Opera’s<br />
production of Mozart’s The<br />
Marriage of Figaro
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 18<br />
Bill Cooper/PMF<br />
SIR PETER MOORES, CBE, DL<br />
Sir Peter Moores was born in Lancashire and educated at Eton College<br />
and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied Italian and German. He<br />
had a ‘gap year’ at Glyndebourne working as a behind-the-scenes<br />
administrator before going to Oxford, then studied for three years at the<br />
Vienna Academy of Music, where he produced the Austrian premiere of<br />
Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and was a production assistant<br />
with the Vienna State Opera working as assistant producer of<br />
performances by Viennese artists at the San Carlo Opera House, Naples,<br />
at the Geneva Festival and at the Rome Opera.<br />
In 1957 he joined his father’s business, Littlewoods, becoming<br />
Vice-Chairman in 1976, Chairman from 1977 to 1980 and remaining a<br />
director until 1993. His public appointments include from 1981 to 1983 Governor of the BBC,<br />
Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1978 to 1985 and from 1988 to 1992 a Director of Scottish<br />
Opera. He received the Gold Medal of the Italian Republic in 1974, an Honorary MA from<br />
Christ Church, Oxford in 1975, and was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Northern<br />
College of Music in 1985. In 1992 he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of Lancashire by<br />
HM Queen Elizabeth II. He was appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1991<br />
and received a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List for 2003 in recognition of his<br />
charitable services to the arts.<br />
PETER MOORES FOUNDATION<br />
Peter Moores’ philanthropic work began with his passion for opera: in his twenties he identified<br />
and helped a number of young artists in the crucial, early stages of their careers, several of whom<br />
– Dame Joan Sutherland, Sir Colin Davis and the late Sir Geraint Evans amongst them – became<br />
world-famous. He set up his eponymous Foundation in 1964 when he was thirty-two, in order to<br />
develop his charitable aims, not only in music and the visual arts, but also in education, health,<br />
youth, social and environmental projects. To date, because of his initiatives and life-long<br />
commitment to these causes, he has disbursed more than £85 million of his own money through<br />
the Foundation and the Peter Moores Charitable Trust – ‘to get things done and to open doors’.<br />
Projects to help the young have ranged from a scheme to encourage young Afro-Caribbeans to<br />
stay on at school to the endowment of a Faculty Directorship and Chair of Management Studies at<br />
Oxford University (providing the lead donation in 1991 for the new School of Management<br />
Studies). In 1994 a permanent Transatlantic Slave Trade Gallery, initiated by Peter Moores, opened<br />
at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, with the aim of fostering discussion about the heritage and<br />
true history of the slave trade. Substantial help was given to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic<br />
Development Trust, whilst through annual PMF Scholarships established in 1971 well over two<br />
hundred young singers have received practical support at the outset of their careers, enabling a<br />
significant number to become international opera stars.<br />
In 1993 the Foundation acquired Compton Verney, an eighteenth-century mansion, and<br />
established the Compton Verney House Trust, an independent charity which it funded in order to<br />
transform the mansion into an art gallery designed especially to encourage newcomers to the visual<br />
arts. Alongside major international touring exhibitions, it will house permanent collections of<br />
North European art, Neapolitan paintings and one of the finest collections of archaic oriental<br />
bronzes in the UK, as well as a British Portrait Collection and a British Folk Art Collection. The<br />
gallery is scheduled to open in Spring 2004.<br />
Opera has given the Foundation its most public ‘face’. Since Peter Moores initiated the live<br />
recording of the ‘Goodall Ring’ at the London Coliseum in the 1970s, the Foundation has enabled<br />
some eighty recordings to be produced: <strong>Chandos</strong> Records’ Opera in English series – ‘Opera that<br />
speaks your language’ – is now the largest recorded collection of operas sung in English whilst<br />
Opera Rara’s recordings of rare bel canto operas have opened up an immensely rich repertory<br />
previously only accessible to scholars. In live performance, the Foundation has encouraged the<br />
creation of new work and schemes to attract new audiences, financing the publication of scores<br />
and enabling rarely heard works to be staged by British opera companies and festivals.<br />
18 19
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 20<br />
Der Begriff Zwischenfach bezieht sich auf<br />
Stimmen wie die der englischen Sängerin<br />
Diana Montague. Dass Organen dieser Art<br />
beinahe keine Grenzen gesetzt sind, beweist<br />
das vorliegende abwechslungsreiche Recital.<br />
Diana Montague ist eine hohe<br />
Mezzosopranistin, die, wie ihre Vorgängerin<br />
Pauline Viardot im 19. Jahrhundert und<br />
andere Sängerinnen, nicht nur die Rollen des<br />
üblichen Mezzofachs beherrscht, sondern auch<br />
viele Partien singt, die eigentlich in den<br />
Sopranbereich fallen. Dabei handelt es sich<br />
um ein Repertoire, das sich von der<br />
Barockoper bis zur Operette erstreckt; diese<br />
CD sowie Diana Montagues Karriere<br />
gewähren einen lebhaften, aufschlussreichen<br />
Überblick über das Fach.<br />
Wie in der ersten Kompilation der<br />
Opernarien, die sie für <strong>Chandos</strong> einspielte<br />
(<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010), ist Diana Montague eine<br />
hervorragende Verfechterin der Oper in ihrer<br />
Landessprache, d.h. auf Englisch. Die<br />
schlanke, ansprechende Stimme bringt den<br />
Text großartig zur Geltung und verleiht jedem<br />
Wort, jeder Phrase eine ganz besondere<br />
Bedeutung. Sie ist auch mit einem<br />
Große Opernarien<br />
angeborenen Timbre gesegnet, an dem sie<br />
gearbeitet hat, bis es mit der Musik atmet und<br />
allen Stücken, die sie singt, eine eigene<br />
Beredsamkeit und gegebenfalls humorvolle<br />
Ausdrucksweise verleiht.<br />
Den Löwenanteil dieses Recitals nehmen<br />
Arien von Händel, Mozart und Gluck ein –<br />
alles Komponisten, die der Sängerin besonders<br />
liegen. Ihre Opern spannen die Epoche des<br />
Aufstiegs und Untergangs der Kastraten.<br />
Zunächst übernahmen sie zahlreiche<br />
Hauptrollen in Händels Opern; als die<br />
künstliche Züchtung dieses “Fachs” allmählich<br />
abgeschafft wurde, entstanden viele<br />
Hosenrollen für Sängerinnen, also für<br />
Stimmen wie die der Montague. Diese<br />
Tradition wurde auch im 19. und 20.<br />
Jahrhundert aufrechterhalten, z.B. in den<br />
Richard Strauss-Partien des Octavian und des<br />
Komponisten in Der Rosenkavalier und<br />
Ariadne auf Naxos; in diesem Recital dient die<br />
Rolle des Orlowsky in Die Fledermaus, dem<br />
Meisterwerk des anderen Strauss, und des<br />
Siébel in Faust, als Beleg.<br />
Die ältesten Beispiele sind zwei<br />
wohlbekannte, ergreifende Arien aus Händel-<br />
Opern, die ursprünglich für Kastraten gesetzt<br />
waren. Die Rolle des Ruggiero in Alcina war<br />
für den Kastraten Carestini geschrieben. Die<br />
Zauberin Alcina hat ihn verhext und in ihm<br />
die Liebe erweckt. Im zweiten Akt ist er<br />
wieder bei Sinnen, verläßt aber nur ungern die<br />
herrliche Landschaft, die er in der berühmten<br />
Arie “Verdant pastures” (Band<br />
5<br />
) besingt. Die<br />
scheinbar einfache Melodie entspricht seinen<br />
zwiespältigen Gefühlen.<br />
Händel eröffnete seinen Opern häufig mit<br />
einem kontemplativen Arioso (z.B. “Ombra<br />
mai fu” in Xerxes). Das ist auch der Fall in<br />
Atalanta: der Held Meleager besingt mit<br />
dem schlichten, elegischen “Noble forests”<br />
(Band<br />
6<br />
) die Herrlichkeit der Natur. Als<br />
Gegenstück zu diesen Arien von Händel dient<br />
das ungekünstelte “If you are near” (Band<br />
18<br />
),<br />
das seinerzeit Johann Sebastian Bach<br />
zugeschrieben wurde, heute aber als das Werk<br />
seines Zeitgenossen Stölzel gilt. Wie dem auch<br />
sei, ist es bezaubernd.<br />
Iphigenia in Tauris ist vielleicht die<br />
dramaturgisch überzeugendste Oper aus<br />
Glucks Reifezeit; sie war sein letztes, größtes<br />
Werk für Paris. Die Titelheldin ist eine<br />
wahrhaft tragische Figur, in der Glucks<br />
genialer Satz klassische Beherrschung mit<br />
echter Gefühlstiefe paart. Diana Montague hat<br />
bereits eine Gesamtaufnahme in der<br />
Originalsprache unter John Eliot Gardiner<br />
eingespielt. In ihrer Muttersprache ist die<br />
Verkörperung der Tochter Agamemnons, eine<br />
Priesterin der Göttin Diana auf der Insel<br />
Tauris, womöglich noch eindringlicher und<br />
ergreifender. Die Verzweiflung und<br />
Verlassenheit ihrer Klage im zweiten Akt<br />
“No hope remains in my affliction”<br />
(Band<br />
3<br />
) enthält melodische Wendungen<br />
und harmonische Progressionen, wie man sie<br />
nur bei Gluck findet. Im vierten Akt beklagt<br />
sie das Geschick, das sie zwingt, ein<br />
furchtbares Blutopfer zu vollziehen: “I implore<br />
thee and tremble” (Band<br />
4<br />
); echt Glucksche<br />
Töne bringen das Grauen ihrer Zwangslage<br />
zur Geltung. Das warme Mitgefühl, das der<br />
Komponist für seine Heldin empfand, ist in<br />
beiden Stücken unverkennbar und Diana<br />
Montagues Interpretation trägt seinen<br />
Emotionen Rechnung.<br />
In Mozarts Zeit war das Geschlecht der<br />
Kastraten (gottlob) im Aussterben, obwohl der<br />
Komponist bei seinen Opere serie noch immer<br />
Partien für dieses Fach schrieb (siehe unten).<br />
Für den Schürzenjäger Cherubino in The<br />
Marriage of Figaro wäre ein Kastrat natürlich<br />
ganz falsch am Platz gewesen. Mozart<br />
entschied sich für die Stimmlage Sopran;<br />
20 21
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 22<br />
allerdings läuft ein leichtes Organ dabei<br />
Gefahr, zu mädchenhaft zu wirken. Hingegen<br />
ist der hohe Mezzo der Montague wie<br />
maßgeschneidert für diesen überschwänglichen<br />
Knaben an der Schwelle des Mannesalters, den<br />
die Arie im ersten Akt “Is it pain, is it pleasure<br />
that fills me” (Band<br />
1<br />
) so wunderbar<br />
beschreibt. Hier wertete Mozart die Mittellage<br />
aus, um hemmungslose Gefühlswärme<br />
auszudrücken. Cherubino war eine der ersten<br />
Partien, mit denen Diana Montague am<br />
Opernhaus Covent Garden ihre erfolgreiche<br />
Karriere anbahnte. Sie war schauspielerisch<br />
und stimmlich ideal, daher ist dieses<br />
Andenken an ihre Interpretation besonders<br />
glücklich gewählt.<br />
Obwohl Dorabella in Così fan tutte ein<br />
ganz anderes Naturell hat, liegt die Partie im<br />
