Composer: Christoph Willibald Gluck, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Anne Sofie von Otter
Orchestra: English Concert
Conductor: Trevor Pinnock
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Archiv
Catalogue: 4492062
Release: 1997
Size: 305 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K.492
01. Act 2 “Voi che sapete”
Gluck: Paride ed Elena
02. Act 1 “O del mio dolce ardor”
Mozart: Don Giovanni, ossia Il dissoluto punito, K.527
03. Act 2 In quali eccessi, o numi
Gluck: Alceste
04. Act 2 Non vi turbate, no
Mozart: Lucio Silla, K.135
05. Act 1 “Dunque sperar poss’io” / “Il tenero momento”
Mozart: La finta giardiniera, K.196
06. Act 2 No. 18 Aria: Dolce d’amor compagna
Haydn: Il mondo della luna
07. Act 1 “Una donna come me”
Haydn: Orlando paladino
08. Act 1 “Ad un guardo, a un cenno solo”
Mozart: Don Giovanni, ossia Il dissoluto punito, K.527
09. Act 1 “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto”
Mozart: Don Giovanni, ossia Il dissoluto punito, K.527
10. Act 2 “Vedrai, carino”
Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice (Orphée et Eurydice)
11. Act 2 Arioso: “Che puro ciel, che chiaro sol”
Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice (Orphée et Eurydice)
12. Act 3 Aria: “Che farò senza Euridice?”
Haydn: La fedeltà premiata
13. Act 1 “Deh soccorri un’infelice”
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito, K.621
14. Act 2 “Ecco il punto, oh Vitellia” – “Non più di fiori”
For the sake of both vocal and family well-being, Anne Sofie von Otter has always followed the wise course of self-rationing in opera. This disc, an entirely personal selection of arias from the Viennese Classical period, means all the more to her including, as it does, arias sung by dramatic and passionate women ‘most of whom’, she admits in the accompanying notes, ‘I have never performed on stage and, alas, probably never will’. They include La clemenza di Tito’s Vitellia, whom she has irresistibly observed in her own role as Sesto: here she at last voices her guilt at implicating Sesto in her crime of passion, and expresses that unique fusion of sadness and desperation of ‘Non più di fiori’ in the eloquent company of Colin Lawson’s basset horn, followed by Gluck’s Alceste, again keenly observed by von Otter in a comprimario role. Gluck’s Orfeo is familiar to her at first hand, and here The English Concert’s introduction to the recitative preceding ‘Che farò’ creates exquisitely the ‘nuova serena luce’ of the Elysian fields against which her grief is the darker, the more plangent. The Mozart arias evoke memorable stage and concert performances by von Otter: a Cherubino whose phrasing combines with that of the wind soloists to create the warm breath of burgeoning sensuality in ‘Voi che sapete’; a Cecilio (Lucio Silla) whose coloratura captures the thrilled anticipation of that ‘tenero momento’; and a moustachioed Ramiro (La finta giardiniera) who pays ecstatic cantabile tribute to the power of love.