Puccini: Tosca: 'Vissi d'arte'

This CD features soprano Amarilli Nizza singing Puccini’s most memorable arias.

The talented Milanese singer outlines Puccini’s heroines with her typical passion and emotional engagement.

Limited edition luxury digipack

1CD + 1DVD in a 6-panel digipack, 36pp booklet with colour photographs and packaging design throughout plus full sung texts and interview-based note in English, German and French.

EMI Classics celebrates the artistry of Angela Gheorghiu and the 150th anniversary of Puccin’s birth with the release of an all-Puccini compilation drawn from five of the charismatic soprano’s earlier recordings. Featured are some of the most popular arias of all time from La bohème, La rondine, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Manon Lescaut and Tosca.

“Angela Gheorghiu delivers some of her finest singing,” wrote BBC Music Magazine about an earlier Puccini disc, the source of several arias in the current compilation. “[She is] one of today’s greatest voices. An instantly recognisable one too, thanks to her vibrant tone and communicative relish of text.” The Evening Standard added, “Gheorghiu is a consummate artist, who brings both superb control and emotional intensity to these performances.”

Angela Gheorghiu’s voice and stage presence have established her as a unique international opera superstar. Born in a small Romanian town, she was destined from early childhood to become a singer and later graduated from the Bucharest Music Academy. In 1992, she made her international debuts at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Zerlina in Don Giovanni, at the Wiener-Staatsoper as Adina in L'elisir d'amore and at the Metropolitan Opera as Mimi in La bohème.

It was at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1994, when she sang her much acclaimed La traviata, that the BBC cleared its schedules to broadcast the opera. At one rehearsal the conductor Sir Georg Solti said: “I was in tears. I had to go out. The girl is wonderful. She can do everything.” Since then Ms Gheorghiu has been in constant demand in opera houses and concert halls around the world.

In 1996, she married the French-Italian tenor Roberto Alagna backstage at the Metropolitan Opera between performances of La bohème in a ceremony conducted by the Mayor of New York. Alagna and Gheorghiu have gone on to perform together in many operas including Roméo et Juliette, L’élisir d’amore, Faust, La rondine, Il tritico, Tosca, Manon and Werther.

In 1998, Ms. Gheorghiu signed an exclusive recording agreement with EMI Classics. In the ten years since then, she has recorded an album of duets and arias with Roberto Alagna and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Puccini’s La rondine with the London Symphony Orchestra, Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette with the Orchestra Capitol du Toulouse and an album of Verdi duets with Roberto Alagna and the Berliner Philharmoniker. Other EMI recordings include Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi from Il trittico, Massenet’s Werther with the London Symphony Orchestra, Massenet’s Manon with l’Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, Bruxelles, Verdi’s Il trovatore with the London Symphony Orchestra and Bizet’s Carmen with l’Orchestre National du Capitol de Toulouse.

In December 2000 Ms Gheorghiu interpreted the title role in the film of Tosca, directed by Benoit Jacqot and released in cinemas around the world to popular and critical acclaim. Opera News (U.S.) wrote, “She is one of the most sensuous Toscas imaginable… Angela Gheorghiu’s passion and beauty are ideal for Tosca, as if the best qualities of Callas’ and Tebaldi’s portrayals had come together.” Ms. Gheorghiu’s subsequent recital album, Casta Diva, was followed by a live recording of her concert with the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Verdi Requiem with the Berliner Philharmoniker and a 2001 recital at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, all released both on CD and DVD. Additional recordings include a Puccini arias recital, a concert for Queen Beatrix’s Silver Jubilee in Amsterdam and a recital at the Teatro alla Scala.

All Ms. Gheorghiu’s CDs have received widespread critical acclaim and have won many prizes, among them Gramophone Awards, Diapason d’Or Awards, Choc du Monde de la Musique in France, the Cecilia Prize in Belgium, Deutsche Schallplattenkritik-Preis and the Echo Award in Germany, the Italian Musica e dischi Foreign Lyric Production Award and the Critics’ Award in the United States. In 2001, at the Classical Brit Awards, Ms. Gheorghiu was named ‘Female Artist of the Year.’

“She has earned her place as one of the best sopranos of her generation and it has been said that her voice is ‘…perhaps the most instantly recognizable and interesting soprano voice of our time… a liquid instrument of great beauty…’. Puccini himself might well have been in agreement. “ Gramophone

“Angela Gheorghiu never sounds better than when singing Puccini…” The Guardian

“Angela Gheorghiu delivers some of her finest singing… one of today’s greatest voices. An instantly recognisable one too, thanks to her vibrant tone and communicative relish of text… too many jewels to list” *****Star review BBC Music Magazine, April 2005

“Gheorghiu is a consummate artist, who brings both superb control and emotional intensity to these performances.” The Evening Standard, March 2005

