About This Item
Sonya Yoncheva has established herself as a much sought-after and celebrated soprano with engagements at the foremost opera houses. This season Sonya Yoncheva will be again one of the big stars at the Metropolitan Opera. She will make her debut in the title role of Verdi's InchLuisa MillerInch and Puccini's InchToscaInch and will also take on the title role of InchLa BohèmeInch. Her performances will be broadcast in cinemas worldwide. For her third album for Sony Classical, the Operalia-winning soprano, Yoncheva turns her attention to the work of a composer for whom many feel she has always had a special affinity Giuseppe Verdi. Yoncheva began her career in the world of baroque music, closely supported and encouraged by the early-music conductor William Christie (This bore fruit in her second Sony , a successful album of arias by Handel). But it was always clear that the remarkable sound of the young artist also included within it the potential of a big, luscious, powerful voice ideal for Verdi's most demanding roles - a rare voice type known as a 'dramatic lyric' soprano. This voice requires an extraordinary combination of talents a superb control of breathing, an ease of tone over a large range, enormous reserves of power, a variety of vocal colours, and - most elusive of all - an instinct for Italian musical phrasing. As audiences and critics have discovered in her performances of Rigoletto and Don Carlos Sonya Yoncheva is one such soprano. After her triumph in La traviata, the newspaper Die Welt even declared that 'she is the finest Violetta The music of Verdi forms the lodestone of most dramatic-lyric sopranos, and Yoncheva includes arias from some of the composer's rarely-performed operas in addition to some of the most beloved ones. From the early operas, she sings arias from Nabucco (1842), Attila (1846), Luisa Miller (1849) and Stiffelio (1850). The latter
