Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore has gathered four attractive works for soprano and orchestra, three related to tragic queens, and one romantically exotic. Barber wrote Andromache's Farewell for Martina Arroyo just before he turned to Antony and Cleopatra, and the concert aria sounds in some ways like a study for the opera. Its dramatic tone particularly foreshadows Cleopatra's death scene, but with an even more intensely anguished post-Romantic expressionism. Berlioz's treatment of the Egyptian queen's death (La mort de Cl ...
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Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore has gathered four attractive works for soprano and orchestra, three related to tragic queens, and one romantically exotic. Barber wrote Andromache's Farewell for Martina Arroyo just before he turned to Antony and Cleopatra, and the concert aria sounds in some ways like a study for the opera. Its dramatic tone particularly foreshadows Cleopatra's death scene, but with an even more intensely anguished post-Romantic expressionism. Berlioz's treatment of the Egyptian queen's death (La mort de Cléopâtre) has many lovely moments, but is unconventionally structured and dramatically somewhat odd; it's easy to see why the judges for the Prix de Rome didn't know what to make of it, withholding any award the year Berlioz entered it in the competition. Ravel's Schéhérazade, the most familiar work on the CD, is a sumptuous, exotic, and perfumed setting of three poems by Tristan Klingsor. Britten's solo cantata Phaedra, one of his last completed pieces, uses excerpts from pivotal...
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