gleichen Stimmumfang wie die des Cherubino<br />
und wird denn auch im Lauf der Jahre von<br />
Sopranistinnen wie Mezzosopranistinnen<br />
gesungen. Übrigens fielen zu Mozarts Zeit<br />
diese Unterschiede kaum ins Gewicht. Auch<br />
hier ist die Montague, die sich in beiden<br />
Lagen gleich wohlfühlt, die ideale Besetzung.<br />
Zunächst hören wir, wie sie ihre<br />
Verzweiflung mit übertriebenen Worten<br />
ausdrückt: “Torture and agony” (Band<br />
8<br />
).<br />
Eine der beiden leicht beeinflussbaren<br />
Schwestern beklagt das grausame Geschick,<br />
dass ihr angeblich den Geliebten entrissen hat.<br />
Dieser Ausbruch echter Leidenschaft ist so<br />
emphatisch, dass er geradezu an Gluck<br />
anklingt<br />
Die nächste Spur bringt Dorabella mit ihrer<br />
Schwester Fiordiligi und dem zynischen alten<br />
Don Alfonso im wunderbaren Abschiedsterzett<br />
“Blow gently, you breezes” (Band<br />
7<br />
). In<br />
diesem Werk gibt sich Mozarts Duktus<br />
herrlicher ruhender Punkte in der<br />
Erscheinungen Flucht besonders deutlich zu<br />
erkennen; freilich meint es eine Person,<br />
diesmal Alfonso, wohl nicht ganz ernst.<br />
Im zweiten Akt entschließen sich die etwas<br />
seriösere Fiordiligi und die leichtfertige<br />
Dorabella, mit den “neuen” Verehrern Kontakt<br />
aufzunehmen; sie singen ein entzückendes<br />
Duett, in dem sie über die beiden Männer<br />
disponieren: “I will take the handsome, dark<br />
one” (Band<br />
9<br />
). Die Stimmen verflechten sich<br />
auf echt schwesterliche Weise.<br />
Das Duett “My heart here I give you”<br />
(Band<br />
12<br />
) drückt Dorabellas neu erwachte<br />
Liebe ganz aufrichtig aus; indes ist die Musik<br />
so betörend, dass man sich des Eindrucks<br />
nicht erwehren kann, auch Guglielmo sei im<br />
Begriff, sich in das “falsche” Mädchen zu<br />
verlieben. Mozart war eben ein Genie. Alan<br />
Opie, der als Guglielmo sowie Alfonso an der<br />
English National Opera aufgetreten ist,<br />
beherrscht beide Partien mühelos, und Orla<br />
Boylan ist die ideale Fiordiligi.<br />
Wie schon erwähnt, schrieb auch Mozart<br />
für Kastraten. In seiner letzten Oper, der Seria<br />
The Clemency of Titus, handelt es sich um<br />
die Partie des Sextus, eines jungen,<br />
empfindsamen Römers, der Vitellia, der<br />
Tochter des enthronten Kaisers, hörig ist.<br />
Vitellia ist erbost, dass Kaiser Titus sie nicht zu<br />
seiner Gattin erwählt hat, und drängt Sextus,<br />
seinen besten Freund zu ermorden. Der<br />
unglückliche Sextus besingt all seine<br />
Gewissensqualen in der langen zweiteiligen<br />
Arie “Send me, but, my beloved, never reject<br />
me in anger” (Band<br />
2<br />
), in der Mozart den<br />
Charakter des rechtschaffenen, innerlich<br />
zerrissenen Jünglings wunderbar ausdrückt.<br />
Auch bei dieser Partie liegt die Tessitura<br />
zwischen Sopran und Mezzosopran und kann<br />
von beiden Stimmen interpretiert werden.<br />
Es folgen zwei Musterbeispiele der vielen<br />
Mozartarien für Solostimme mit Orchester. Sie<br />
sind Diana Montague wie auf den Leib<br />
geschrieben, denn sie entstanden für Louise<br />
Villeneuve, die erste Dorabella, als Einlagen in<br />
Vicente Martins Oper Il burbero di buon cuore<br />
nach einem Schauspiel von Goldoni, Libretto<br />
von Lorenzo da Ponte, KV 582 und KV 583<br />
im Köchelverzeichnis. KV 582, “Who knows<br />
what feeling” (Band<br />
11<br />
) ist entzückend, aber<br />
nicht besonders seriös; KV 583, “Banished,<br />
rejected” (Band<br />
10<br />
) ist in Mozarts<br />
überschwänglichstem, gefühlvollsten Stil<br />
geschrieben.<br />
Ein Jahrhundert später befinden wir uns in<br />
einer ganz anderen Welt, nämlich der<br />
russischen Oper mit Fürst Igor von Borodin.<br />
Den zweiten Akt eröffnet ein Chor Polowetzer<br />
Mädchen, die der Kontschakowna ein<br />
schmachtendes Lied vorsingen: “Tender<br />
flower, starved of water” (Band<br />
14<br />
). Fürst Igor<br />
ist der Gefangene ihres Vaters, des<br />
warmherzigen Khan Kontschak. Das quasiorientale<br />
Kolorit und Ambiente der Musik<br />
bietet im dramatischen Geschehen<br />
vorübergehend etws Entspannung. Borodin<br />
vermochte sehr geschickt die Musik des<br />
Westens mit lokalen Einflüssen zu verbinden.<br />
Viel urbaner und mehr nach<br />
westeuropäischem Geschmack ist Gounods<br />
Faust, eine Oper aus derselben Epoche, wie die<br />
reizende Arie des Siébel “When happy days”<br />
(Band<br />
16<br />
) beweist. Er liebt Margarete, kann<br />
sich aber nicht gegen Faust behaupten.<br />
Mittlerweile hatte in Wien seit Mozarts Zeit<br />
eine grundlegende Änderung im Zugang zur<br />
22 23
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 24<br />
Musik stattgefunden. Nun war die Operette<br />
die große Mode. Mit seinem Bombenerfolg<br />
des Jahres 1874, Die Fledermaus, machte sich<br />
Johann Strauß etwas maliziös über die<br />
damalige bürgerliche Gesellschaft der k. und k.<br />
Hauptstadt lustig. Mittelpunkt des<br />
Geschehens ist ein Fest im Palais des jungen,<br />
blasierten Prinzen Orlowsky; zu Beginn des<br />
zweiten Aktes verkündet er die Philosophie<br />
seines Lebens in einem Couplet “Chacun à<br />
son goût” (Band<br />
15<br />
). Dieses Lied, in dem<br />
Nonchalance und Zynismus mit einer<br />
gewissen Taktlosigkeit verbunden sind, fängt<br />
den Charakter des Prinzen großartig ein. Es ist<br />
für eine Mezzostimme gesetzt und folglich<br />
nicht einfach zu singen, denn es liegt zumeist<br />
recht tief, verlangt aber auch mehrmals das<br />
hohe As. Diana Montagues Stimme ist wie<br />
geschaffen, um diese Probleme zu überwinden.<br />
Mit seinem 1898 in Wien uraufgeführten<br />
Opernball erwies sich Richard Heuberger als<br />
einer der erfolgreicheren Nachkommen des<br />
Walzerkönigs. Bei weitem die populärste<br />
Nummer ist “In a cosy chambre séparée”<br />
(Band<br />
13<br />
). Henri und Hortense begegnen<br />
einander im Foyer der Pariser Oper und er<br />
lockt sie mit Hilfe eines verführerischkantablen<br />
Walzers in eine Loge, die für<br />
ungestörte Zusammenkünfte reserviert ist.<br />
Noch erfolgreicher war Lehárs Operette<br />
The Merry Widow, die 1905 zum ersten Mal<br />
über die Bühne ging. Der lyrische Höhepunkt<br />
ist das Duett im zweiten Akt. Der französische<br />
Aristokrat Camille de Rosillon ist in<br />
Valencienne, die Gattin des pontevedrinischen<br />
Gesandten in Paris, Baron Mirko Zeta,<br />
verliebt. Ihre Beziehung gipfelt in dem Stück<br />
“Just as the sun awakens” (Band<br />
17<br />
).<br />
Valencienne beschwört Camille, sie nicht<br />
weiter zu verfolgen, willigt aber schließlich zu<br />
einem letzten Kuss im Pavillon ein (“See where<br />
the summer-house awaits”). Keiner konnte wie<br />
Lehár so berückende, erotisch suggestive<br />
Musik komponieren. Auch Valencienne ist<br />
eine Zwischenfach-Partie, die der<br />
Sopranstimme sowie dem hohen Mezzo liegt.<br />
Diana Montagues Partner ist der elegante,<br />
eindringliche Tenor Bruce Ford.<br />
© 2003 Alan Blyth<br />
Übersetzung: Gery Bramall<br />
Diana Montague wurde in Winchester<br />
geboren und studierte am Royal Northern<br />
College of Music. Seit ihrem Debüt als Zerlina<br />
mit der Glyndebourne Touring Opera ist sie<br />
an vielen namhaften Opernhäusern – Royal<br />
Opera Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera in<br />
New York, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brüssel,<br />
Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, Teatro Colón<br />
in Buenos Aires – sowie bei den Bayreuther<br />
und Salzburger Festspielen aufgetreten.<br />
Ihr Repertoire umfasst die wichtigen Rollen<br />
für Mezzosopran in Opern von Mozart, Gluck,<br />
Strauss, Rossini, Bellini und Berlioz, und im<br />
Rahmen regelmäßiger Konzertverpflichtungen<br />
ist sie unter der Leitung von Sir Georg Solti,<br />
James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Sir John Eliot<br />
Gardiner, Seiji Ozawa, Jeffrey Tate und<br />
Sir Andrew Davis aufgetreten. Ihre<br />
Opernengagements haben sie in alle Welt<br />
geführt: Iphigénie en Tauride in Buenos Aires,<br />
Madrid und an der Welsh National Opera;<br />
Le Comte Ory in Lausanne, Rom und<br />
Glyndebourne; Andromaca in Rossinis Ermione<br />
in Glyndebourne; Proserpina in Monteverdis<br />
Orfeo in Amsterdam; Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria<br />
in Amsterdam und Sydney; Sesto in Madrid;<br />
Der Komponist (Ariadne auf Naxos) an der<br />
Scottish Opera und in Lissabon; Meg Page<br />
(Falstaff ) zur Wiedereröffnung der Royal Opera<br />
Covent Garden; Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) in<br />
Neapel, Bilbao und am Teatro Real in Madrid;<br />
sowie Marguerite (Faust) in Wien.<br />
Diana Montague hat zahlreiche<br />
Schallplatten aufgenommen, u.a. Monteverdis<br />
Orfeo, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma, Lucia<br />
di Lammermoor, Iphigénie en Tauride, für die<br />
Opera Rara Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di<br />
Granata und Il crociato in Egitto sowie für<br />
<strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores Foundation Cavalleria<br />
rusticana, Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier<br />
(Auszüge), Faust und eine frühere Sammlung<br />
großer Opernarien (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010).<br />
Walter Weller war von Januar 1992 bis Juli<br />
1997 Musikdirektor und Chefdirigent des<br />
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, von dem er<br />
zum “Conductor Emeritus” ernannt wurde.<br />
Außerdem ist er Künstlerischer Berater und<br />
Chefgastdirigent des Orquesta Nacional de<br />
España. Er war bei der Allgemeinen<br />
Musikgesellschaft Basel Generalmusikdirektor<br />
an der Oper und Musikddirektor des<br />
Orchesters (September 1994 bis Juli 1997),<br />
Chefdirigent des Royal Philharmonic Orchestra<br />
(1980–1985) sowie Musikdirektor und<br />
Künstlerischer Leiter beim Royal Liverpool<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra (1977–1980). Bereits<br />
mit 21 Jahren wurde er zum 1. Konzertmeister<br />
der Wiener Philharmoniker ernannt, die er<br />
später auch dirigierte.<br />
Walter Weller tritt regelmäßig als<br />
Gastdirigent mit den großen Orchestern der<br />
Welt auf und hat zahlreiche Orchester geleitet:<br />
London Symphony Orchestra, London<br />
24 25
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 26<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia<br />
Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, RSO Berlin,<br />
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Philharmonie<br />
Hamburg, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,<br />
Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de<br />
France, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala Milan,<br />
Concertgebouw Orkest, Radio Filharmonisch<br />
Orkest, Tonhalle Zürich, Orchestre de la<br />
Suisse Romande, Sveriges Radios<br />
Symfoniorkester, Kungliga<br />
Filharmonikerna, Stockholm sowie die<br />
Philharmoniker von Oslo und von Helsinki.<br />
