Sony Classical Releases Soprano Sonya Yoncheva’s New Album Rebirth
First Single Out Now
Monteverdi: ‘Oblivion soave’ from L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Listen Here | Watch the Video Here
Album Release Date: March 12, 2021
The lockdown of Spring 2020 allowed Sonya Yoncheva and conductor Leonardo García Alarcón to make the album they had been considering for ten years. Rebirth is a message of hope but also the exploration of an idea: that silence and inactivity are the best prelude to creative renewal.
Yoncheva’s fourth solo album for Sony Classical, to be released March 12, 2021 (Pre-order here), includes music spanning more than five centuries, from folksong to pop, via some of the most powerful moments in seventeenth-century opera. The music video for the first single, Monteverdi’s ‘Oblivion soave’ from L'Incoronazione di Poppea is available to watch now.
All the music, in Yoncheva’s view, is contemporary. ‘Certain styles of musical composition have remained surprisingly close to us through 500 years of history, combining enormous emotional thrust with great simplicity,’ she says.
From the dawn of opera and music by Monteverdi, the album plots a thematic journey from the Italy of Cavalli, his pupil Strozzi and heir Stradella to the England of Dowland, Gibbons and Ferrabosco – whose motet Hear me, O God employs the same four-note theme as ABBA’s Like an Angel Passing Through My Room. After dance-inspired works from Spain and Latin America, and Alarcón’s reconstruction of an aria by Antonio Draghi, Yoncheva offers a traditional folksong from her Bulgarian homeland. Media were full of praise after Sonya Yoncheva performed her album repertoire at the Salzburg Festival after the lockdown in August 2020. ‘Music that moves you to tears’ wrote the APA and the FAZ raved about her Bulgarian folksong ‘Zableinano mi agunce’ being “an unforgettable emotional experience”.
‘This project is of great importance to me,’ says the soprano. ‘I would like to highlight the timeless quality of this music, the sense of unlimited freedom that it offers us. It is an appeal for a rebirth, for the renewal our world so desperately needs.’
Rebirth was recorded in the concert hall of La Chaux-de-Fonds, with Alarcón and his ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, during the first European lockdown. The feeling of the acoustic, Alarcón says, was equivalent to ‘playing inside a vast lute.’
Sonya Yoncheva was voted artist of the year by the readers of Opera magazine in 2019 and is a regular guest at the major opera houses of the world.
Track listing for Rebirth
1. ALESSANDRO STRADELLA 1639–1682
Queste lagrime e sospiri
Aria of Salome from San Giovanni Battista
Text: Ansaldo Ansaldi
2. CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI 1567–1643
O rosetta, che rosetta SV 237 (instrumental)
from Scherzi musicali
3. FRANCESCO CAVALLI 1602–1676
E te pur vero … Luci mie, voi che miraste
Aria of Adelanta from Xerse
Text: Nicolò Minato
4. ORLANDO GIBBONS 1583–1625
The Silver Swan
5. CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI 1567–1643
Voglio di vita uscir SV 337
Voglio di vita uscir (instrumental)
6. S’apre la tomba
7. JOSÉ MARÍN 1618/19–1699
Ojos, pues me desdeñáis
8. LEONARDO GARCÍA ALARCÓN *1976
Y a tus plantas Nisea
Aria of Minerva from El Prometeo
Text: Antonio Draghi
9. SIMÓN DÍAZ 1928–2014
Pasaje del olvido (instrumental)
10. BULGARIAN FOLK-SONG
Zableyalo mi agǎnce
11. FRANCESCO CAVALLI
L’Egisto: Sinfonia della notte (instrumental)
12. CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
Oblivion soave
Aria of Arnalta from L’incoronazione di Poppea SV 308
Text: Giovanni Francesco Busenello
13. BARBARA STROZZI 1619–1677
L’Eraclito amoroso
from Cantate, ariette e duetti op. 2
14. SANTIAGO DE MURCIA c.1682–c.1740
DIEGO FERNÁNDEZ DE HUETE c.1635–c.1713
Tarantela española (instrumental)
15. ALFONSO FERRABOSCO II c.1575–1628
Hear me, O God
Adapted from Pavan on Four Notes
Text: Ben Jonson
16. JOHN DOWLAND 1563–1626
Come again, sweet love doth now invite
17. TOMÁS DE TORREJÓN Y VELAZCO 1644–1728
No hay que decirle el primor
18. ABBA
(BENNY ANDERSSON / BJÖRN ULVAEUS)
Like an Angel Passing Through My Room