Angela Gheorghiu to release Eternamente - The Verismo Album on Warner Classics October 20

Eternamente - The Verismo Album, Angela Gheorghiu's first studio recording in six years, will be released on Warner Classics on October 20, 2017, and will feature performances of opera and song by Italian composers of the generation that followed Verdi. Gheorghiu is singing nearly all the repertoire on this album for the first time, including three duets with tenor Joseph Calleja.

While it was with Verdi’s La traviata that the Romanian-born soprano made her international breakthrough in the 1990s, she has become most closely identified with the operas of Puccini and his contemporaries, especially Tosca, La rondine, Madama Butterfly (a role she has not performed on stage, only on the award-winning Warner Classics recording) and Adriana Lecouvreur. Cilea, the composer of Adriana Lecouvreur does not feature on Eternamente, but Puccini does, along with Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Ponchielli, Boito and the lesser-known Donaudy, Refice and Mascheroni. 

In an interview with Opera magazine, Gheorghiu of the music on the album: “It is like my soul, it is something different, it is not the voice...The voice is also there, it has to be there, and it has had to be prepared – but at that moment of the performance, there is more. The response is never a conscious exaggeration – it is a natural expression. I am never pretending. It is just how I am at that moment.” 

Among the selections on Eternamente are three numbers from Cavalleria rusticana, including the climactic duet in which Santuzza begs Turiddu to stay with her, and the glorious final duet from Andrea Chénier, Giordano’s tale of the French Revolution; an aria from the same composer’s seldom-heard Siberia is also included. Tosca’s ‘Vissi d’arte’, which has become a kind of soprano credo, is complemented by an aria from another of Angela Gheorghiu’s signature Puccini operas, La rondine – but here she appropriates a tenor showpiece, ‘Parigi! È la città dei desideri’. Leoncavallo is represented not by his celebrated Pagliacci, but by his version of La bohème, which was eclipsed by Puccini’s, and by another rarity, I zingari. The composers Donaudy, Refice and Mascheroni are today known almost exclusively for the touching and lovely songs heard on this album, which were favoured by such legendary singers of the early 20^th century as the tenor Enrico Caruso and the soprano Claudia Muzio: ‘O del mio amato ben’; ‘Ombra di nube’ and the song that gives this album its name, ‘Eternamente’. “I want to be remembered eternally through my voice,” says Angela Gheorghiu, “and I want this album to give pleasure to many audiences now and in the future.”

Joining Gheorghiu and Joseph Calleja on Eternamente are the Prague Philharmonia conducted by Emmanuel Vuillaume, a team that made such an important contribution to the success of tenor Bryan Hymel’s 2015 Warner Classics release Héroïque. Also featured are the Prague Philharmonic Choir and, in the extract from Mefistofele, the bass Richard Novák.

 

TRACKLIST CD and DIGITAL

1. Pietro Mascagni: “Regina coeli” from Cavalleria Rusticana           
2. Pietro Mascagni: “Voi Lo Sapete O Mamma” from Cavalleria Rusticana with Prague Philharmonic Choir  
3. Pietro Mascagni: “Tu qui, Santuzza” from Cavalleria Rusticana (duet)* with Joseph Calleja (tenor)
4. Stefano Donaudy: “O Del Mio Amato Ben”                                                
5. Giacomo Puccini: “Vissi d'arte” from Tosca                                                       
6. Arrigo Boito: “Spunta l'aurora pallida” from Mefistofele* with Joseph Calleja (tenor), Richard Novak (bass) and Prague Philharmonic Choir
7. Angelo Mascheroni: “Eternamente”                                                          
8. Licinio Refice: “Ombra di Nube”                                                            
9. Amilcare Ponchielli: “Suicidio” from La Gioconda                          
10. Umberto Giordano: “No! se un pensier torture” from Siberia                      
    Ruggiero Leoncavallo: “Ed Ora Conoscetela” from La Boheme      
11. Ruggiero Leoncavallo: “La Canzone di Fleana” from I Zingari        
12. Giacomo Puccini: “Parigi” from La Rondine                                                
13. Umberto Giordano: “Vicino a te s'acqueta” from Andrea Chenier (duet)*with Joseph Calleja (tenor)  and Emmanuel Villaume (spoken voice)    

 

TRACKLIST LP vinyl

SIDE A

1. Pietro Mascagni:  “Regina coeli” from Cavalleria Rusticana  
2. Pietro Mascagni: “Voi Lo Sapete O Mamma” from Cavalleria Rusticana  
3. Pietro Mascagni: “Tu qui, Santuzza” from Cavalleria Rusticana (duet)*   
4. Stefano Donaudy: “O Del Mio Amato Ben”            
5. Giacomo Puccini: “Vissi d'arte” from Tosca                             

 

SIDE B

1. Arrigo Boito: “Spunta l'aurora pallida” from Mefistofele*
2. Angelo Mascheroni: “Eternamente” 
3. Licinio Refice: “Ombra di Nube”                         
4. Amilcare Ponchielli: “Suicidio” from La Gioconda               
5. Ruggiero Leoncavallo: “La Canzone di Fleana” from I Zingari        
6. Umberto Giordano: “Vicino a te s'acqueta” from Andrea Chenier (duet)*