In Nordamerika hat er mit Orchestern wie den<br />
New York Philharmonikern, den<br />
Sinfonieorchestern von Minnesota, San<br />
Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit,<br />
Cincinnati und Toronto sowie dem National<br />
Arts Centre Orchestra von Ottawa gearbeitet.<br />
Zu seinen Opernverpflichtungen gehörten<br />
Der fliegende Holländer (Scala), Ariadne on<br />
Naxos und The Flying Dutchman (English<br />
National Opera), Der Freischütz (Teatro<br />
Comunale, Bologna), Prince Igor (Berliner<br />
Staatskapelle) sowie Fidelio und Der<br />
Rosenkavalier (Scottish Opera). Außerdem hat<br />
er Konzertaufführungen beim Tivoli Festival<br />
geleitet. In seiner Eröffnungssaison in Basel<br />
dirigierte er eine hocherfolgreiche Inszenierung<br />
von Die Frau ohne Schatten. Andere<br />
konzertante Opernaufführungen waren Fidelio<br />
mit dem City of Birmingham Symphony<br />
Orchestra, Elektra und Der fliegende Holländer<br />
mit dem Royal Scottish National Orchestra<br />
sowie Eugene Onegin in Kopenhagen.<br />
Neben Gesamtaufnahmen der Sinfonien von<br />
Prokofjew und Rachmaninow hat Walter Weller<br />
Bartóks Konzert für Orchester, die Lachischen<br />
Tänze von Janáček’s, Bruckners Sinfonie Nr. 4<br />
und für <strong>Chandos</strong> die zehn Sinfonien<br />
Beethovens und dessen Klavierkonzerte (mit<br />
John Lill) sowie die Mendelssohn-Sinfonien<br />
eingespielt. Für <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation hat er eine CD Großen<br />
Operettenarien mit Bruce Ford dirigiert.<br />
Guy Gravett<br />
Diana Montague as Sesto<br />
in Glyndebourne Festival<br />
Opera’s production of Mozart’s<br />
The Clemency of Titus<br />
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Le terme Zwischenfach (types intermédiaires)<br />
est utilisé en Allemagne et ailleurs, dans la<br />
littérature, pour décrire le type de voix que<br />
possède Diana Montague. Les possibilités pour<br />
les voix comme la sienne sont presque<br />
illimitées, et le récital varié, éclectique<br />
enregistré ici le confirme. Sa voix de mezzo<br />
aiguë lui permet, comme Pauline Viardot<br />
longtemps avant elle au dix-neuvième siècle, et<br />
d’autres depuis, d’interpréter des rôles destinés<br />
à des mezzos ordinaires et bien d’autres encore<br />
revenant habituellement aux sopranos.<br />
L’éventail est large et s’étend de l’opéra baroque<br />
à l’opérette – comme l’illustrent brillamment ce<br />
disque ainsi que l’évolution de sa carrière.<br />
Comme dans le premier volume d’arias<br />
qu’elle enregistra pour <strong>Chandos</strong> (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010),<br />
Diana Montague défend aussi, de manière très<br />
convaincante, la cause de l’opéra chanté en<br />
anglais. Elle déploie sa voix délicate et plaisante<br />
pour tirer le meilleur parti d’un texte dans la<br />
langue vernaculaire, donnant à chaque terme et<br />
à chaque phrase une inflexion d’une expressivité<br />
spécifique. Elle a aussi l’inestimable avantage de<br />
posséder naturellement, mais d’avoir développé<br />
aussi, un timbre qui palpite avec la musique<br />
Grands airs d’opéra<br />
qu’elle interprète. Ceci pare tout ce qu’elle<br />
chante d’une éloquence particulière, ou d’esprit<br />
là où il sied.<br />
Dans une importante partie de ce récital,<br />
Diana Montague déploie ses dons<br />
exceptionnels comme interprète de Haendel,<br />
Gluck et Mozart. Leurs opéras couvrent<br />
l’époque de la vogue du castrat. Plus tard,<br />
quand ce type de voix créé artificiellement fut<br />
progressivement écarté, des femmes, avec des<br />
voix du type de celle de Diana Montague<br />
encore, reprirent souvent les rôles de ces jeunes<br />
chanteurs. Cette tradition se poursuivit aux<br />
dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles. Citons à<br />
titre d’exemple, les rôles d’Octavian et du<br />
Compositeur, respectivement dans Der<br />
Rosenkavalier et Ariadne auf Naxos de Richard<br />
Strauss. Dans ce récital, ceci est illustré par<br />
Orlofsky dans Die Fledermaus de Johann<br />
Strauss et par Siébel dans Faust de Gounod.<br />
Les extraits les plus anciens repris sur ce<br />
disque sont deux arias célèbres et émouvants de<br />
Haendel, chantés tous deux par des castrats.<br />
“Verdant pastures” (plage<br />
5<br />
) dans Alcina est<br />
chanté par Ruggiero et fut interprété à l’origine<br />
par le castrat Carestini. Ruggiero a été ensorcelé<br />
par la magicienne Alcina et est tombé amoureux<br />
d’elle. Il est libéré de ce sortilège dans l’Acte II,<br />
mais se montre assez réticent à l’idée de quitter<br />
les merveilleux pâturages qu’il chante dans cet<br />
aria à juste titre célèbre. Sa mélodie d’apparence<br />
simple voile ses sentiments ambivalents.<br />
Haendel avait souvent pour habitude de<br />
débuter un opéra par un arioso (voir “Ombra<br />
mai fu” dans Xerxes). C’est le cas dans Atalanta<br />
où le héros Meleagro chante cet air élégiaque et<br />
tout en simplicité “Noble forests” (plage<br />
6<br />
) dans<br />
lequel il célèbre la magnificence de la nature.<br />
Le pendant de ces pièces de Haendel dans cet<br />
enregistrement est la mélodie candide, sincère,<br />
“If you are near” (plage<br />
18<br />
) qui fut à une certaine<br />
époque attribuée à J.S. Bach et qui l’est<br />
maintenant à son contemporain Stölzel. Qui que<br />
soit le compositeur, la pièce est un délice.<br />
Iphigenia in Tauris de Gluck est peut-être<br />
l’opéra le plus éloquent et explicite du point de<br />
vue dramatique de sa période de maturité. C’est<br />
la dernière et la plus grandiose des œuvres<br />
sérieuses écrite par le compositeur pour Paris.<br />
Son héroïne éponyme est une figure<br />
véritablement tragique dont le destin est exprimé<br />
d’emblée – tel est le génie de Gluck – avec une<br />
sobriété classique et une émotion profonde.<br />
Diana Montague a déjà enregistré l’opéra<br />
complet en français avec John Eliot Gardiner. Ici,<br />
elle chante dans sa langue maternelle et elle est,<br />
s’il est possible, plus émouvante et expressive<br />
encore dans l’interprétation de son rôle, la fille<br />
d’Agamemnon, prêtresse de Diane sur l’île de<br />
Tauride. Dans la lamentation de l’Acte II “No<br />
hope remains in my affliction” (plage<br />
3<br />
), elle<br />
épanche son désespoir et son esseulement dans<br />
un genre unique à Gluck, à la fois par les<br />
contours mélodiques et la progression<br />
harmonique. Plus tard, dans l’Acte IV, elle<br />
déplore dans “I implore thee and tremble”<br />
(plage<br />
4<br />
) que son destin l’oblige à un sacrifice<br />
sanglant et exprime en un style spécifiquement<br />
gluckien l’horreur de la situation. Dans les deux<br />
airs, Gluck témoigne d’une profonde compassion<br />
pour son héroïne, des sentiments que reflètent<br />
l’interprétation de Diana Montague.<br />
A l’époque de Mozart, le castrat était,<br />
heureusement, un type de voix appelé à<br />
disparaître, bien que le compositeur ait encore<br />
écrit des rôles pour celui-ci (voir ci-dessous)<br />
dans son opera seria. De toute manière, il<br />
aurait paru étrange de faire appel à un castrat<br />
pour chanter le rôle du juvénile Cherubino<br />
(The Marriage of Figaro). Mozart porta plutôt<br />
son choix sur une soprano, mais les voix<br />
légères dans ce registre peuvent sembler trop<br />
féminines. Le mezzo aigu de Diana Montague,<br />
par contre, convient tout à fait pour restituer<br />
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la jeunesse palpitante de Cherubino qui prend<br />
conscience de sa virilité naissante, ce que<br />
résume parfaitement l’aria de l’Acte I “Is it<br />
pain, is it pleasure that fills me” (plage<br />
1<br />
). Ici,<br />
Mozart exploite les possibilités qu’offre le<br />
registre intermédiaire de la voix pour diffuser la<br />
chaleur et l’acuité des sentiments de<br />
Cherubino. Ce fut l’un des premiers rôles de la<br />
glorieuse carrière de Diana Montague à Covent<br />
Garden. Elle incarnait et chantait le rôle<br />
presque à la perfection, et ce souvenir de cette<br />
exécution est donc particulièrement bienvenu.<br />
Bien que Dorabella dans Così fan tutte soit<br />
un caractère très différent de Cherubino, le<br />
registre vocal des deux rôles est très semblable,<br />
et tous deux ont été interprétés au cours des ans<br />
par des sopranos et des mezzos. De toute<br />
manière, à l’époque de Mozart, les démarcations<br />
rigides entre les types de voix étaient pour ainsi<br />
dire inexistantes. Une fois encore, la voix de<br />
Diana Montague, à mi-chemin entre l’une et<br />
l’autre, semble être la réponse idéale.<br />
Nous l’entendons tout d’abord dans le<br />
burlesque “Torture and agony” (plage<br />
8<br />
) dans<br />
lequel une des vulnérables héroïnes de Mozart<br />
maudit le destin qui lui a soi-disant ravi son<br />
bien-aimé. Cette explosion de passion,<br />
apparemment sincère, évoque la manière de<br />
Gluck par sa force.<br />
Ensuite, nous entendons Dorabella et sa<br />
sœur Fiordiligi chanter l’incomparable trio<br />
d’adieu en compagnie du cynique vieillard<br />
Don Alfonso dans “Blow gently, you breezes”<br />
(plage<br />
7<br />
). Mozart, comme de coutume, mais<br />
dans cette oeuvre tout particulièrement,<br />
marque un moment de repos et de réflexion<br />
d’une beauté intemporelle, en dépit du fait<br />
qu’un personnage, tel Alfonso ici, puisse avoir<br />
des pensées très différentes.<br />
Dans l’Acte II, Fiordiligi, la plus résolue des<br />
deux sœurs, et Dorabella – ayant décidé de<br />
tenter leur chance avec leurs “nouveaux”<br />
hommes – chantent un merveilleux duo<br />
dans lequel chacune fait son choix, “I will<br />
take the handsome, dark one” (plage<br />
9<br />
).<br />
L’entrelacement de leurs deux voix est<br />
véritablement fraternel.<br />
Dans le duo “My heart here I give you”<br />
(plage<br />
12<br />
), tout comme dans le trio évoqué cidessus,<br />
l’amour naissant de Dorabella est<br />
exprimé dans toute son authenticité, mais<br />
nous sentons aussi que Guglielmo, malgré lui,<br />
est en train de tomber amoureux en se<br />
trompant de femme; la musique exprime<br />
l’équivoque avec une étonnante séduction.<br />
C’est le génie de Mozart. Alan Opie qui a<br />
interprété les rôles de Guglielmo et d’Alfonso<br />
pour le English National Opera maîtrise<br />
facilement les deux dans ces extraits et Orla<br />
Boylan a juste la voix qui convient pour<br />
Fiordiligi.<br />
Dans son dernier opéra, The Clemency of<br />
Titus, Mozart écrit, une fois encore, comme je<br />
l’ai noté précédemment, un rôle qu’il destine à<br />
un castrat, celui de Sextus, jeune homme<br />
vulnérable esclave de Vitellia. Désespérée car<br />
l’empereur Titus ne l’a pas choisie comme<br />
impératrice, elle persuade Sextus d’aller<br />
assassiner son meilleur ami, Titus. Toute la<br />
contradiction des sentiments de Sextus est<br />
exposée dans le long aria en deux parties “Send<br />
me, but, my beloved, never reject me in<br />
anger”) (plage<br />
2<br />
). Mozart y dépeint le<br />
