557109bk Soprano US 26/04/2004 11:54am Page 16 Also Available SOPRANO ARIAS Eugene Onegin • Norma • Don Carlo • Luisa Miller Marina Mescheriakova Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Michael Halász 8.555796 8.555797 8.555920 8.557269 Naxos Radio 40 Channels of Classical Music • Jazz, Folk/World, Nostalgia Accessible Anywhere, Anytime • Near-CD Quality www.naxosradio.com 8.557109 16 557109bk Soprano US 26/04/2004 11:54am Page 2 MARINA MESCHERIAKOVA - Soprano Arias allontani l’adorato oggetto the man I love Eugene Onegin • Norma • Don Carlo • Luisa Miller per cui morte m’attende. and for whom I die. Living in a global world, we rarely consider how many squeezed into the uninspiring bio format, but become 9 VERDI: Ernani, Act I: opera singers in the last fifty years have triumphed, at very interesting when read like an explorer’s logbook. 9 VERDI: Ernani, Act I: Surta è la notte ... Ernani, involami least in part, because of a particular cultural We can say, in fact, that this recital charts the Surta è la notte ... Ernani, involami background which shone through their public image. exploration of the global operatic repertoire by a brave ELVIRA Maria Callas’s blend of Greek, American and Italian and talented young lady from Russia. ELVIRA Night has fallen yet Silva has not returned! culture, for instance, was an essential ingredient of her Composed in 1844 and based on the ultra-romantic Surta è la notte, e Silva non ritorna! Ah, if only he would never return! perceived persona, just as Leontyne Price’s descent, stage success Hérnani by Victor Hugo, Ernani is Ah, non tornasse ei più! That detestable old man with African-American memories of deportation and Verdi’s first opera set in Spain, one of a series Questo odiato veglio, who pursues me like a foul spectre slavery, must have helped with the creation of her including Il trovatore, La forza del destino and Don che quale immondo spettro ognor m’insegue, with his words of love unforgettable Aida. Carlos. All these operas present sharp contrasts col favellar d’amore, makes my love for Ernani ever stronger. Nowadays we can still detect regional varieties of between day and night, love and duty, personal ethics più sempre Ernani mi configge in core. Ernani!… Ernani, rescue me taste when comparing opera programmes in Italy, and religion, young and old, contrasts on which Verdi Ernani!... Ernani, involami from his dreaded embrace. France, Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan, thrived. In Ernani, Ernani, involami Leonora feels like all’aborrito amplesso. Let us flee.. if love but extending comparisons over the last fifty years, a a hostage in the castle of the old aristocrat Silva who Fuggiamo... se teco vivere allows me to live with you, growing harmonization is undeniable almost wants to marry her. She hopes to be kidnapped by the mi sia d’amor concesso, I shall follow you anywhere, except in the former Soviet Union. There bandit hero Ernani: his mountain cave will be heaven, per antri e lande inospiti through inhospitable lands and caverns. things only now start to respond: only in 2002, for compared with her gilded cage. In the closing cabaletta ti seguirà il mio piè. Those caverns will be instance, did the St Petersburg’s Mariinsky stage their she bursts into an outright declaration of love. Un Eden di delizia a Garden of Eden for me. première of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Bellini is a supreme stylist in Italian opera, a strict saran quegli antri a me. Ten years ago the programme of the recital here observer of quintessential elegance. His melodies curl I despise all that does not speak recorded would never have been the choice of a snake-like around long sustained arches, Tutto sprezzo, che d’Ernani of Ernani to my heart. Russian soprano. Until the final days of the Soviet era, accompaniments are kept at a meaningful minimum, non favella a questo core. There is no jewel Russian performers and opera lovers could know Luisa chorus words become pointillist syllables detached by Non v’ha gemma che in amore that can turn love to hate. Miller, Maria Stuarda and La Vestale only from long pauses. With a libretto again based on a French possa l’odio tramutar. Fly, time, and hasten hearsay. Recordings of Callas or Sutherland were play, the lyric tragedy Norma was first staged at La Vola, o tempo, e presto reca the joyous moment of my flight; restricted to a tiny élite of well-connected Scala, Milan, in 1831. Norma is a druid priestess and di mia fuga il lieto istante, fly, time, for delay connoisseurs, and even arias from standard operatic