Georges Bizet (1838–1875) Camille Saint-Saëns Carmen Samson et Dalila Libretto: Henri Meilhac & Ludovic Halévy 7 “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” (Dalila) 5:19 1 Seguidilla: “Près des remparts de Séville” (Carmen) 2:04 Николай Римский-Корсаков Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) [Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov] (1844–1908) Samson et Dalila Царская Невеста [The Tsar’s Bride] Libretto: Ferdinand Lemaire Die Zarenbraut · La Fiancée du Tsar 2 “Printemps qui commence” (Dalila) 5:37 Libretto: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov & Ilya Tyumenev 8 Lyubasha’s Song: “Снаряжай скорей” [Snaryažay skorey] (Lyubasha) 4:26 Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Il trovatore Georges Bizet Libretto: Salvadore Cammarano Carmen 3 “Condotta ell’era in ceppi” (Azucena) 4:33 9 Habanera: “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Carmen, chorus) 4:14 Don Carlo Libretto: Joseph Méry & Camille du Locle Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) Italian translation: Achille de Lauzières & Angelo Zanardini Cavalleria rusticana 4 Veil Song: “Nei giardin del bello” (Eboli, Tebaldo, chorus) 4:15 Libretto: Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti & Guido Menasci 10 “Voi lo sapete, o mamma” (Santuzza) 3:01 Jules Massenet (1842–1912) Werther Charles Gounod (1818–1893) Libretto: Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet & Georges Hartmann Sapho 5 Letter Aria: “Werther … Je vous écris de ma petite chambre” (Charlotte) 7:00 Libretto: Émile Augier 11 “Où suis-je? … Ô ma lyre immortelle” (Sapho) 6:50 დიმიტრი არაყიშვილი [Dimitri Arakishvili] (1873–1953) თქმულება შოთა რუსთაველზე Giuseppe Verdi [The Legend of Shota Rustaveli] Don Carlo Libretto: Aleksandre Khakhanashvili 12 “Ah! più non vedrò … O don fatale” (Eboli) 4:16 6 თამარ მეფის კავატინა [Cavatina of King Tamar] (Tamar) 2:23 ANITA RACHVELISHVILI mezzo-soprano BARBARA MASSARO soprano (4) CORO DEL TEATRO MUNICIPALE DI PIACENZA (4/9) CORRADO CASATI chorus master ORCHESTRA SINFONICA NAZIONALE DELLA RAI GIACOMO SAGRIPANTI conductor ANITA RACHVELISHVILI DÉBUT t was the sort of début operatic dreams are made of. Aged just 25, an unknown Georgian mezzo-soprano stepped out on the stage of one of the world’s great opera houses, La Scala, Milan, to sing Carmen. Daniel Barenboim was the conductor and the superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann sang opposite her as Don José. It was the young Anita Rachvelishvili’s first performance at the theatre and her début in the role of Bizet’s famous seductress. It Ilaunched her on a glittering international career that has since seen her sing Carmen, and a wide variety of other great mezzo roles, on all the world’s great stages. What makes the story even more astonishing, however, is that Rachvelishvili had first discovered opera only eight years earlier. She comes from a musical family in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, her mother a ballerina and her father a bass player in a rock band. “We were all connected to music,” she says. “I started playing the piano when I was six years old and was also singing all the time – but jazz, soul and blues, not opera.” The voice grew, though, and a friend of the teenage Rachvelishvili’s father recognized her potential and suggested that she might try opera. Her first singing teacher sent her, aged 17, to see an opera for the first time: Don Giovanni at the Tbilisi State Opera. “It was a completely different world,” she remembers, “a completely different sort of very beautiful music. I was very impressed and decided to give it a try.” She entered the conservatoire in Tbilisi and joined the company of the State Opera there briefly. Then she auditioned for the Accademia Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the specialist academy attached to the city’s famous opera house. “That year, in 2007, there were almost 200 people auditioning,” she recalls, “and they were taking only seven or eight. I arrived and I was very nervous. Nobody had heard of me, and all the other singers there had already been doing competitions around the world.” There was an additional pressure, as well, in that her parents had needed to take out a loan against their house for her just to travel to the audition. This meant that, when she was accepted, there was no choice but to grasp the opportunity, to work as hard as possible and make a success of it. “I have to be in the Academy,” she remembers saying to herself. “I have to take that scholarship they give me, and I have to finish it. Then I have to become a singer who has a career.” That career started earlier than anyone could have expected when she was summoned to audition for Barenboim, who was looking for a mezzo-soprano to sing