caractère du jeune homme, honnête et<br />
perplexe. Une fois encore, il s’agit d’un rôle qui<br />
de par sa tessiture moyenne peut être interprété<br />
soit par une soprano, soit par une mezzo.<br />
En plus de ses opéras, Mozart a composé de<br />
nombreuses pièces pour voix solo qui sont des<br />
arias avec accompagnement orchestral; nous en<br />
avons deux excellents exemples ici. Ils<br />
conviennent particulièrement bien à Diana<br />
Montague, car tous deux furent écrits pour<br />
Louise Villeneuve, la première Dorabella, afin<br />
d’être insérés dans Il burbero di buon cuore de<br />
Vicente Martin, un opéra d’après un livret de<br />
Da Ponte, inspiré d’une pièce de Goldoni. Ils<br />
se trouvent côte à côte dans le catalogue<br />
Köchel et portent les références K.582 et 583.<br />
Le second qui est beaucoup plus substantiel<br />
est “Banished, rejected” (plage<br />
10<br />
), composé<br />
dans une style mozartien d’une exceptionnelle<br />
éloquence et profondeur de sentiment.<br />
L’autre “Who knows what feeling” (plage<br />
11<br />
)<br />
est une pièce sans prétention, mais<br />
charmante.<br />
Environ cent ans plus tard, nous nous<br />
retrouvons dans un univers tout à fait<br />
différent, celui de l’opéra de souche russe<br />
représenté par le Prince Igor de Borodine.<br />
Dans la scène introductive de l’Acte II, un<br />
groupe de jeunes filles polovtsiennes chantent<br />
une mélodie langoureuse “Tender flower,<br />
starved of water” (plage<br />
14<br />
) devant leur<br />
maîtresse, Kontchakovna, la fille du khan<br />
Kontchak, le souverain bienfaisant dont Igor<br />
est prisonnier. La musique de cet épisode qui<br />
évoque l’Orient par sa coloration et les<br />
sentiments qui l’imprègnent marque un temps<br />
de repos dans ce drame intense. Borodine était<br />
maître dans l’art de marier ce que lui avait<br />
enseigné la musique occidentale aux influences<br />
plus locales. Faust, une œuvre datant de la<br />
même époque, est musicalement beaucoup<br />
plus courtoise et occidentale comme le montre<br />
la charmante mélodie chantée par Siébel<br />
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“When happy days” (plage<br />
16<br />
). Le rival de Strauss que le succès récompensa. L’air de très<br />
Faust pour la main de Marguerite est<br />
loin le plus célèbre dans cette oeuvre est “In a<br />
condamné à l’insuccès.<br />
cosy chambre séparée” (plage<br />
13<br />
) qui évoque la<br />
Entre temps, à Vienne, la situation avait première rencontre des amants Henri et<br />
beaucoup évolué en termes de génie et de Hortense dans un théâtre. Henri mène<br />
caractère musical depuis l’époque de Mozart. Hortense dans la “chambre séparée”, l’une des<br />
L’opérette faisait fureur. Johann Strauss, loges du théâtre gardée comme chambre<br />
dans ce grand succès que fut son opérette particulière. Il lui fait la cour en chantant un<br />
Die Fledermaus en 1874, ridiculisait avec une air qui compte parmi les plus délicieusement<br />
tendresse mitigée la société bourgeoise du séduisants de tout le répertoire de l’opérette.<br />
moment dans la capitale autrichienne. La pièce The Merry Widow de Lehár obtint un<br />
se joue autour de la réception offerte au palais succès plus prodigieux encore en 1905. Le<br />
du prince Orlofsky, un jeune homme blasé sommet lyrique de l’œuvre est le duo de<br />
que la vie ennuie et qui cherche à être distrait. l’Acte II mettant en scène l’aristocrate français<br />
Dans les couplets qu’il chante peu après le Camille de Rosillon et Valencienne qui est en<br />
début de l’Acte II, il énonce sa philosophie – il réalité l’épouse du baron Mirko, représentant<br />
veut que tout le monde boive avec lui et le du Pontevedrin à Paris. La relation illicite<br />
divertisse (“Chacun à son goût”, plage<br />
15<br />
). culmine dans l’air “Just as the sun awakens”<br />
Strauss esquisse son caractère à la perfection (plage<br />
17<br />
). Valencienne supplie Camille de<br />
dans un air qui allie nonchalance et cynisme, mettre un terme à ses ardentes avances, mais<br />
avec une touche de gaucherie. Ecrit pour une finalement, au son d’une musique fragrante,<br />
voix de mezzo, il n’est pas facile à chanter. Il se très érotique, celle dans laquelle le compositeur<br />
situe pour une grande partie dans le registre excelle (“See where the summer-house awaits”,<br />
grave, mais il y a aussi une répétition du la elle consent à un dernier baiser dans le<br />
bémol. Une voix comme celle de Diana pavillon qui conduit à toutes sortes d’intrigues<br />
Montague convient parfaitement pour compliquées. Valencienne est encore un de ces<br />
surmonter ses difficultés.<br />
rôles situés à mi-chemin entre deux types de<br />
Avec son Opera Ball créé à Vienne en 1898, voix qui ont été chantés à la fois par des<br />
Richard Heuberger fut l’un des disciples de sopranos et par des mezzos. Diana Montague a<br />
ici comme partenaire Bruce Ford, ténor<br />
élégant, convaincant.<br />
© 2003 Alan Blyth<br />
Traduction: Marie-Françoise de Meeûs<br />
Diana Montague est née à Winchester, et a<br />
fait ses études au Royal Northern College of<br />
Music de Manchester. Depuis ses débuts dans<br />
le rôle de Zerlina avec le Glyndebourne<br />
Touring Opera, elle s’est produite dans des<br />
salles telles que le Royal Opera de Covent<br />
Garden à Londres, le Metropolitan Opera de<br />
New York, le Théâtre de la Monnaie à<br />
Bruxelles, l’Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, le<br />
Teatro Colon de Buenos Aires, et dans les<br />
festivals de Bayreuth et Salzbourg.<br />
Son répertoire compte les grands roles de<br />
mezzo-sopranos dans des opéras de Mozart,<br />
Gluck, Strauss, Rossini, Bellini et Berlioz. Très<br />
demandée en concert, elle a chanté sous la<br />
direction de chefs tels que Sir Georg Solti,<br />
James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Sir John Eliot<br />
Gardiner, Seiji Ozawa, Jeffrey Tate et Sir<br />
Andrew Davis. Parmi ses prestations à la scène,<br />
on citera Iphigénie en Tauride à Buenos Aires, à<br />
Madrid et au Welsh National Opera; Le Comte<br />
Ory à Lausanne, Rome et Glyndebourne;<br />
Andromaca dans Ermione de Rossini à<br />
Glyndebourne; Proserpina dans Orfeo de<br />
Monteverdi à Amsterdam; Il ritorno d’Ulisse in<br />
patria à Amsterdam et à Sydney; Sesto à<br />
Madrid; le Compositeur (Ariadne auf Naxos)<br />
au Scottish Opera et à Lisbonne; Meg Page<br />
(Falstaff ) pour la réouverture du Royal Opera<br />
de Covent Garden à Londres; Octavian (Der<br />
Rosenkavalier) à Naples, Bilbao et au Teatro<br />
Real de Madrid; Marguerite à Vienne.<br />
La riche discographie de Diana Montague<br />
inclut Orfeo de Monteverdi, I Capuleti e i<br />
Montecchi, Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, et<br />
Iphigénie en Tauride. Pour Opera Rara, elle a<br />
enregistré Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di<br />
Granata, Il crociato in Egitto, et pour <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
et la Peter Moores Foundation, Cavalleria<br />
rusticana, Octavian dans Der Rosenkavalier<br />
(extraits), Faust en un disque précédent dans la<br />
collection Great Operatic Arias (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010).<br />
Après avoir été directeur musical et chef<br />
principal du Royal Scottish National Orchestra<br />
de janvier 1992 à juillet 1997, Walter Weller<br />
est aujourd’hui chef honoraire de cet ensemble.<br />
Il est également conseiller artistique et chef<br />
invité principal de l’Orchestre National<br />
d’Espagne. Il fut directeur artistique de<br />
l’Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft de Bâle,<br />
directeur musical de l’Opéra de Bâle et chef<br />
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principal de l’Orchestre symphonique de Bâle de<br />
septembre 1994 à juillet 1997, chef principal du<br />
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra de 1980 à 1985<br />
ainsi que directeur musical et artistique du Royal<br />
Liverpool Philharmonic de 1977 à 1980. A l’âge<br />
de vingt et un ans, il fut nommé premier violon<br />
de l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Vienne, une<br />
formation qu’il dirigea par la suite.<br />
Il est invité régulièrement à diriger les plus<br />
grands orchestres du monde et a travaillé avec le<br />
London Symphony Orchestra, le London<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra, le Philharmonia<br />
Orchestra, le Staatskapelle de Dresde,<br />
l’Orchestre Symphonique de Berlin, le<br />
Gewandhaus de Leipzig, la Philharmonie de<br />
Hambourg, l’Orchestre Philharmonique<br />
d’Israël, l’Orchestre de Paris, l’Orchestre<br />
National de France, l’Orchestre du Théâtre de<br />
La Scala à Milan, l’Orchestre Royal du<br />
Concertgebouw, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de<br />
la Radio Néerlandaise, l’Orchestre de la<br />
Tonhalle de Zürich, l’Orchestre de la Suisse<br />
Romande, l’Orchestre de la Radio Suédoise,<br />
l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Stockholm, ceux<br />
d’Oslo et d’Helsinki. En Amérique du Nord, il<br />
a collaboré avec des ensembles tels le New York<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra, les Orchestres<br />
Symphoniques du Minnesota, de San Francisco,<br />
Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cincinnati et<br />
Toronto ainsi qu’avec le National Arts Centre<br />
Orchestra à Ottawa.<br />
Sur la scène lyrique, il a dirigé entre autres<br />
Der fliegende Holländer à La Scala, Ariadne on<br />
Naxos et The Flying Dutchman pour l’English<br />
National Opera, Der Freischütz au Teatro<br />
Comunale de Bologne, Prince Igor pour le<br />
Staatskapelle de Berlin et Fidelio ainsi que Der<br />
Rosenkavalier pour Scottish Opera. Il s’est<br />
également produit en concert dans le cadre du<br />
Festival de Tivoli. Durant sa première saison à<br />
Bâle, il a dirigé une version extrêmement réussie<br />
de Die Frau ohne Schatten. Parmi les autres<br />
opéras qu’il donna en concert, notons Fidelio<br />
avec le City of Birmingham Symphony<br />
Orchestra, Elektra et Der fliegende Holländer<br />
avec le Royal Scottish National Orchestra ainsi<br />
qu’Eugen Onegin à Copenhague.<br />
Sa discographie comprend des cycles des<br />
Symphonies de Prokofiev et de Rachmaninov,<br />
le Concert pour orchestre de Bartók, les<br />
Danses valaques de Janáček, la Symphonie<br />
No 1 de Rachmaninov, la Symphonie No 4 de<br />
Bruckner et, pour <strong>Chandos</strong>, les Symphonies et<br />
les Concertos pour piano (avec John Lill) de<br />
Beethoven ainsi que les Symphonies de<br />
Mendelssohn. Pour <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation il a dirigé une enregistrement de<br />
Grands airs d’opérette avec Bruce Ford.<br />
Diana Montague as Isolier in Rome Opera’s production of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory<br />
Corrado Maria Falsini<br />
34
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Zwischenfach (tra un registro e l’altro) è un<br />
termine tedesco che può aiutarci a descrivere la<br />
