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Rossini: Messa di Gloria - 3. Gloria: Laudamus te
07:03
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Rossini: Messa di Gloria - 4. Gloria: Gratias agimus tibi
07:22
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Rossini: Messa di Gloria - 6a. Gloria: Qui tollis peccata mundi
03:05
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Rossini: Messa di Gloria - 7. Gloria: Quoniam tu solus sanctus
07:40
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℗© 1992 Universal International Music B.V.

Artist bios

A coloratura soprano who in the late 1990s became one of the most noticed new names on the international operatic circuit, Sumi Jo was a discovery of the flamboyant German conductor Herbert von Karajan. A striking beauty, she owed her initial celebrity in part to video: the conductor arranged for her a prominent role in his "Karajan in Salzburg" video production.

Sumi Jo was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1962. After studying both voice and piano from a young age, she dropped out of Seoul National University in 1983 to travel to Italy for study at the Accademia di Santa Cecelia in Rome. Among her teachers were Carlo Bergonzi and Grannila Bonelli. She graduated in 1985, with a concentration in keyboard as well as voice, and over the next few years took top voice competition prizes in several countries, attracting the attention of Karajan. Her operatic debut came as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1986, and two years later she performed in Un Ballo in Maschera under Karajan's baton. In the 1990s she was ubiquitous, singing in major capitals on nearly every continent. She won a Grammy award in 1993, and among her many recordings, her several portrayals of Mozart's vocally treacherous Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte have been especially noteworthy. The 1999-2000 season has seen Sumi Jo embarking on a major tour of Australia and her native Far East, and she plans to return to New York to reprise her debut Rigoletto role. ~ All Music Guide

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Ann Murray is one of the leading mezzo-sopranos on the international scene. (She is not related to the famous Canadian popular music singer with a similar name.) The Irish-born singer was educated at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where she studied with Frederic Cox. She bases her career in London, where she sings regularly at the English National Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. With the former she has sung Charlotte, Rosina, Beatrice, Xerxes, and Ariodante. At the Royal Opera House she has sung Cherubino, Dorabella, Rosina, Oktavian, and Donna Elvira and has been given roles in the openings of new productions of Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortiléges; Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos; Mozart's Idomeneo, Mitridate Rè de Ponto, and Così fan tutte; Rossini's Moses in Egypt; Wagner's Götterdämmerung; and Handel's Alcina and Giulio Cesare.

Other opera houses where she has appeared are the major houses of Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Zurich, and Cologne, La Monnaie of Brussels, the Opéra de Paris, the Metropolitan Opera of New York, and the Chicago Lyric Opera. At La Scala in Milan, she has sung Donna Elvira, Sextus, Dorabella, and Cherubino under the baton of Riccardo Muti.

At the end of the century, she was invited to make frequent appearances at the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, and the Salzburg Festival. In one or more of these houses, in addition to several of the roles already mentioned, she was to sing Oktavian (Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier), Nicklaus in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and the title role of La Cenerentola under such conductors as Maazel, Muti, Levine, Chailly, and Cambreling. She also planned to sing Maria Stuarda for the English National Opera and Alceste for the Netherlands Opera.

She has sung in orchestral concerts with many major orchestras, including the Orchestre de Paris under Rafael Kubelik, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Muti, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Solti. Her concert appearances also include all the major symphony orchestras of the British Isles under many leading conductors, including both the first nights and the last nights of the BBC Promenade Concerts.

She is also an esteemed solo recitalist. She is a founding member of Graham Johnson's organization The Songmakers' Almanac. She has sung at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, and Munich Festivals, as well as giving recitals in Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Dresden, Zürich, Frankfurt, Madrid, London, Dublin, and Vienna (both the Konzerthaus and the Musikverein).

She has recorded for Hyperion and other labels in a wide variety of music from her concert and recital repertoire as well as several operas. These include Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas under Harnoncourt, Dorabella under Levine, Cherubino under Muti, Despina under Rattle, Hansel under Colin Davis, Sextus under Harnoncourt, and Donna Elvira under Solti. Her recital recordings include songs of Bizet and Gounod, as well as entries in Graham Johnson's complete Schubert series.

