Tudor Queens (CD) – Diana Damrau

Composer: Gaetano Donizetti
Artists: Diana Damrau, Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Erato
CD Release Date: September 10, 2020

Donizetti returned time and again to the Tudor period in English history, casting three of its most famous queens in a trilogy of bel canto operas. He endowed these strong yet vulnerable women, bound equally by royal duty and human desire, with glorious music of nuanced emotion, boundless freedom and cathartic energy.

Soprano Diana Damrau assumes the crowns of these queens: Anne Boleyn (Anna Bolena), Mary, Queen of Scots (Maria Stuarda), and Elizabeth I (Roberto Devereux). With Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Damrau performs the substantial and climactic final scene of each work.

When Damrau sang Maria Stuarda at the Zurich Opera, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote: “She commands a voice that seems to have no limits. Her coloratura is stunning, her vocal range impressive, and her dynamic shadings are breath-taking. Damrau is in a class of her own.”

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