voce di Diana Montague. Le cantanti come lei<br />
hanno possibilità quasi infinite, come<br />
conferma questo vario ed eclettico recital. Pur<br />
essendo un mezzosoprano, Diana Montague è<br />
capace, come Pauline Viardot nel lontano<br />
Ottocento e altre cantanti delle epoche<br />
successive, di affrontare anche molti altri brani<br />
normalmente appartenenti al repertorio del<br />
soprano. Le sue possibilità abbracciano ruoli<br />
che vanno dall’opera barocca all’operetta,<br />
come testimoniano questo straordinario disco<br />
e il progresso della sua carriera.<br />
Abbiamo già visto nel primo volume di arie<br />
da lei registrate per <strong>Chandos</strong> (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010)<br />
che Diana Montague è una strenua paladina<br />
dell’opera in lingua inglese. La sua bella voce<br />
curata diventa uno strumento per sfruttare al<br />
massimo un testo nella propria lingua,<br />
modellando ciascuna parola e frase in base al<br />
suo particolare significato. A questo si<br />
aggiunge la preziosissima qualità innata di un<br />
timbro in grado di palpitare di pari passo con<br />
la musica, un dono da lei curato e sviluppato.<br />
Ecco perché tutte le sue interpretazioni hanno<br />
Grandi arie operistiche<br />
un accento particolarmente eloquente e, a<br />
volte, spiritoso.<br />
Questo recital esalta in gran parte le sue<br />
eccezionali doti di interprete di Handel, Gluck<br />
e Mozart, compositori legati al periodo<br />
inizialmente dominato dal castrato, che<br />
assumeva molti dei principali ruoli maschili<br />
delle opere di Handel. In seguito, quando i<br />
soprani “artificiali” cominciarono a scomparire,<br />
si diffuse maggiormente l’abitudine di affidare i<br />
personaggi dei giovani uomini a donne, sempre<br />
con voci affini a quella della Montague. La<br />
tradizione proseguiva nell’Ottocento e nel<br />
Novecento, per esempio con i ruoli di Ottavio<br />
e del Compositore in Der Rosenkavalier e<br />
Ariadne auf Naxos di Richard Strauss e viene<br />
ricordata in questo recital dal ruolo di Orlofsky<br />
in Die Fledermaus, di un altro Strauss, e dal<br />
ruolo di Siébel in Faust di Gounod.<br />
Le arie più antiche tra quelle presenti nella<br />
registrazione sono due brani famosi e<br />
commoventi tratti dalle opere di Handel,<br />
entrambe affidate originariamente ai castrati.<br />
“Verdant pastures” (traccia<br />
5<br />
) dall’Alcina,<br />
viene eseguita da Ruggero e fu originariamente<br />
interpretata dal castrato Carestini. Ruggero,<br />
36<br />
vittima di un incantesimo della maga Alcina,<br />
si è innamorato di lei. L’incantesimo viene<br />
spezzato nell’Atto II, ma l’eroe non riesce ad<br />
abbandonare i meravigliosi pascoli a cui<br />
inneggia in quest’aria giustamente famosa. La<br />
melodia apparentemente semplice esprime i<br />
suoi sentimenti contrastanti.<br />
Spesso Handel aveva l’abitudine di aprire<br />
un’opera con un arioso meditativo (come<br />
“Ombra mai fu” in Serse). Lo stesso accade in<br />
Atalanta dove l’eroe, Meleagro, esegue un<br />
brano semplice ed elegiaco, “Noble forests”<br />
(traccia<br />
6<br />
), in cui rende omaggio alle bellezze<br />
della natura. Fanno da contrappunto a questi<br />
brani di Handel il semplice, sincero motivo “If<br />
you are near” (traccia<br />
18<br />
), un tempo attribuito<br />
a J.S. Bach e oggi al suo contemporaneo<br />
Stölzel, un brano comunque delizioso.<br />
Dal punto di vista drammatico, Iphigenia<br />
in Tauris è probabilmente l’opera più<br />
rivelatrice e coerente della maturità di Gluck,<br />
l’ultima e la più grande delle opere serie<br />
composte per Parigi. L’omonima eroina è una<br />
figura veramente tragica, il cui destino viene<br />
genialmente espresso allo stesso tempo con<br />
autocontrollo classico e profondità<br />
emotiva. Diana Montague ha già registrato la<br />
versione integrale dell’opera in francese con<br />
John Eliot Gardiner. Qui canta nella propria<br />
lingua, e l’interpretazione della figlia di<br />
Agamennone, ormai sacerdotessa di Diana<br />
nella Tauride, forse è ancora più commovente.<br />
Il suo lamento nell’Atto II, “No hope remains<br />
in my affliction” (traccia<br />
3<br />
), è uno sfogo di<br />
disperazione e solitudine con un taglio<br />
melodico e una progressione armonica<br />
esclusiva di Gluck. Nel brano successivo,<br />
“I implore thee and tremble” (traccia<br />
4<br />
)<br />
dall’Atto IV, Ifigenia lamenta il proprio fato<br />
che l’ha costretta a compiere un sacrificio<br />
sanguinoso con toni che descrivono l’orrore<br />
della situazione nella maniera caratteristica di<br />
Gluck. In entrambi i brani, il compositore<br />
guarda alla propria eroina con profonda<br />
compassione, un’emozione che si rispecchia<br />
nell’interpretazione della Montague.<br />
All’epoca di Mozart, quella del castrato era<br />
(per fortuna) una razza in via di estinzione,<br />
anche se il compositore creò altri ruoli per<br />
questa voce nelle sue opere serie. Comunque,<br />
sarebbe sembrato strano affidare a un cantante<br />
del genere il ruolo del giovane Cherubino<br />
(The Marriage of Figaro). Mozart scelse un<br />
soprano, ma le voci più leggere di questo<br />
registro possono sembrare troppo giovanili. Il<br />
mezzosoprano alto della Montague, invece, è<br />
ideale per il ritratto del paggio appassionato,<br />
che manifesta perfettamente la consapevolezza<br />
37
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 38<br />
della propria virilità incipiente nell’aria<br />
dell’Atto I, “Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills<br />
me” (traccia<br />
1<br />
). Mozart qui sfrutta l’abilità<br />
del registro medio della voce per proiettare il<br />
calore e l’immediatezza dei sentimenti di<br />
Cherubino. Questo è stato uno dei primi ruoli<br />
della fortunata carriera della Montague al<br />
Covent Garden. La cantane era perfetta per<br />
aspetto e per interpretazione e il ricordo della<br />
sua interpretazione è graditissimo.<br />
Sebbene Dorabella in Così fan tutte sia un<br />
personaggio molto diverso da Cherubino, la<br />
gamma vocale di entrambi è quasi la stessa e,<br />
quindi, è stata affidata negli anni sia a soprani<br />
sia a mezzosoprani. Comunque ai tempi di<br />
Mozart le rigide differenze tra registri non<br />
esistevano. Ancora una volta, la voce della<br />
Montague sembra la risposta ideale, in<br />
equilibrio tra i due generi.<br />
La sentiamo prima nell’imitazione della<br />
retorica di “Torture and agony” (traccia<br />
8<br />
) in<br />
cui Mozart spinge la sua sensibile eroina a<br />
inveire contro il destino che avrebbe<br />
allontanato da lei l’innamorato. L’esplosione di<br />
questa passione apparentemente sincera ha una<br />
forza che ricorda la musica di Gluck.<br />
Poi è la volta di Dorabella e di sua sorella<br />
Fiordiligi, in un impareggiabile trio d’addio in<br />
compagnia del vecchio cinico Don Alfonso:<br />
“Blow gently, you breezes” (traccia<br />
7<br />
). Come<br />
è sua abitudine, specialmente in quest’opera,<br />
Mozart crea un momento eterno di riposo e<br />
riflessione, anche se un personaggio, in questo<br />
caso quello di don Alfonso, nutre sentimenti<br />
molto diversi.<br />
Nell’Atto II, la risoluta Fiordiligi e Dorabella,<br />
avendo deciso di lasciarsi convincere dai “nuovi”<br />
uomini, cantano un delizioso duetto in cui<br />
ciascuna fa la propria scelta, “I will take the<br />
handsome, dark one” (traccia<br />
9<br />
). Anche le due<br />
voci sono sorelle, nel loro intrecciarsi.<br />
Nel duetto, “My heart here I give you”<br />
(traccia<br />
12<br />
), come nel trio precedente, il nuovo<br />
amore di Dorabella è espresso con sincerità,<br />
mentre Guglielmo, suo malgrado, è sul punto<br />
di innamorarsi della donna “sbagliata”, tale è la<br />
forza seducente e ingannatrice della musica<br />
geniale di Mozart. Alan Opie, cha ha<br />
interpretato i ruoli di Guglielmo e Alfonso per<br />
la English National Opera, li padroneggia<br />
entrambi con facilità in questi brani e Orla<br />
Boylan ha la voce giusta per Fiordiligi.<br />
Nella sua ultima opera, The Clemency of<br />
Titus, Mozart compose ancora una volta un<br />
ruolo per castrato: la parte di Sesto, un<br />
giovane vulnerabile, completamente schiavo di<br />
Vitellia. Offesa di non essere stata scelta come<br />
imperatrice, Vitellia convince Sesto ad<br />
assassinare Tito, il suo migliore amico. Sesto<br />
esprime i suoi sentimenti contrari nella lunga<br />
aria in due parti, ‘Send me, but, my beloved,<br />
never reject me in anger’ (traccia<br />
2<br />
), con cui<br />
Mozart presenta il personaggio di questo<br />
giovane retto e tormentato. Anche in questo<br />
caso il ruolo può essere affidato a un soprano o<br />
mezzosoprano, per la sua tessitura intermedia<br />
tra i due registri.<br />
Mozart compose anche molto brani<br />
indipendenti per voce solista di cui qui<br />
vengono presentati due ottimi esempi con<br />
l’accompagnamento dell’orchestra. Le arie<br />
sono particolarmente adatte a Diana<br />
Montague in quanto furono entrambe<br />
composte per Louise Villeneuve, la prima<br />
Dorabella, per essere inserite in Il burbero di<br />
buon cuore, di Vicente Martin, un’opera su<br />
libretto di Da Ponte, basata su una commedia<br />
di Goldoni. Si trovano affiancate nel catalogo<br />
Köchel con i numeri K. 582 and 583. La<br />
seconda e più impegnativa è “Banished,<br />
rejected”, (traccia 10 ) composta nella maniera<br />
più sentita, altisonante di Mozart. L’altra,<br />
“Who knows what feeling” (traccia<br />
11<br />
), è un<br />
brano più leggero, ma incantevole.<br />
Circa un secolo dopo, ci ritroviamo in un<br />
mondo completamente diverso, quello<br />
dell’opera russa, con Prince Igor di Borodin.<br />
Nella scena iniziale dell’Atto II, un gruppo di<br />
fanciulle polovesi canta una canzone<br />
languida, “Tender flower, starved of water”<br />
(traccia<br />
14<br />
), davanti alla padrona<br />
Konciakovna, figlia del Khan Konciak,<br />
governante benevolo che tiene prigioniero<br />
Igor. La musica, di colore e ispirazione quasi<br />
orientale, crea un momento di distensione in<br />
un dramma carico di tensione. Borodin aveva<br />
l’abilità di abbinare quanto aveva imparato<br />
dalla musica occidentale ad influenze più<br />
locali. Faust, un’opera dello stesso periodo,<br />
rivela un carattere musicale molto più cortese e<br />
occidentale, come dimostra il delizioso brano<br />
di Siebel “When happy days” (traccia<br />
16<br />
).<br />
Il rivale di Faust alla mano di Margherita è<br />
destinato al fallimento.<br />
A fine Ottocento, molte cose erano<br />
cambiate a Vienna rispetto ai tempi di Mozart<br />
per quanto riguarda i costumi e la musica.<br />
Adesso era di gran moda l’operetta. Nel suo<br />
grande successo del 1874, Die Fledermaus,<br />
Johann Strauss si prese gioco senza tanti<br />
complimenti della società borghese dell’epoca<br />
nella capitale austriaca. Al centro della vicenda<br />
