Maestro Villaume conducted the Orchestre et Choeur de l’Opéra National de Lyon for Diana Damrau’s new “Grand Opera” album of arias by Meyerbeer, to be released by Warner Classics in May 2017.

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Giacomo Meyerbeer, the master of Parisian grand opera, was hugely successful in his time and a major influence on Verdi and Wagner. His music has fascinated Diana Damrau since her student days. With her brilliant coloratura, lyricism and dramatic power, the soprano rises triumphantly to the vocal and expressive challenges of arias from 10 of his operas, singing in French, Italian and German. Two of the arias receive their world premiere recording with this album.

The idea of a Meyerbeer album has been close to Diana Damrau’s heart since she first recorded for Erato back in 2006. She became fascinated by the composer’s music as a student in Würzburg, when she was invited to perform his cantata Gli amori di Teolinda. “I immersed myself in Meyerbeer’s world,” she explains, “and was excited by his multifaceted writing for the voice, by his orchestral colours, his theatrical instincts, the powerful and varied way in which he expresses emotion, his splendid melodies and, last but not least, his ability to capture precisely the right ‘national style’. If you compare his Italian, German and French works, it is like listening to three different composers.”