Miah Persson - Sempre libera (2015) [SACD]

To the audiences of many of the world’s leading opera houses – the Metropolitan, Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper – Miah Persson will be well-known as an infinitely charming Susanna, a beguiling Sophie and a coquettish Fiordiligi. On her latest recording for BIS she takes up a set of different roles, however, as she ventures into the fields of bel canto, opéra lyrique and verismo in the company of Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The range of characters is wide, from a teenage Juliet, eager to live life to the full in Gounod’s Je veux vivre, to Verdi’s Violetta, a courtesan at the height of her powers, who in her scene and aria È strano…tries to convince herself that her freedom is more valuable than love. The programme includes some of the emotional high points in the opera literature (Bellini’s Oh! quante volte, Puccini’s O mio babbino caro), as well as light relief (Norina’s cavatina So anch’io la virtù magica) and moments of pure, unadulterated beauty, such as the Flower Duet from Lakmé and Offenbach’s Barcarolle. In the two latter pieces, Miah Persson is joined by her Swedish colleague, the mezzo-soprano Katarina Karnéus, while the tenor Andrew Staples makes a cameo appearance in Sempre libera, as Alfredo, singing of his love for Violetta below her window.