è il ballo organizzato al palazzo del principe<br />
Orlofsky, un giovane blasé annoiato della vita,<br />
in cerca di divertimento. Nei suoi versi<br />
all’inizio dell’Atto II dichiara la propria<br />
38<br />
39
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 40<br />
filosofia. Esorta tutti a bere con lui e a farlo<br />
divertire (“Chacun à son goût”, traccia<br />
15<br />
).<br />
Strauss definisce perfettamente la sua<br />
personalità in un brano che abbina noncuranza<br />
e cinismo con un pizzico di goffaggine.<br />
Composta per un mezzosoprano, l’aria non è<br />
facile da cantare. Per lo più è in un registro<br />
basso, ma contiene anche alcuni la bemolle<br />
ripetuti. Una voce come quella della Montague<br />
è ideale per superare le sue difficoltà..<br />
Richard Heuberger fu uno dei seguaci di<br />
Strauss di maggior successo, con il suo Opera<br />
Ball eseguito per la prima volta a Vienna nel<br />
1898. Il brano più riuscito è “In a cosy<br />
chambre séparée”, (traccia<br />
13<br />
), in cui gli<br />
innamorati Henri e Hortense si incontrano per<br />
la prima volta in un teatro. L’uomo guida la<br />
donna nella chambre séparée, uno dei palchi del<br />
teatro adibito a camera privata, e la corteggia<br />
con uno dei più seducenti brani operettistici.<br />
The Merry Widow di Lehár riscosse ancora<br />
più successo nel 1905. La sua vetta lirica è il<br />
duetto dell’Atto II tra Camillo de Rosillon,<br />
aristocratico francese, e Valencienne, moglie<br />
del barone Mirko, inviato di Pontevedrin a<br />
Parigi. La relazione culmina in questo brano,<br />
“Just as the sun awakens” (traccia<br />
17<br />
).<br />
Valencienne supplica Camillo di desistere dalle<br />
sue focose avances ma alla fine, al suono della<br />
musica raffinata, piena di richiami erotici di<br />
cui il compositore era maestro (“See where the<br />
summer-house awaits”), accetta un ultimo<br />
bacio nella serra, che porterà a una serie di<br />
complicazioni nella vicenda. Valencienne è un<br />
altro ruolo “intermedio”, eseguito da soprani e<br />
mezzosoprani alti. Diana Montague qui è<br />
accompagnata dall’elegante, persuasivo tenore<br />
Bruce Ford.<br />
© 2003 Alan Blyth<br />
Traduzione: Emanuela Guastella<br />
Diana Montague è nata a Winchester e ha<br />
studiato presso il Royal Northern College of<br />
Music. Dopo il suo esordio nel ruolo di<br />
Zerlina con la Glyndebourne Touring Opera si<br />
è esibita in teatri quali la Royal Opera House<br />
di Covent Garden, la Metropolitan Opera di<br />
New York, il Théâtre de la Monnaie di<br />
Bruxelles, l’Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, il<br />
Teatro Colón di Buenos Aires e ha partecipato<br />
ai festival di Bayreuth e Salisburgo.<br />
Il suo repertorio include i principali ruoli<br />
per mezzosoprano delle opere di Mozart,<br />
Gluck, Strauss, Rossini, Bellini e Berlioz. La<br />
sua ricca attività concertistica l’ha vista<br />
comparire a fianco di Sir Georg Solti, James<br />
Levine, Riccardo Muti, Sir John Eliot<br />
Gardiner, Seiji Ozawa, Jeffrey Tate e Sir<br />
Andrew Davis. I suoi impegni hanno<br />
compreso Iphigénie en Tauride a Buenos Aires,<br />
Madrid e con la Welsh National Opera; Le<br />
Comte Ory a Losanna, Roma e Glyndebourne;<br />
Andromaca nell’Ermione di Rossini a<br />
Glyndebourne; Proserpina nell’Orfeo di<br />
Monteverdi ad Amsterdam; Il ritorno d’Ulisse<br />
in patria ad Amsterdam e Sydney; i ruoli di<br />
Sesto a Madrid; il Compositore (Ariadne auf<br />
Naxos) per Scottish Opera e a Lisbona; Meg<br />
Page (Falstaff ) per la riapertura della Royal<br />
Opera House, Covent Garden; Ottavio (Der<br />
Rosenkavalier) a Napoli, Bilbao e al Teatro Real<br />
di Madrid, e Marguerite a Vienna.<br />
La ricca discografia di Diana Montague<br />
comprende Orfeo di Monteverdi, I Capuleti e i<br />
Montecchi, Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor,<br />
Iphigénie en Tauride; per Opera Rara Rosmonda<br />
d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di Granata e Il crociato in<br />
Egitto; per <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation, Cavalleria rusticana, Ottoavio in<br />
Der Rosenkavalier (momenti salienti), Faust, e<br />
il disco Great Operatic Arias (<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010).<br />
Walter Weller è stato Direttore musicale e<br />
Direttore stabile della Royal Scottish National<br />
Orchestra tra il gennaio del 1992 e il luglio del<br />
1997 e oggi è il suo Direttore Emerito. Inoltre<br />
è Consulente artistico e Direttore ospite<br />
dell’Orchestra nazionale di Spagna. È stato<br />
Direttore artistico della Allgemeine<br />
Musikgesellschaft di Basilea, Direttore<br />
musicale del Teatro di Basilea e Direttore<br />
principale dell’Orchestra sinfonica di Basilea<br />
dal settembre 1994 fino al luglio 1997,<br />
Direttore stabile della Royal Philharmonic<br />
Orchestra dal 1980 al 1985 e Direttore<br />
Musicale e artistico della Royal Liverpool<br />
Philharmonic dal 1977 al 1980. All’età di<br />
ventuno anni è stato nominato primo violino<br />
dell’Orchestra filarmonica di Vienna, di cui in<br />
seguito sarebbe diventato direttore.<br />
Walter Weller viene regolarmente invitato<br />
come direttore ospite da importanti orchestre<br />
di tutto il mondo e ha lavorato con la London<br />
Symphony Orchestra, la London<br />
Philharmonic, la Philharmonia Orchestra, la<br />
Staatskapelle di Dresda, la RSO di Berlino,<br />
l’orchestra del Gewandhaus di Lipsia, la<br />
Philharmonie di Amburgo, la Israel<br />
Philharmonic Orchestra, l’Orchestre de Paris,<br />
l’Orchestre National de France, l’Orchestra del<br />
Teatro alla Scala di Milano, l’Orchestra del<br />
Concertgebouw, l’Orchestra filarmonica della<br />
radio olandese, la Tonhalle-Orchester di<br />
Zurigo, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande,<br />
l’orchestra della radio svedese, la Filarmonica<br />
40<br />
41
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 42<br />
di Stoccolma e le Filarmoniche di Oslo e di<br />
Helsinki. Nell’America del nord ha lavorato<br />
con la New York Philharmonic, le orchestre<br />
sinfoniche del Minnesota, di San Francisco,<br />
Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cincinnati e<br />
Toronto e l’Orchestra del National Arts Centre<br />
di Ottawa.<br />
In teatro Walter Weller ha diretto tra l’altro<br />
Der fliegende Holländer alla Scala, Ariadne on<br />
Naxos e The Flying Dutchman per la English<br />
National Opera, Der Freischütz al Teatro<br />
Comunale di Bologna, Il principe Igor per la<br />
Staatskapelle di Berlino, Fidelio e Der<br />
Rosenkavalier per la Scottish Opera. Ha diretto<br />
concerti al festival di Tivoli. Nella sua prima<br />
stagione a Basilea, ha diretto un allestimento<br />
di grande successo della Frau ohne Schatten.<br />
Altre opere in concerto comprendono Fidelio<br />
con la City of Birmingham Symphony<br />
Orchestra, Elektra e Der fliegende Holländer<br />
con la Royal Scottish National Orchestra ed<br />
Eugenio Onieghin a Copenaghen.<br />
La discografia comprende le sinfonie di<br />
Prokof’ev e Rachmaninov, il Concerto per<br />
Orchestra di Bartók, le Danze di Lachi di<br />
Janáček, la Sinfonia n. 1 di Rachmaninov, a<br />
Sinfonia n. 4 di Bruckner e, per <strong>Chandos</strong>, le<br />
Sinfonie e i concerti per pianoforte di<br />
Beethoven (con John Lill) e le sinfonie di<br />
Mendelssohn. Per <strong>Chandos</strong>/Peter Moores<br />
Foundation ha diretto una registrazione di<br />
Grandi arie da operetta con Bruce Ford.<br />
Bill Cooper<br />
42<br />
Diana Montague as Romeo<br />
in a scene from Bellini’s<br />
The Capuleti and the<br />
Montecchi at The Royal<br />
Opera House, Covent<br />
Garden
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 44<br />
1<br />
from The Marriage of Figaro<br />
Cherubino’s Aria<br />
Cherubino<br />
Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills me,<br />
and with feverish ecstasy thrills me?<br />
At the sight of a woman I tremble,<br />
and my heart seems to burst into flame.<br />
Love! That word sets me hoping and fearing.<br />
Love! That word that I always am hearing!<br />
Love! Ah, love! How can I dissemble<br />
those desires that I hardly dare name?<br />
Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills me,<br />
and with feverish ecstasy thrills me?<br />
At the sight of a woman I tremble,<br />
and my heart seems to burst into flame.<br />
All day for love I languish,<br />
dream of delicious anguish!<br />
To ev’ry vale and mountain,<br />
to stream, to lake, and fountain,<br />
for love, for love I’m sighing;<br />
and Nature’s voice replying…<br />
echoes my tender moan.<br />
All day for love I languish,<br />
dream of delicious anguish!<br />
To ev’ry vale and mountain,<br />
to stream, to lake, and fountain,<br />
wherever I wander<br />
for love, for love I’m sighing;<br />
and Nature’s voice replying…<br />
echoes my tender moan.<br />
2<br />
And yet, if no one hear me,<br />
no, ne’er a soul to hear me,<br />
I talk of love alone.<br />
English version by Edward J. Dent,<br />
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press<br />
from The Clemency of Titus<br />
Sextus’s Aria<br />
Sextus<br />
Send me, but, my beloved<br />
never reject me in anger.<br />
For you I shall be stronger:<br />
I shall do all you ask.<br />
Look at me once, I beg you:<br />
I go as your avenger.<br />
That glance so sweet and tender<br />
will ease the fateful hour.<br />
Send me, but, my beloved<br />
never reject me in anger.<br />
For you I shall be stronger:<br />
I shall do all you ask.<br />
Look at me, look at me!<br />
That glance so sweet and tender<br />
will ease the fateful hour.<br />
Look at me once, I beg you:<br />
I go as your avenger.<br />
Heaven must treasure beauty<br />
to grant so great a pow’r.<br />
Mazzolà after Metastasio,<br />
translation by David Parry<br />
3<br />
from Iphigenia in Tauris<br />
Priestesses’ Chorus and Iphigenia’s Aria<br />
Chorus of Priestesses<br />
Farewell, beloved homeland,<br />
ah, from this alien shore<br />
we longed to return to Mycenae,<br />
but we’ve lost you for evermore!<br />
Iphigenia<br />
No hope remains in my affliction,<br />
my dear fatherland lost now forever,<br />
lost, ah, lost forever!<br />
(to the Priestesses)<br />
Your mighty King is dead,<br />
those I love are all slain;<br />
so raise your plaintive cries<br />
and share my grief and pain:<br />
your mighty King is dead,<br />
those I loved have been slain!<br />
Ah, no hope remains,<br />
ah, no hope in my affliction!<br />
Land and kindred lost forever!<br />
Your mighty King is dead,<br />
those I love have been slain!<br />
So raise your plaintive cries,<br />
share all my grief and pain!<br />
Your mighty King lies died,<br />
those I love all are slain.<br />
Chorus of Priestesses<br />
We raise out plaintive cries<br />
to share your grief and pain!<br />
4<br />
5<br />
Once we hoped that Orestes would come!<br />
But he is dead:<br />
Now ev’ry hope has fled,<br />
endless grief lies before us!<br />
N.F. Guillard and Du Roullet,<br />