“This is a considerable addition to this artist’s discography… everything she achieves here is technically assured, thought through and emotionally rewarding… a deeply satisfying traversal of the Puccini canon, well supported by the Milan orchestra and Anton Coppola.” Gramophone, March 2005

“Gheorghiu here shows why she’s the soprano of the moment.” The Observer, “Classical CD of the week”, March 2005

“She is one of the most sensuous Toscas imaginable…Angela Gheorghiu’s passion and beauty are ideal for Tosca, as if the best qualities of Callas’ and Tebaldi’s portrayals had come together” Opera News

In the year of the Beijing Olympics, EMI Classics is pleased to release the debut CD by the Chinese-born soprano Liping Zhang whose interpretations of the belcanto and lyric repertoire have established her as a leading light in today’s opera world. The programme showcases arias by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini, including Vissi d’arte (Tosca), Un bel di (Madama Butterfly), Casta diva (Norma) and The Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Giordano Bellincampi.

Liping Zhang was born in Wuhan, China, some 650 miles south of Beijing. The daughter of a classical musician and a dancer, she studied dance before entering the Wuhan Conservatoire as a voice student. While continuing her studies at the Beijing Conservatoire, she was selected to sing with Plácido Domingo in Tian'anmen Square. Subsequently, Zhang moved to Vancouver, Canada, where, as a member of Vancouver Opera's Young Artist Program, she performed the roles of Mimi (La bohème), Leila (Les pêcheurs de perles), Liù (Turandot), Marguerite (Faust) and Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor) throughout the country. She has made her home in London since 1997.

It was the role of Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly that brought Liping Zhang to international attention. She has sung it to great acclaim at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Opéra de Paris, the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona and the Deutsche Oper, among other houses in the U.S. Europe and Asia: “[In the role of Cio-Cio San,] Liping Zhang is entirely compelling in her every move, and in the perfectly integrated expressive range of her silk-spun soprano.” (The Times). Other roles she has made her own include Mimi and Micaela (Carmen), Violetta (La traviata), Liù (Turandot), Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Gilda (Rigoletto), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Luisa (Luisa Miller), Magda (La rondine) and Tosca.

Closely associated with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where her debut in 2002 caused a sensation, Liping has appeared in its productions of Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Lucia di Lammermoor, La bohème and Carmen. The Sunday Telegraph remarked that: "The biggest round of applause went to the Liù of Liping Zhang, whose sumptuous soprano had us hanging on her every note.” Hugh Canning wrote in Opera Magazine of her performance in La bohème, "I was delighted to encounter her lovely, stylishly sung Mimi.” Of her Lucia, The London Times said, “Liping Zhang gave us a heroine of exceptional eloquence and intensity, no drooping lily but a vital, suffering, deeply touching creature whose élans and agonies raised the work momentarily to a higher plane”.

In Asia, Liping has appeared as Mimi in Hong Kong and as Violetta at the Shanghai International Festival. In the United States, she has appeared as Cio-Cio-San and Mimi at New York City Opera and as Cio-Cio-San with Baltimore Opera.

"With Liping Zhang’s lovelorn Liu … sweet drama and music came rolled into one. Her part’s vocal perils left her unscathed; each word struck home in the heart in a way no one else’s ever did. At the curtain calls, she enjoyed all the fervent applause." The Times

“The soprano …. Clearly has great insight and intelligence, as well as good looks, and her clearly drawn, thoughtful performance held the audience in the palm of her hand. When she sang [Un bel di], you could see the tears being shed. Her performance was a tour-de-force.” Sunday Express

“One of the most delicate, sighing, judiciously used women’s voices one might ever hear.” That was the verdict of the tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, writing in his fascinating study of the leading singers of his time, Voci parallele (Bologna ed. 1977). “Licia Albanese,” he says, “would move on stage purposefully, with precision, painting her tones with careful control of her means and a clear perception of their end”. Audiences were captivated by an effect of modesty, simplicity and tenderness but behind that effect was a solid mastery of her art. He, the senior artist, is full of admiration. But he has a warning: we should not suppose that these fixed, fossilised, mummified objects we call records can convey the individuality, the true character of such singers. So: caveat emptor. Lauri-Volpi had his own way of putting things (that adjective ‘sighing’ surprises us, not so much in itself as in its placing, second among the primary characteristics of the singer he is describing, and one may well object that records, however ‘fixed’, can at least sing to us, which is more than fossils and mummies can do). There is still something in what he says. He is thinking of Albanese’s particular kind of art: that delicate, ‘sighing’ quality which he hears inwardly, summoned up in a memory that is visual as well as aural and which is scarcely to be ‘fixed’, held still. Its essence lies in the moving, breathing individual. He speaks of her strong intuitive faculties. She knew what she was going to do next, vocally and dramatically – but what the audience experienced was the sense of an assured spontaneity. In the theatre you felt that her singing and her movements might take any number of forms: in a recording it will always take one. The living being is caught, pinned-down, captured; and that’s not the way she was.

Extract from the booklet note John Steane, 2008