An album cover featuring three celebrities who have made history in the musical world: Plácido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli and Ana María Martínez.

A novelty in the recording world, launched by Decca Records on 20^th October, makes itself heard on Romania Music one day in advance. It is a privilege to once again listen to Plácido Domingo in the conductor’s position, leading an ensemble created in 2006 to ensure a season of fantastic, modern new opera from València to Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. The quality of the group “driven” from the very start by the baton of the late conductor Lorin Maazel was always valued as part of the Mediterranean Festival, organized under the leadership of Zubin Mehta.

Manon Lescaut

This version of Giacomo Puccini’s opera – included in the ‘Vote the best classical album of 2014’ campaign, brings to the fore – through its excellent technical clarity – the voice of the Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez in conversation with Andrea Bocelli’s; two voices that have taken different artistic paths in the evolution of their careers, and that starred together once before in the complete recording of the opera Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, which was released in 2006.

Six decades ago, Puccini’s discography announced an arrival considered remarkable by many: Manon Lescaut under Ionel Perlea’s baton, at the music rack of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma ensemble, with soloists Licia Albanese, Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill.

The same title would return to the top of the list in 1959, when the cast of the recording group from Il Teatro alla Scala focused on Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano and Giulio Fioravanti, with Tullio Serafin as conductor.

From the numerous productions of the subsequent years engraving Puccini’s same opera, many remember the one with performances of Luciano Pavarotti alongside Mirella Freni, and James Levine at the lead of the Metropolitan Opera ensemble or – with the same orchestra and conductor - Plácido Domingo together with Renata Scotto… Domigo, the tenor, appeared in albums with this title in the company of two other great sopranos of the past decades: Montserrat Caballé and Mirella Freni, with two British groups, and two Italian conductors (Bruno Bartoletti and Giuseppe Sinopoli). So, the person that the musical world is rediscovering in the last years as a baritone actively on stage (even these days he appears on posters in London, singing in I Due Foscari at the Royal Opera House and the next month performing in Simon Boccanegra at Il Teatro alla Scala) has approached the score of Puccini’s Manon – in order to record this album – from the all-encompassing vision of the conductor.

Andrea Bocelli

It has been two decades since Andrea Bocelli became a shining light in the international music world. It was in 1994 when he bewitched his audience, in San Remo, and it was also 1994 when his first album appeared. A success which launched him into the world of pop music, with his lyrical voice, with a distinctive ease and colour, hailing from that Italian field of music which through its excellence has had great influence over his journey into the world of opera. 

There are many connections between Bocelli’s life and Puccini’s universe. Accidentally or not, his discography has been  marked from the beginning by the presence of Puccini’s titles: from his first complete opera La Bohème, in 2000, to Tosca, in 2003, the singer’s native city being  in Tuscany, close to Lucca (where Puccini was born), and Bocelli’s Italian home is not far away from Puccini’s ‘temple’ in Torre del Lago.

Ana María Martínez

Probably for an audience different from that of concert-goers obsessed with opera repertoire, the name of this excellent and long praised soprano born in Puerto Rico still sounds familiar from the news reports of the Glyndebourne Festival in 2009, where the artist was – without her intention – the heroine of a few dreadful moments, that could have ended a lot worse … While performing the part of Rusalka, during the duet at the end of act I (a moment charged with great sensibility and emotional involvement), she fell into the orchestra pit, the victim most affected being – in the end – just one violinist, the artist being herself injured and replaced for the rest of the performance.

Distinct vocal dimensions, a fluency and facility of the musical discourse in the very emotional writing of Puccini’s pages – these are the main titles of the Opera in Famous Performances on 19^th October, starting at 19:30, on Romania Music.