translation by Andrew Porter<br />
from Iphigenia in Tauris<br />
Iphigenia’s Aria<br />
Iphigenia<br />
I implore thee and tremble,<br />
O relentless Diana!<br />
Now inspire in my heart<br />
furious desire to kill.<br />
Extinguish every tender sigh,<br />
the plaintive voice of human nature!<br />
Alas! No crueller fate<br />
could the gods have in store:<br />
as a priestess of bloodshed,<br />
a sad, unwilling victim,<br />
I obey!<br />
Tho’ my heart will be torn by remorse,<br />
but my heart will be torn by remorse.<br />
N.F. Guillard and Du Roullet,<br />
translation by Andrew Porter<br />
from Alcina<br />
Ruggiero’s Aria<br />
Ruggiero<br />
Verdant pastures, leafy woodlands,<br />
all your beauty will decay.<br />
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6<br />
7<br />
Perfumed flowers, clear flowing rivers<br />
though you invite me, and delight me,<br />
’tis your fate to fade away.<br />
Verdant pastures, leafy woodlands,<br />
all your beauty will decay:<br />
what I loved and longed to cherish<br />
is as dust, destined to perish<br />
and return to barren clay.<br />
translation by Amanda Holden<br />
from Atalanta<br />
Meleagro’s Aria<br />
Meleagro<br />
Noble forests, sombre and shady,<br />
burning passion fills my heart!<br />
translation by David Parry<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso’s Trio<br />
Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso<br />
Blow gently, you breezes,<br />
lie quietly, great ocean,<br />
for Heaven surely pleases<br />
to grant them protection<br />
and guide them to shore<br />
Da Ponte, translation by Anne Ridler<br />
reproduced by permission of ENO Benevolent Fund<br />
8<br />
9<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Dorabella’s Recitative and Aria<br />
Dorabella<br />
Ah! Leave me now, beware the dangerous<br />
madness of a desperate woman!<br />
Go and close the shutters. I hate the daylight.<br />
I hate the air that I’m breathing… I hate<br />
myself !<br />
Who makes fun of my despair?<br />
Who dares console me?<br />
Now go, for pity’s sake, leave me.<br />
Ah, for pity’s sake, leave me to suffer.<br />
Torture and agony, fiercely tormenting,<br />
now do your worst to me, without relenting,<br />
until your tyranny has brought my death.<br />
You fatal Destinies who scourge and punish,<br />
take what is left of me when life has vanished,<br />
when my despairing cries cease with my breath.<br />
Da Ponte, translation by Anne Ridler<br />
reproduced by permission of ENO Benevolent Fund<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Dorabella and Fiordiligi’s Duet<br />
Dorabella<br />
I will take the handsome, dark one,<br />
for he has a wicked mind.<br />
Fiordiligi<br />
Well, in that case I’ll take the fair one,<br />
for his wit is so refined.<br />
10<br />
11<br />
Dorabella<br />
If he writes me ardent verses<br />
I will tease him with a smile.<br />
Fiordiligi<br />
I shall imitate his sighing<br />
and his tragic lover’s style.<br />
Dorabella<br />
He will say ‘For you I languish.’<br />
Fiordiligi<br />
He will say ‘Ah, soothe my anguish.’<br />
Dorabella and Fiordiligi<br />
This adventure will be risky,<br />
but I know we’ll have some fun!<br />
Da Ponte, translation by Anne Ridler<br />
reproduced by permission of ENO Benevolent Fund<br />
Concert Aria<br />
Banished, rejected, God save me!<br />
Where will my torment guide me,<br />
where will my weeping find me<br />
if heav’nly mercy fails?<br />
Love, deep and strange within me,<br />
show me the way to follow;<br />
soothe all the pain and sorrow<br />
which fills my heart with doubt.<br />
?Da Ponte, translation by David Parry<br />
Concert Aria<br />
Who knows what feeling<br />
my lover is concealing?<br />
12<br />
He’s angry, or he’s jealous,<br />
afraid, suspicious, in love.<br />
You know, you gods who hear this,<br />
how pure the love I bear is;<br />
wipe from my soul, I beg you,<br />
the agony of doubt.<br />
Wipe from my soul, I beg you,<br />
the agony of love.<br />
?Da Ponte translation by David Parry<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
Guglielmo and Dorabella’s Duet<br />
Guglielmo<br />
My heart here I give you,<br />
a pledge and a token.<br />
As mine you have taken,<br />
give yours in return.<br />
Dorabella<br />
You gave it, I take it,<br />
but mine, I’ll not give it;<br />
I cannot command it,<br />
my heart is not mine.<br />
Guglielmo<br />
But a heart here is beating;<br />
now how can that be?<br />
Dorabella<br />
How can your heart be beating?<br />
You gave it to me?<br />
Guglielmo<br />
What is beating, beating here?<br />
46<br />
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Dorabella<br />
What is beating, beating here?<br />
Dorabella and Guglielmo<br />
What is beating, beating here?<br />
It’s my heart that’s beating,<br />
it’s with me no longer,<br />
it’s living with you now,<br />
it beats there for you.<br />
Guglielmo<br />
And here let me place it.<br />
Dorabella<br />
It must not stay here.<br />
Guglielmo<br />
Oh, come now, don’t tease me.<br />
Dorabella<br />
What’s happ’ning?<br />
Guglielmo<br />
Do not look.<br />
Dorabella<br />
I feel such confusion, but love is to blame.<br />
Guglielmo<br />
(Forgive me, Ferrando,<br />
this cannot be true.)<br />
Guglielmo<br />
And now turn and face me.<br />
Dorabella<br />
What is it?<br />
13<br />
Guglielmo<br />
Look closely, look closely,<br />
rejoice in the sight.<br />
Dorabella and Guglielmo<br />
How happy these changes<br />
of hearts and affections,<br />
what strange new sensations,<br />
what painful delight.<br />
Da Ponte, translation by Anne Ridler<br />
reproduced by permission of ENO Benevolent Fund<br />
from The Opera Ball<br />
Henri and Hortense’s Duet<br />
Henri<br />
This is the clock, she’s not arrived yet,<br />
if she’s delayed, what shall I do?<br />
The trouble is I’ve no experience<br />
with a secret rendezvous!<br />
My first attempt to woo a lady,<br />
I hope she won’t be long.<br />
Oh! How I wonder if she will like me!<br />
What will happen if it all goes wrong?<br />
(looking at the clock)<br />
Where can she be?<br />
Should I stand and wait?<br />
(looking at the clock again)<br />
Oh! I’m on tenterhooks,<br />
how could she be late?<br />
Who, who, who can advise me what to do?<br />
Where on earth should I search?<br />
Has she left me in the lurch?<br />
No, no, no I’ll go exploring high and low<br />
till I find my lady fair.<br />
So let’s start over there!<br />
Hortense (entering, wearing a mask)<br />
This is the clock, no sign of Henri,<br />
but he’ll come… without a doubt,<br />
though it could be a tricky problem<br />
if his cash has all run out!<br />
I’m pretty sure he has no notion<br />
who wrote the billet-doux.<br />
And if I know our young lothario<br />
he’s ripe for a rendezvous!<br />
(looking at the clock)<br />
Where can he be?<br />
I can’t wait all night!<br />
(looking at the clock again)<br />
There he is! Five minutes late,<br />
let’s give him a fright!<br />
(She steps back a bit so she can’t be seen by Henri,<br />
and is able stand behind him.)<br />
Henri<br />
No sign at all,<br />
and I’m at my wits end.<br />
Hortense<br />
Why not turn around, my gallant friend?<br />
Henri<br />
Madame…<br />
Hortense<br />
Monsieur!<br />
Henri<br />
Thank heaven, we meet at last!<br />
Oh! Tell me quickly, who you are!<br />
Hortense<br />
No, no! Not quite so fast!<br />
In a cosy chambre séparée,<br />
come, let’s enjoy a tender tête à tête.<br />
While we sip champagne<br />
our cares will melt away,<br />
and who knows what pleasures await.<br />
Henri (nervously)<br />
In a cosy chambre séparée…<br />
Hortense<br />
Come, let’s enjoy a tender tête à tête…<br />
Henri<br />
While we sip champagne…<br />
Hortense<br />
Our cares will melt away…<br />
Hortense and Henri<br />
And who knows what pleasures await!<br />
Hortense<br />
You’ll follow me?<br />
Henri<br />
Yes, anywhere!<br />
Hortense<br />
Shh! Quiet, or all the world will hear!<br />
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Henri<br />
I’m so in love I may expire!<br />
Hortense<br />
Come let’s enjoy…<br />
Henri<br />
A tête à tête?<br />
Hortense<br />
And after supper…<br />
Henri<br />
What joys await!<br />
Hortense<br />
Hush!<br />
Henri<br />
I’m burning with such desire,<br />
my blood’s on fire,<br />
but here’s a cosy chambre séparée!<br />
Hortense<br />
Where we’ll enjoy a tender tête à tête!<br />
Henri<br />
While we sip champagne…<br />
Hortense<br />
Our cares will melt away<br />
Hortense and Henri<br />
Who knows what pleasures await!<br />
Henri<br />
It’s perfect for a tête à tête!<br />
14<br />
Hortense and Henri<br />
Our chambre séparée!<br />
translation by Nigel Douglas<br />
from Prince Igor<br />
Song of the Polovtsian Maiden<br />
Polovtsian Maiden<br />
Tender flower, starved of water,<br />
drooping, wilting, in the sunlight burning.<br />
Ah. All her leaves are dry and fading,<br />
and her rosy petals wither.<br />
Polovtsian Maiden and Chorus<br />
Ah. But the sunlight now is dying,<br />
and the dew is falling fast.<br />
Soon the earth will bathe in moisture,<br />
and the flower’s sorrow pass.<br />
In the cool and fragrant evening<br />
she will quench her thirst at last.<br />
Chorus<br />
Sunlight dying, night falls fast.<br />
Dew will fall, and the flower drink at last.<br />
As the flower thirsts for water<br />
so a maiden yearns for her lover.<br />
Polovtsian Maiden<br />
She will pine and she will languish,<br />
and desire her lover’s caresses.<br />
Polovtsian Maiden and Chorus<br />
Ah. But the sunlight now is dying,<br />
and the night is falling fast.<br />
15<br />
Soon our lovers will come to join us,<br />
and our sorrows all will pass.<br />
In the cool and fragrant evening<br />
we will quench our thirst at last.<br />
Chorus<br />
Sunlight dying, night falls fast.<br />
Soon we all will quench our thirst at last.<br />
Borodin, translation by David Lloyd Jones<br />
from Die Fledermaus<br />
Orlofsky’s Aria<br />
Orlofsky<br />
Three score and ten the years we men<br />
must suffer here on earth,<br />
but I shall try and try again<br />
to pass the time in mirth.<br />
I ask my friends to join me here,<br />
to while away a night.<br />
But one thing I make very clear<br />
to those whom I invite.<br />
I can’t abide the dreary lout<br />
who makes himself a bore,<br />
and very soon I throw him out,<br />
straight thro’ the nearest door.<br />
When people say ‘That’s surely<br />
a curious thing to do.’<br />
I answer them quite simply<br />
Chacun à son goût.<br />
Vodka!<br />
16<br />
All friends to come and go are free,<br />
and all I’ll entertain,<br />
but those who will not drink with me<br />
shall never come again.<br />
One kind of man I can’t endure,<br />
the kind that’s simply crass.<br />
The chronic pestilential bore<br />
who will not drain his glass,<br />
and very soon I let him know<br />
that my last word is said,<br />
I take the glass and throw it so,<br />
directly at his head!<br />
When people say ‘That’s surely<br />
a curious thing to do.’<br />
I answer them quite simply<br />