Casta diva is her prayer to the Moon, as she performs vola, o tempo, al core amante is torment to a loving heart repertoire like Ernani or Norma were rarely, if ever, a sacred rite in the woods of Celtic France. It is a è supplizio l’indugiar. heard in their original context. glowing moment of beauty, as she tries to silence the In other words Marina Mescheriakova’s choice of anger of a community under Roman rule, and stifle her All English translations by Susannah Howe programme here is motivated by entirely personal own sense of guilt at her association with her people’s except Track 2 by Philip Taylor reasons, founded on expatriation and cross-cultural enemy. encounters. Life-stories like hers are generally Verdi and his wife loved the city of Genoa, where 8.557109 2 15 8.557109 557109bk Soprano US 26/04/2004 11:54am Page 14 quando il cor ti diedi allora, when I gave you my heart, they often spent the winter at the lavish Palazzo Doria. that is precisely why they are so tragic. Based on qual eri allor, ah, riedi a me!) come back to me as you were then!) An aural counterpart of seascapes he loved and knew Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe, the opera Luisa Miller so well, the aria Come in quest’ora bruna, from the was first staged in Naples in 1849. In Tu puniscimi, o revised 1881 Simon Boccanegra is an epitome of Signore Luisa Miller prays in desperation, as Count 7 DONIZETTI: Maria Stuarda, Act II: 7 DONIZETTI: Maria Stuarda, Act II: Verdi’s mature style. From a terrace in Genoa Amelia Walter’s steward, Wurm, threatens her imprisoned O nube! che lieve per l’aria t’aggiri O nube! che lieve per l’aria t’aggiri looks at the sea at sunrise. She believes herself to be an father, demanding that she renounce the Count’s son, orphan and has flashing memories of her dying mother. Rodolfo, and elope with him. She is forced to renounce MARIA STUARDA MARY STUART She does not know what her future will be, considering Rodolfo, but in the end the lovers die together, after O nube! che lieve per l’aria t’aggiri, O cloud, how lightly you float through the air, her adoptive family’s strict code of honour. Rodolfo has killed Wurm. tu reca il mio affetto, tu reca i sospiri bearing my love and my sorrow Verdi’s opera Don Carlos, based on a French Schiller’s Maria Stuart was popular in nineteenth- al suolo beato che un dì mi nudrì. to the blessed land that once nurtured me. version of Schiller’s dramatic poem, had its first century Italy in its depiction of a Catholic heroine, Deh! scendi cortese, Ah! be kind, performance, with a French libretto, in Paris in 1867. martyred by her Protestant rival. Donizetti’s opera on m’accogli sui vanni, come down and carry me on your wings, The Italian version was first staged at La Scala in 1884. the subject had a difficult early history, banned by mi rendi a quel suolo, m’invola agli affanni! take me to that land, rescue me from my torment! It centres on the conflict between Don Carlos and his royal command in Naples, where it was to have been Ma cruda la nube pur essa fuggì Yet the cruel cloud floats away father, Philip II of Spain, who has married Elisabeth de first staged, and provoking censorship in Milan in 1835 al suolo beato che un dì mi nudrì. to that blessed land that once nurtured me. Valois, originally intended as a wife for Don Carlos. In in a period when the execution of monarchs was a Tu che le vanità Elisabeth de Valois, in a crypt, subject better avoided. In her cavatina O nube! che Nella pace del mesto riposo Elizabeth would break the peace of my sad repose addresses her plea for sympathy to the tomb of lieve per l’aria ti aggiri Mary strolls in the park of vuol colpirmi di nuovo spavento. and burden me with a new fear. Charles V. She had hoped to marry Don Carlo and Fotheringay where she is kept a prisoner. She enjoys Io la chiesi, e vederla non oso, Though I summoned her, I will not see her, herald a new age, but is now the loveless wife of his this brief semblance of freedom: the sight of clouds tal coraggio nell’alma non sento! I am not brave enough! father, who is ready to kill his son. All dreams have moving East stirs memories of her youth. Then she Resti, resti sul trono adorata, Stay, stay on your throne, adored, vanished. She feels ready to die. This black, realises that Queen Elisabeth is hunting nearby, and il suo sguardo da me sia lontan, let not your gaze rest on me, pessimistic scene is central not only to Don Carlo, but has mixed feelings at the prospect of meeting her face- troppo, troppo, son io disprezzata; I am too much scorned; to Verdi’s whole idea of drama.