Midsummer Night (2009)

performed by Andrew Staples (tenor), Kate Royal (soprano), Thomas Allen (baritone), Crouch End Festival Chorus (choir, chorus), English National Opera Orchestra, Edward Gardner (conductor)
composed by André Messager, Antonin Dvorák, Benjamin Britten, Bernard Herrmann, Carlisle Floyd, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Lehár, Igor Stravinsky, Samuel Barber, William Alwyn, William Walton

For her second solo album for EMI, lyric soprano Kate Royal has created an ambitious program: songs of love or longing from twentieth century opera and operetta, excluding the obvious choices of Puccini or Strauss, and more than half are in English. She has come up with a gorgeous selection of arias, ranging from the very popular ("Song to the Moon" from Dvorák's Rusalka and "The trees on the Mountain" from Floyd's Susannah) to the very obscure (the rhapsodic "Midsummer Night" from Alwyn's Miss Julie, Rossignol from ... Read More

For her second solo album for EMI, lyric soprano Kate Royal has created an ambitious program: songs of love or longing from twentieth century opera and operetta, excluding the obvious choices of Puccini or Strauss, and more than half are in English. She has come up with a gorgeous selection of arias, ranging from the very popular ("Song to the Moon" from Dvorák's Rusalka and "The trees on the Mountain" from Floyd's Susannah) to the very obscure (the rhapsodic "Midsummer Night" from Alwyn's Miss Julie, Rossignol from Messager's Monsieur Beaucaire, and "I have dreamt" from Bernard Hermann's Wuthering Heights). Some of the arias are not infrequently heard in recital, including "Vilja-Lied" from Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe, "Do no utter a word" from Barber's Vanessa, and "Mariettas Lied" from Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, but the rest are rarely sung apart from the complete opera, and it's a pleasure to hear how effective they are in a recital setting. This is especially true of two stunning Britten excerpts,... Read Less