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Araiza's father was a tenor and also the chorus master of the Mexico Opera, so Araiza was exposed to opera at an early age. In 1966, he studied organ at the Escuela de Música in Mexico City, and, to fulfill a curricular requirement, he reluctantly joined the choir, though he was not particularly interested in vocal music. He actually began as a bass, but a teacher found that he had an exceptionally good upper register, with a natural high B flat. Under Irma Gonzalez, he developed his voice into a lyric tenor with a strong ring. He made his operatic debut in 1970 as the first prisoner in a concert version of Beethoven's Fidelio, sang his first major performance as a soloist in Haydn's Creation in 1973, and in the fall of 1974, competed in the ARD Singing Competition in Munich, Germany. While he won only the third prize, the jury recognized his potential as a Mozart singer, and he was given the chance to audition for the Karlsruhe Staatstheater Mozart project, a multi-year full Mozart cycle. He was offered a two-year contract with an option for the third year, but he had not studied Mozart before to any great extent, so Anton Dermota and Richard Holm (two of the three judges) both took him under their wing, training him in Mozart style. He enjoyed great success as Tamino and Ferrando.

In 1979, Herbert von Karajan took a special interest in Araiza's career, and chose him for Tamino in his new recording of Die Zauberflöte. In 1981 he made his U.S. debut, and in 1983, made his Met debut. During the mid-'80s, however, Araiza began to take on slightly heavier roles, but when he started to sing such spinto and dramatic roles as Alvaro in Verdi's La forza del destino, Cavaradossi in Tosca, and even Lohengrin, his voice lost much of its flexibility, becoming rather leathery in timbre as well by the 1990s. In 1996, he was scheduled to sing performances of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Metropolitan, but his contract was bought out by mutual agreement. Araiza still performs those lighter roles in which he is comfortable, and also spends much of his time teaching.

Some of his early recordings, the Mozart Così fan tutte under Neville Marriner (Philips) and the Rossini Barbiere di Siviglia, also under Marriner (Philips), are still considered benchmarks for post-Wunderlich and Gedda tenors.

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Basses are not typically the superstars of the operatic world, but Samuel Ramey is an exception to that rule. Though his voice does not have the sonority of a Nicolai Ghiaurov or a Boris Christoff, his instrument is remarkable for its easy flexibility -- dealing effortlessly with long runs, ornaments, and leaps -- and its brilliant intensity. His stage presence (particularly when portraying "devil" figures) is vivid and lively, aided by an attractive physique and a dancer-like grace. He and the various stage directors have tended to emphasize these aspects, giving rise to the comment that "Ramey's Mefistofele has everything one could desire, except possibly a shirt."

While he was attending Kansas State University, Ramey's interest in operatic music was awakened when a friend suggested that he audition for a summer program at Colorado's Central City Opera. He was accepted and got to sing in the chorus for two productions. Soon after, he began to study avidly, first at Wichita State University and later in New York with Armen Boyajian; he made his professional debut in 1973 as Zuniga in Bizet's Carmen at the New York City Opera. His Glyndebourne debut was in 1976 as Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

A 1980 performance of Rossini's Semiramide at Aix-en-Provence, opposite Monserrat Caballé and Marilyn Horne, made him an overnight sensation. For critics and audience alike, this new bass with the ideal power and agility was a welcome surprise. His La Scala debut came the next year as Mozart's Figaro, followed by his Covent Garden debut in 1982, in the same role. In 1984, he made his Metropolitan debut as Argante in Rinaldo. He has been a regular at the Pesaro Rossini Festival. Many Rossini bass roles had become "character parts" over the years -- performed more in parlando than actually sung (partly for comedy, partly because of the extreme difficulty of the roles) -- and Ramey determined to sing these as written. His instinctive gift for comedy without clownishness has served him well in these parts, as well as in his various diabolical roles, most of which contain a good deal of sardonic humor. He performs arias from his darker roles in his "Date with the Devil" concerts.

Later in his career, as his voice became darker and weightier, Ramey slowly began to drop the florid Rossini and Handel roles in favor of the heavier Verdi roles, such as King Philip in Don Carlo, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, and even Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. He has also performed twentieth century repertoire widely, especially noted for his Reverend Olin Blitch in Floyd's Susannah and Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

Ramey is the most recorded bass in history, with dozens of recordings to his credit. These range from nearly all of his operatic roles to solo recordings of arias and song, and even some musical theater. He has appeared on the TV series Live from Lincoln Center and in TV and video recordings of many of his roles.

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