Liszt: Sardanapalo & Mazeppa Joyce El-Khoury, Airam Hernandez, Oleksandr Pushniak, Staatskapelle Weimar & Kirill Karabits

• Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886): Mazeppa. Symphonic Poem, S. 100:
• 1Mazeppa. Symphonic Poem, S. 10015:33
• Sardanapalo, S. 687:
• 2Sardanapalo, S. 687: Preludio01:56
• 3Sardanapalo, S. 687: Vieni! Risplendono festive faci03:43
• 4Sardanapalo, S. 687: Oh del tetto paterno01:57
• 5Sardanapalo, S. 687: L'altera Ninive a te s'inchina04:26
• 6Sardanapalo, S. 687: Più lunga cura02:57
• 7Sardanapalo, S. 687: Giù pel piano01:44
• 8Sardanapalo, S. 687: Sogno vano03:01
• 9Sardanapalo, S. 687: Ahi! Nell'ansio rapimento03:07
• 10Sardanapalo, S. 687: Nella tua stanza01:48
• 11Sardanapalo, S. 687: Parla! Parla!02:59
• 12Sardanapalo, S. 687: Sotto il tuo sguardo06:20
• 13Sardanapalo, S. 687: Mentre a tuo danno04:45
• 14Sardanapalo, S. 687: Se sol l'armi02:07
• 15Sardanapalo, S. 687: Oh perché, perché quel core02:30
• 16Sardanapalo, S. 687: Che far pensi?02:44
• 17Sardanapalo, S. 687: Diletta vergine02:24
• 18Sardanapalo, S. 687: Allegro deciso02:59
• Huldigungsmarsch, S228i:
• 19Huldigungsmarsch, S228i06:08
• Total Runtime01:13:08

Info for Liszt: Sardanapalo & Mazeppa

Double premiere – first recording and first performance: Franz Liszt never finished his mature opera Sardanapalo. Now 170 years old, the first act refracts the world of mid 19th-century opera through the prism of Liszt’s unmistakable voice. Kirill Karabits directs Liszt’s own orchestra in Weimar, where the music was composed, in a programme of burning, Byronic romanticism.

Contrary heroes: Mazeppa and Sardanapalo performed by Karabits and the Weimar Staatskapelle

Sardanapalo, who prefers wine and concubines to politics and warfare, and Mazeppa, who dies with glory, having endured pain and humiliation: dramatic literary models, impressively set to music by Franz Liszt. Written at the same time, these works represent Liszt's ideas striving to unite literature and music, on the one hand modernising Italian opera and on the other advancing towards the symphonic poem in his orchestral writing.

The Sardanapalo manuscript comprises the first act. For 170 years the material lay dormant in the Goethe and Schiller archive in Weimar: it was only in 2017 that David Trippett deciphered, edited and orchestrated the manuscript at the University of Cambridge.

Kirill Karabits conducts the Weimar Staatskapelle: Liszt's orchestra in the city in which he composed the opera. audite continues its series of the great Weimar Kapellmeister-composers.

"It is indeed extraordinary… Liszt’s fluid treatment of bel canto structures reveals an assured musical dramatist at work… He makes no concessions to his singers, though, and his vocal writing is taxing in the extreme… The choral singing is consistently strong, the playing terrific, and Karabits conducts with extraordinary passion. Trippett has carefully modelled his orchestration on Liszt’s works of the early 1850s, and it sounds unquestionably authentic." (Graamophone)

Joyce El-Khoury, soprano
Airam Hernandez, tenor
Oleksandr Pushniak, bass-baritone
Opernchor des Deutschen Nationaltheaters Weimar
Staatskapelle Weimar
Kirill Karabits, conductor

Joyce El-Khourys
Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury made her Royal Opera debut in the 2016/17 Season as Violetta (La traviata). In the 2017/18 Season she sings Musetta (La bohème) and Sylvia (L’Ange de Nisida) in concert.

El-Khoury studied at the University of Ottawa, the Academy of Vocal Arts, Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, New York. Opera engagements include Imogene (Il pirata) for Opéra National de Bordeaux and in St Gallen, Violetta for Glyndebourne Festival, Welsh National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival and Canadian Opera Company, Léila (Les Pecheurs de perles) in Bordeaux, Maria Stuarda for Seattle Opera, Desdemona (Otello) for Castleton Festival, Musetta (La bohème) for Teatro Real, Bavarian State Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Dutch National Opera, Mimì (La bohème) for the Canadian Opera Company, Micaëla (Carmen) for Santa Fe Opera and Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) for Vancouver Opera.

El-Khoury’s engagements in contemporary opera include the title role in Tobias Picker’s Emmeline for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Tatyana Bakst (Jake Heggie’s Great Scott) for San Diego Opera. Concert engagements include an appearance with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Lorin Maazel, the title role in Rusalka at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with James Gaffigan, Pauline (Donizetti’s Les Martyrs) at the Southbank Centre with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mark Elder, Antonia (Donizetti’s Belisario) at the Barbican, Rossini’s Stabat Mater with Orchestre de Paris and Jésus López Cobos and galas with Juan Diego Flórez at the Beiteddine Festival with the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Her recordings include Les Martyrs, Belisario and Écho for Opera Rara.

Booklet for Liszt: Sardanapalo & Mazeppa