Pumeza Matshikiza ARIAS

South African lyric soprano Pumeza Matshikiza is one of today’s rising opera stars. An exclusive Decca Classics recording artist, her debut album ‘Voice of Hope’ was released in 2014. Her second album ‘Arias’ will be released in May 2016 showcasing her operatic roles from Purcell to Puccini and newly arranged art songs by Faure, Hahn and Tosti.

Pumeza Matshikiza opened the 15/16 season singing solo concerts in Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Krakow. In October she made her debut with Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome, singing the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Bread, Water and Salt, based on the famous speech by Nelson Mandela. These opening concerts of the Santa Cecilia season were broadcast live by RAI and she will reprise this new work as part of Radio France’s Festival Présence in February 2016, Mikko Franck conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. On the operatic stage Pumeza sings Mimì (La Bohème) and as well as making her role debut as Micaёla (Carmen), both at the Staatsoper Stuttgart where she has been a leading ensemble member for the past three seasons. Her roles in Stuttgart have included Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Ännchen (Der Freischütz), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and Pamina (Die Zauberflöte).

Pumeza’s second album ARIAS is a collection of many of the great opera roles in which Pumeza has blossomed: Mimì in La Boheme; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro; Liù in Turandot; Dido in Dido & Aeneas; Concepcion in L’heure espagnole together with such operatic greatest hits as ‘The Song to the Moon’ from Rusalka and ‘Ebben, ne andro lontano’ from La Wally.

The album also features new arrangements of art songs such as Faure’s ‘Après un rêve’ and Reynaldo Hahn’s A Chloris as well as a Rosa Ponselle favourite, Tosti’s ‘Si tu le voulais’

Also included are arrangements of Sarti’s famous aria ‘Lungi del caro bene’ made by DECCA for Renata Tebaldi in the 1970s and recorded here for the first time since then and an arrangement of the classic song ‘La Paloma’ originally made for Victoria de los Angeles.

Patricia Petibon MELANCOLÍA Spanish Arias and Songs

Spain, and its music and art, have long had a special appeal for Patricia Petibon: “From an early age I was intrigued and fascinated by Spanish culture, by the way the excessive and the subtle are inextricably linked. It glorifies emotions with pride and, at the same time, refinement. It’s a culture that comes from the earth, from the people. Everything about it appealed to me, and in my early recitals I liked to insert some Spanish songs into my American and French programmes. Then, when I went to Madrid to sing in Dialogues des Carmélites, I met the stage director Emilio Sagi, and that led to my opportunity to enter the world of zarzuela. It was Sagi who directed me in Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda in Vienna, where it was wonderful to be singing alongside Plácido Domingo. I found myself surrounded by performers from all kinds of Spanish-speaking backgrounds; they noticed how interested I was in their culture, and that’s how we made a connection, and I learned from real specialists. Spanish artists have a physical sense of the music: for them, it draws its strength from the body, and there I can’t resist making a connection with Baroque music, with dance, of course, and extreme characters – think of Médée or Armide. It also shares the same kind of quality of roughness, of rawness, and voices are used to express emotions, not just to make a lovely sound.”
“I spent a long time thinking about the programme for this disc, creating a mixture of music, and finally I settled on one unifying idea: the feeling of melancholy, which is a reflection of Spain itself. The disc is a journey through different styles, but through folk music as well, which has a strong presence on the disc. The theatrical element is very important, too, and at the centre is the character of Salud in Falla’s La vida breve. She embodies the melancholy of the title, the loss of hope. Melancholy is a balance in life, a sadness that binds us to death. Salud represents the darkest side of melancholy that tends toward tragedy. But this sort of melancholy can also depict the radiance of childhood, of joy and laughter. What I wanted to explore through this disc was the journey between these two poles.”