Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Sings Handel

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Handel
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "On the day before the Fourth of July, the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died. … The voice was primally beautiful, rich in tone and true in pitch, warm and deep and wine-dark. It had a wonderful way of materializing from the instrumental background, as if from the ether. In 'Ombra mai fù,' from Handel’s 'Xerxes,' the first note begins like an extra resonance around the strings. There was something calming and consoling about the mere fact of that sound. 'Time itself stopped to listen,' Richard Dyer wrote in his obituary for the Boston Globe. Central to the singer’s repertory was a group of arias that I think of as her benedictions, her laying on of hands: 'Ombra mai fù,' with which she made an overpowering first impression on New York operagoers in City Opera’s 1997 production of 'Xerxes'; 'As with rosy steps the morn,' from 'Theodora,' which she made into an anthem of beatitude. … Listening closely, you could hear how immaculately crafted these performances were. Their emotional transparency was rooted in the fact that each expressive inflection was joined seamlessly to the next."