Chacun à son goût.<br />
Na zdarovye.<br />
C. Haffner & R. Genée after Meilhac and Halévy,<br />
translation by Leonard Hancock and David Pountney<br />
from Faust<br />
Siébel’s Romance<br />
Siébel<br />
When happy days bring you gladness and laughter,<br />
seeing your joy my sadness disappears.<br />
But if the pain and sorrow follow after,<br />
oh, Marguerite, oh, Marguerite,<br />
I shed a tear to mingle with your tears!<br />
We are two flowers that bloom beside each other;<br />
destiny guides us on a single course.<br />
50<br />
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17<br />
I share your grief as if I were a brother,<br />
oh, Marguerite, oh, Marguerite,<br />
blameless and chaste, my selfless love endures!<br />
Jules Barbier and Michel Carré,<br />
translaton by Christopher Cowell<br />
from The Merry Widow<br />
Valencienne and Camille’s Duet<br />
Valencienne<br />
Calm down, my friend!<br />
Camille<br />
Always so distant!<br />
Valencienne<br />
No ifs and buts, I’m quite insistent!<br />
You’ll simply have to get engaged to Hanna!<br />
Camille<br />
All right, I will.<br />
But why maltreat me in this manner?<br />
Valencienne<br />
Believe me, love, I find it hard.<br />
I don’t enjoy these endless quarrels.<br />
I’d yield to you with no holds barred,<br />
if there were no such thing as morals.<br />
Camille<br />
So does this mean goodbye forever?<br />
Valencienne<br />
It means at least a serious endeavour.<br />
Camille<br />
I’ll do my best, I really will!<br />
Valencienne<br />
I know, my love, I don’t mean to tease.<br />
Camille<br />
Then let me kiss you…<br />
Valencienne<br />
Now don’t make me angry.<br />
Camille<br />
Forgive, forgive me please!<br />
Just as the sun awakens<br />
the sleepy buds of May<br />
so does your beauty inspire me<br />
and drive my fears away.<br />
This seed that you have sown<br />
within my slumb’ring breast,<br />
into a flow’r has grown,<br />
a flow’r forever blest.<br />
Can hearts so newly woken<br />
return to sleep again?<br />
Should words that spring has spoken<br />
dissolve in autumn rain?<br />
This flow’r we both must cherish,<br />
to beautify our lives.<br />
Tho’ all around may perish<br />
the pow’r of love survives.<br />
Valencienne<br />
O Camille!<br />
Camille<br />
Valencienne!<br />
Valencienne<br />
My darling, no!<br />
O sweetheart, why can’t you let me go?<br />
Camille<br />
Then grant me, my angel,<br />
just one parting kiss.<br />
Valencienne<br />
Not out here.<br />
Camille<br />
See where the summer-house awaits,<br />
so suggestive of a rendezvous.<br />
There, where that summer-house awaits<br />
we could be divinely entre nous!<br />
There in the dark of night we could<br />
share love’s delight.<br />
There, where the summer-house awaits<br />
we could kiss the whole night through, we two!<br />
Valencienne<br />
Love calls me… How can I not surrender?<br />
18<br />
Camille<br />
There, where the summer-house awaits<br />
we shall whisper words of tender love.<br />
Valencienne<br />
No one to hear us? My dearest love!<br />
Camille and Valencienne<br />
There in the dark of night<br />
we can share love’s delight.<br />
There, where the summer-house awaits<br />
we shall kiss the whole night through, we two!<br />
Léon & Stein after Meilhac,<br />
translation by Nigel Douglas, © Josef Weinberger Ltd<br />
Stölzel<br />
If you are near I shall go gladly<br />
to Death’s eternal peace and rest.<br />
Ah, with what joy my end shall fill me,<br />
if your sweet hands are there to still me<br />
and close my trusting eyes at last.<br />
translation by David Parry<br />
52<br />
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3079(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3086(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3011(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3017(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3027(2)
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 56<br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3013<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3032<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3049<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3076<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3006<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3010<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3035<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3044
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3052(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3036(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3030(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3023(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3068(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3067
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3007<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3014(3)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3004 <strong>CHAN</strong> 3003<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3005(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3057(3)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3022
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3042(2) <strong>CHAN</strong> 3033(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3000(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3008(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3019(3)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3029<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3070(2)
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3066<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3025(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3073<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3078<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3077
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3054(3) <strong>CHAN</strong> 3038(4)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3045(4) <strong>CHAN</strong> 3060(5)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3065(16)
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> <strong>BOOK</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:31 pm Page 68<br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3083(2) <strong>CHAN</strong> 3089(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3074(2) <strong>CHAN</strong> 3081(2)<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3088
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Opera in English on <strong>Chandos</strong><br />
Steinway Concert Grand provided and maintained by Steinway & Sons, London<br />
Harpsichord supplied by McCartney Music<br />
Harmonium supplied by Cambridge Reed Organs<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3072<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> 3091(2)<br />
Artistic consultant to the Peter Moores Foundation: Patric Schmid<br />
Staging consultant and repetiteur: Charles Kilpatrick<br />
Language and vocal consultant: Ludmilla Andrew<br />
Repertoire consultant: Nigel Douglas<br />
Recording producer Brian Couzens<br />
Sound engineer Ralph Couzens<br />
Assistant engineers Christopher Brooke and Michael Common, and Richard Smoker (track 16)<br />
Editors Rachel Smith, and Jonathan Cooper (track 16)<br />
Operas administrator Sue Shortridge<br />
Recording venue Blackheath Halls, London; 3–10 February 2002; & 27–31 July 1998 (track 16)<br />
Front cover Diana Montague in Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s production of The Marriage of<br />
Figaro (© Mike Hoban/ArenaPAL)<br />
Back cover Session photograph of Walter Weller by Bill Cooper<br />
Design Sean Coleman<br />
Booklet typeset by Dave Partridge<br />
Booklet editor Kara Reed<br />
Copyright OUP (track 1), English National Opera (track 2), English National Opera/Anne<br />
Ridler Estate (tracks 7–9, & 12), tracks 10 & 11 published by Alkor-Edition-Kassel, Bosworth<br />
and Co. Ltd (track 13), Scottish Opera (track 15), Josef Weinberger Ltd<br />
(track 17)<br />
p 1999, 2003 <strong>Chandos</strong> Records Ltd<br />
c 2003 <strong>Chandos</strong> Records Ltd<br />
<strong>Chandos</strong> Records Ltd, Colchester, Essex, England<br />
Printed in the EU<br />
71
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong> Inlay.<strong>qxd</strong> 11/4/07 3:21 pm Page 1<br />
GREAT OPERATIC ARIAS: Diana Montague 2 - Weller<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong>DOS<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong><br />
GREAT OPERATIC ARIAS<br />
1<br />
2<br />
3<br />
4<br />
5<br />
6<br />
7<br />
8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
11<br />
Diana MONTAGUE 2<br />
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<br />
from The Marriage of Figaro<br />
‘Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills me’ 3:07<br />
from The Clemency of Titus<br />
‘Send me, but, my beloved’ 6:39<br />
Christoph Willibald von Gluck<br />
from Iphigenia in Tauris<br />
‘No hope remains in my affliction’ 4:56<br />
with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir<br />
‘I implore thee and tremble’ 3:36<br />
George Frideric Handel<br />
from Alcina<br />
‘Verdant pastures, leafy woodlands ’ 4:18<br />
from Atalanta<br />
‘Noble forests, sombre and shady ’ 2:05<br />
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
‘Blow gently, you breezes’ 3:33<br />
with Orla Boylan soprano • Alan Opie baritone<br />
‘Torture and agony’ 3:39<br />
‘I will take the handsome, dark one’ 3:07<br />
with Orla Boylan soprano<br />
Concert Arias<br />
‘Banished, rejected, God save me!’ 4:50<br />
‘Who knows what feeling’ 3:16<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong>DOS DIGITAL <strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong><br />
12<br />
13<br />
14<br />
15<br />
16<br />
17<br />
18<br />
from Così fan tutte<br />
‘My heart here I give you’ 4:39<br />
with Alan Opie baritone<br />
Richard Heuberger<br />
from The Opera Ball<br />
‘In a cosy chambre séparée’ 5:46<br />
with Helen Williams soprano<br />
Alexander Borodin<br />
from Prince Igor<br />
‘Tender flower, starved of water’ 5:57<br />
with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir<br />
Johann Strauss II<br />
from Die Fledermaus (The Bat)<br />
‘Three score and ten’ 2:46<br />
Charles Gounod<br />
from Faust<br />
‘When happy days’ 2:49<br />
with Philharmonia Orchestra • David Parry (20-bit recording)<br />
Franz Lehár<br />
from The Merry Widow<br />
‘Just as the sun awakens’ 6:55<br />
with Bruce Ford tenor<br />
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel<br />
‘If you are near’ 2:54<br />
TT 75:01<br />
Diana Montague mezzo-soprano<br />
London Philharmonic Orchestra<br />
Walter Weller<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong>DOS RECORDS LTD LC 7038 DDD p 1999, 2003 <strong>Chandos</strong> Records Ltd c 2003 <strong>Chandos</strong> Records Ltd<br />
Colchester . Essex . England<br />
Printed in the EU<br />
GREAT OPERATIC ARIAS: Diana Montague 2 - Weller<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong>DOS<br />
<strong>CHAN</strong> <strong>3093</strong>