Renée Fleming has succeeded in bringing Handel's operatic arias to the likes of the Late Show with David Letterman, and that's all to the good. For anyone whose appetite has been whetted by her Handel disc, Sarah Connolly's Heroes and Heroines: Handel would make an ideal follow-up purchase, one that gets a a little deeper into the music than does Fleming's favorite-arias disc. Connolly, a mezzo soprano well known for Handel performances in England, offers selections from just four works: the operas Alcina and Ariodante, the ...
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Renée Fleming has succeeded in bringing Handel's operatic arias to the likes of the Late Show with David Letterman, and that's all to the good. For anyone whose appetite has been whetted by her Handel disc, Sarah Connolly's Heroes and Heroines: Handel would make an ideal follow-up purchase, one that gets a a little deeper into the music than does Fleming's favorite-arias disc. Connolly, a mezzo soprano well known for Handel performances in England, offers selections from just four works: the operas Alcina and Ariodante, the sacred oratorio Solomon, and Hercules, a dramatic work that Handel himself had trouble classifying. In the words of conductor Harry Christophers, "Sarah and I had no desire just to pile together her favourite arias. We wanted to depict not only the close links between opera and oratorio in Handel's works but also equate the position of hero and heroine [two of the roles Connolly takes on are 'pants' parts]." Leaving aside the impossibility of extrapolating any such conclusions from...
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