Release Date: 2013 Duration: 01:20:07 Recorded: Paroisse Notre Dame du Liban, Paris, 6-8 mai 2013
Sabine Devieilhe, the young French lyric-coloratura soprano is a name to watch. Over the 2013-14 Paris season she will star in Delibes’ Lakmé at the Opéra Comique and make her debut at the Opéra as the dazzling Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte. She has been described as a singer “whose upper register, like her virtuosity, appears limitless, while her verbal sense and dramatic engagement are breathtaking”. Both her achievement and her potential were recognised at the 2013 Victoires de la Musique Classique, France’s equivalent of the Grammys, where she won the award in the category for ‘Révélation artiste lyrique’...
Audiophile hi-res 24bit 44.1kHz Release Date: 2013 Recorded: Auditorio Stelio Molo/Studio 2, RSI, Lugano, Switzerland; Chiesa del Sacro Cuore, Bellinzona, Switzerland, 14-21 March 2012 Duration: 01:11:46
Disc reviews by James Manheim "AMG" Russian Julia Lezhneva here shows an admirably gutsy attitude toward developing her repertory, avoiding familiar milestones in favor of an original project. Here she is paired with French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in a program of works by Pergolesi for two high voices, strings, and continuo: the Stabat mater, for which there are plenty of other recordings, and the less-common Laudate pueri dominum and Confitebor tibi Domine. The distinctive feature here -- which might tempt some to use the word "gimmick," but listen before doing so -- is that Lezhneva fashions her voice into a very close copy of Jaroussky's, which is not at all an easy thing to do. Put this together with the precise, rather edgy playing of I Barocchisti under Diego Fasolis, and the result is a rather otherworldly Stabat mater. The tragic quality of the work and its association with Pergolesi's short life are played down (probably a good thing, for Pergolesi wasn't planning to die at age 26 ) in favor of creating a hypnotic globe of sound from which the two singers' voices emerge as flashing accents along with the punchy sound of Fasolis' strings. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it's quite an accomplishment, and the album continues to serve notice of Lezhneva's emergence as a major star in Baroque singing.