8
Mar
“For me, Strauss is one of the greatest composers,” Diana Damrau has said. “The way he handles the soprano voice is a joy. And to be able to sing his music with my voice feels like coming home.” The centrepiece of this album of Strauss songs is the sublime Vier letzte Lieder, in which Damrau – born and trained in Bavaria – joins forces with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its long-standing Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons, in what was to become his final recording. Her partner in a tempting and diverse selection of songs with piano is Helmut Deutsch. “Not only is Strauss’s music gorgeous,” says Damrau, “there’s the way he combines words and notes – and the psychology.”
Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann, reigning stars of opera, are also consummate interpreters of song. In early 2018, with master pianist Helmut Deutsch, they performed Hugo Wolf’s multi-faceted Italienisches Liederbuch in 12 cities around Europe. “One couldn’t ask for more,” wrote the Telegraph after their London concert, which took place two days before this live recording was made in the German city of Essen.
This album is available for pre-order via Amazon.de and will be released in Germany on January 11, and on Amazon.com on January 25, 2019.
Label: C Major Entertainment/Naxos
Diana Damrau, Carlos Álvarez, Golda Schultz, Markus Werba
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Frederic Wake-Walker, director
For the 225th anniversary of Mozart’s death, Teatro alla Scala presents a new production of Le nozze di Figaro, entrusted to the extraordinary director Frederic Wake-Walker. He focusses the action of the piece on the instability of love: Le nozze di Figaro presents us with the impossibility of a world where everyone is loving and forgiving. In charge of the musical direction is one of the finest Mozart conductors of our times, Franz Welser-Möst, who appears for the first time at La Scala. The main roles are played by Diana Damrau (Countess), Marianne Crebassa (Cherubino), Golda Schultz (Susanna), Markus Werba (Figaro) and Carlos Álvarez (Count).
Feb 17, 2020
This spring, Diana Damrau makes her debut as Amalia in Verdi’s I Masnadieri at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Fairly unknown, this opera’s plot is bursting under high-pressure from the very beginning.
Based on Schiller’s The Robbers, Verdi wrote I masnadieri upping the stakes from the play: instead of combating social grievances, in the opera all the characters struggle to keep up with a family story that is laden with early loss and brotherly rivalry, with suppressed desire and misunderstood needs. The political conflict of The Robbers is intensified on the personal level in Verdi’s opera.
OPERA NEWS Editor in Chief F. Paul Driscoll today announced the recipients of the fifteenth annual OPERA NEWS Awards. This year’s honorees — soprano Diana Damrau, baritone and stage director Thomas Allen, tenor Javier Camarena, countertenor and producer Anthony Roth Costanzo and soprano Ana María Martínez — will be fêted at a black-tie gala on Sunday, April 5, 2020, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. A musical tribute will also be performed in honor of the recipients.
Deputy Editor Henry Stewart observes: “As a stage performer, Diana Damrau is always in the moment, using her theatrical acumen, buttery soprano, effortless coloratura and idiosyncratic, text-focused phrasing to vitalize the characters she sings—and the art form itself.”
Jan 18, 2020
On January 31, Diana Damrau releases her latest album of Richard Strauss Lieder, which marks her latest collaboration with pianist Helmut Deutsch and her last with the late Mariss Jansons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Jansons tragically passed away after their performance together at Carnegie Hall on November of 2019. The album is already available for pre-order on Amazon and iTunes.
“For me, Strauss is one of the greatest composers,” Diana Damrau has said. “The way he handles the soprano voice is a joy. And to be able to sing his music with my voice feels like coming home.” The centrepiece of this album of Strauss songs is the sublime Vier letzte Lieder, in which Damrau – born and trained in Bavaria – joins forces with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and its long-standing Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons, in what was to become his final recording. Her partner in a tempting and diverse selection of songs with piano is Helmut Deutsch. “Not only is Strauss’s music gorgeous,” says Damrau, “there’s the way he combines words and notes – and the psychology.”
“the leading coloratura soprano in the world”
– New York Sun
Soprano Diana Damrau has been performing on the world’s leading opera and concert stages for two decades. Her vast repertoire spans both lyric soprano and coloratura roles including the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor (La Scala, Bavarian State Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House), Manon (Vienna State Opera, Metropolitan Opera) and La Traviata (La Scala, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Opéra national de Paris and Bavarian State Opera) as well as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte (Metropolitan Opera, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House, Bavarian State Opera).
Invested as Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera (2007) and holder of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art (2010), Diana Damrau has forged close links with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich where she has been seen in new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor, Les contes d’Hoffmann (the four heroines), Ariadne on Naxos (Zerbinetta), The Silent Woman (Aminta), Die Zauberflöte (Queen of the Night) and Rigoletto (Gilda). Other high profile appearances have included La Traviata (Violetta), Der Rosenkavalier (Sophie), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Konstanze) as well as Le Nozze di Figaro (Susanna and Contessa d’Almaviva).