the small role of Mercédès in a forthcoming new production of Carmen. “I just went to the theatre, completely not ready for the audition, dressed as normal for the Academy. I started singing Carmen’s ‘Habanera’ for 3 Maestro Barenboim. Then he asked me to do the ‘Seguidilla’, then the ‘Chanson bohème’. Then going around doing crazy stuff, being violent, but she’s not like that! She’s a very troubled, very he wanted to hear the Card Scene, and I did that too – I had all the role in my pocket, because fragile woman.” I had studied it in Georgia.” Another larger-than-life Verdi role is that of Princess Eboli in Don Carlo, a role that Rachvelishvili Then he suggested she sing the final duet. “Maestro, I don’t have a tenor!” she replied. “Oh no, is due to tackle in a couple of years’ time, and whose two arias are included here. The challenge, you do have a tenor,” Barenboim joked, “he’s sitting right there behind you!” Only then did she she explains, comes in striking the balance between the delicate Veil Song and the more dramatic realize that Jonas Kaufmann had been watching the audition too. The conductor was clearly “O don fatale”: “Both arias are written perfectly, but to manage to control your voice exactly the impressed. It would be a pity to have her sing Mercédès, he told her afterwards, so she would way you need for those arias, that is the most difficult thing.” be the cover for Carmen herself. Then, a couple of months later, came the call from the theatre: Barenboim wanted her to sing Carmen instead. Rachvelishvili has chosen arias from two more French roles. “Ô ma lyre immortelle” from Gounod’s Sapho is a famous number from a rarely performed opera based on the life of the ancient Greek She found it a difficult decision, she admits. “But I like taking risks, so I said ‘yes’! I knew that poet. “It’s beautiful but difficult to sing,” says Rachvelishvili, “but I don’t know if I’ll ever get the I would work hard, that I would give anything to make it at that level.” Accordingly she studied chance to perform the opera.” She describes the role of Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther – whose the role completely afresh in France, discovering that a lot in the way Carmen was traditionally Letter Aria is included here – as “beautiful and a dream to sing. And I hope that’s going to come sung was not to be found in the score. “I was told not to listen to any recordings, because it true one day!” has to be something that you made, from your musicality, from what you’re capable of doing.” Another new role included here is that of Santuzza in Mascagni’s one-act Cavalleria rusticana. It’s Rachvelishvili has sung the role more than 300 times since that triumphant 2009 début at La Scala, an opera Rachvelishvili will perform for the first time in 2018, and with which she feels a personal and continues to find new interpretative possibilities and approaches. That first performance connection. “The first time I watched it live, I cried from beginning to end,” she recalls. “It’s about also led to her singing Lyubasha in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, and she includes the Sicily, about all the shame women are made to feel, and about love. And all those things are very character’s remarkable a cappella aria here on her début disc. “That role is very special for me,” close to Georgian traditions, too, where there’s still all that rigidity, all those discussions and she says, “because it was the second big production I did with Maestro Barenboim, a couple of questions about women.” years after I did the Carmen at La Scala. It was a very important step for my career.” The role of women is very differently portrayed, however, in The Legend of Shota Rustaveli, There was also no doubt that Carmen should feature on her début recording, as it does in the completed in 1919 by the Georgian composer Dimitri Arakishvili and based on the folk legend built form of the “Seguidilla” and “Habanera”. The rest of the selection showcases roles and arias around the figure of Tamar the Great, a woman who, as Rachvelishvili explains, ruled Georgia, that are especially close to Rachvelishvili’s heart, allowing her to explore – and reassess – the from 1184 to 1213, less as a queen than as an independent female king. “She was a very strong dramatic side of the mezzo-soprano repertoire. These are strong women, but they are characters woman, very smart and very clever. We are very proud that we had this huge personality in that she has set out to examine afresh – much as she did with Carmen. Many of them have been our history, at a time when women had no roles, no power, no importance at all. She’s a good reduced to stereotypes over the years; Rachvelishvili seeks to portray them as realistic, complex example for Georgian woman today.