This is the second release on the Deutsche Grammophon label from soprano Nadine Sierra (leaving out her entry in a "Musical Moments" series), and it marks her as a talent to watch. The title is Sierra's description of herself, growing up in south Florida, checking a VHS tape of Puccini's La bohème out of the library, and experiencing its stars, Teresa Stratas and Renata Scotto. These are good models, and Sierra, in her early thirties when this album appeared in 2022, has a voice with some well-developed and attractive ...
Read More
This is the second release on the Deutsche Grammophon label from soprano Nadine Sierra (leaving out her entry in a "Musical Moments" series), and it marks her as a talent to watch. The title is Sierra's description of herself, growing up in south Florida, checking a VHS tape of Puccini's La bohème out of the library, and experiencing its stars, Teresa Stratas and Renata Scotto. These are good models, and Sierra, in her early thirties when this album appeared in 2022, has a voice with some well-developed and attractive features, most immediately its crisp, brilliant upper register. Here, Sierra enters unaccompanied in "È strano! È strano!" from Verdi's La traviata, as if to point to the sheer beauty of the voice. It's not a powerhouse instrument, but Sierra augments the appeal with a well-chosen program. A casual browser seeing the names of Verdi, Donizetti, and Gounod might take this for a typical early-career album of familiar soprano arias, but it's something different. Sierra performs sequences of...
Read Less
