This release showed up on classical best-seller charts in early 2024. That may have been because it was the first release by soprano
Angela Gheorghiu
since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and she has a great big army of fans. However, the album's popularity may also be due to the repertory. These
Puccini
songs for voice and piano have been recorded occasionally (except for the final
Melanconia!
, which receives its world premiere), but this may be the first recording of them as a group (there are 17 of
's 19 songs, one of them religious and accompanied by an organ). They come from various phases of
's career; just a few are juvenilia, and a listener hearing them cold might well identify
as the composer, even the opening love song
A te
, written when he was 16. A few (sample
Sogno d'or
) sound like excerpts from the operas. This is remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, a song is quite a different thing from a section of a
opera, with its flowing action. Moreover, the texts are a real miscellany; there is a patriotic school hymn,
Dios y patria
, and another patriotic song,
Inno a Roma
. Yet the melodic stuff of the songs is straight from the operas, and there are some striking correspondences (hear
Mentia l'avviso
and then Des Grieux's song about Manon in
Manon Lescaut
).
Gheorghiu
's voice is remarkably well preserved, and she scales it back to song dimensions effectively enough, although she applies quite a bit of vibrato, and a lighter voice might have suited some of these songs better. A harsh church acoustic also doesn't do her any favors. For those who love
, though, this is a valuable document that penetrates to the heart of his creativity. ~ James Manheim