A Journey: Pretty Yende

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On this basis of this disc, I can imagine Pretty Yende will soon be in demand all over the world. — BBC Music Magazine, December 2016 More…

Release Date: 16th Sep 2016
Catalogue No: 88985321692
Label: Sony
Length: 77 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

December 2016

Opera Choice
ECHO Klassik Awards

2017

Winner
International Opera Awards

2017

Winner - Solo Recital

Excerpt, Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia

Work length6:08

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Pretty Yende (soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
Marco Armiliato

Una voce poco fa

Track length6:08

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Excerpt, Delibes: Lakmé

Work length6:13

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Pretty Yende (soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI, Kate Aldrich (mezzo-soprano)
Marco Armiliato

Viens, Mallika... Sous le dôme épais ("Flower Duet")

Track length6:13

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Excerpt, Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda

Work length12:36

Album only

Pretty Yende (soprano), Coro del Teatro Municipale di Piacenza, Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
Marco Armiliato

Respiro io qui... Ma la sola, ohimè! son io... Ah, la pena in lor piombò

Track length12:36

Album only

Excerpt, Rossini: Le Comte Ory

Work length9:46

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Pretty Yende (soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI, Coro del Teatro Municipale di Piacenza
Marco Armiliato

En proie à la tristesse... Vous que l'on dit sensible... Céleste providence

Track length9:46

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Excerpt, Gounod: Roméo et Juliette

Work length5:57

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Pretty Yende (soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
Marco Armiliato

Dieu, quel frisson court dans mes veines!... Amour, ranime mon courage

Track length5:57

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Excerpt, Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

Work length12:59

Album only

Pretty Yende (soprano), Kate Aldrich (mezzo-soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
Marco Armiliato

No. 3: Ancor non giunse!... Regnava nel silenzio... Quando rapito in estasi

Track length12:59

Album only

Excerpt, Bellini: I Puritani

Work length15:22

Album only

Pretty Yende (soprano), Nicola Alaimo (baritone), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI, Gianluca Buratto (bass)
Marco Armiliato

O rendetemi la speme... Qui la voce sua soave... Vien, diletto, è in ciel la luna!

Track length15:22

Album only

Excerpt, Delibes: Lakmé

Work length8:08

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Pretty Yende (soprano), Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI
Marco Armiliato

Où va la jeune Indoue

Track length8:08

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About

“It was instantly clear to everyone there that she was ready for the world's greatest stages. She has an extraordinarily beautiful voice with a phenomenal technique, and she lights up the stage with charisma.” - PLACIDO DOMINGO

Besides the much-loved Lakmé duet, which transformed Yende’s life and opened her heart to the world of opera, the recording also includes the touching scene ‘Vous que l’on dit’ from Rossini’s Le comte Ory. Yende gained dazzling international recognition in this opera when she starred opposite Juan Diego Flórez at the New York’s Metropolitan Opera in January 2013.

Juliette’s ‘Amour ranime mon courage’ from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette represents the aria performed at the International Belvedere Competition in 2009, in which she made history by becoming the first artist to win first prize in every category. This success also led to an offer to join the prestigious young artists’ programme at La Scala in Milan.

With ‘Ah, la pena’ from Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, Yende continued her success at international competitions. This time she scintillated in Plácido Domingo’s renowned Operalia Competition in 2011. Again she was the first singer in history to receive not only the first prize but also the prize of the public and the Zarzuela prize.

A particularly significant and moving event for the young singer came when she returned to her homeland in 2013 to sing the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Cape Town. From this opera she has chosen the much-loved aria ‘Regnava nel silenzio’.

The recording also includes ‘Una voce poco fa’ from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (the opera of her Opéra National de Paris debut in February 2016)

Pretty Yende performs with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI Torino under Marco Armiliato.

Born in 1985 in the small town of Piet Retief, about two hundred miles from Johannesburg, Yende’s journey to become one of the world’s most sought-after sopranos is like a modern fairy-tale. She was initially introduced to singing in a manner familiar to many South Africans - in her church choir. Then at the age of sixteen, she heard the Flower Duet from Lakmé on a British Airways television advertisement, and was so enraptured by its beauty that she determined to find out what it was. On learning that it was opera, she decided at that moment to abandon her plans to become an accountant, and train to become an opera singer instead.

She gained a scholarship to study at the South African College of Music in Cape Town with Professor Virginia Davids, the first black woman to appear on opera stages during the apartheid years in South Africa. With Davids’s help, Yende triumphed at the 2009 Belvedere Competition and Operalia Competition (2011) and has joined the prestigious young artists’ programme at La Scala in Milan. She continues to study with the celebrated soprano Mariella Devia.

Reviews

December 2016

On this basis of this disc, I can imagine Pretty Yende will soon be in demand all over the world.

Hers is a lyric coloratura voice of real beauty and flexibility. There’s a dash of cream to it, and she phrases with instinctive musicality and feel for line, meaning that her Bellini and Donizetti, in particular, have a real seductiveness to them…Yende isn’t quite the finished product…[but she] is clearly a major talent, and one who is only going to get better

December 2016

The rarely extracted aria ‘Ma la sola, ohimè! son io’ from Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda is a token of the 2011 Operalia Competition, where— uniquely—she carried off all three prizes: First Prize, the Zarzuela Prize and the Audience Prize, with this aria one of her submissions. The sheer beauty of her tone, her technical accomplishment and her sense of both character and dramatic engagement once again carry the day.

29th September 2016

The ubiquitous Flower Duet from Lakmé is on this portrait disc, but Yende’s lustrous, appealingly forward soprano tone and somersaulting vocal agility are showcased far more effectively by the other six numbers...there’s definitely something winning about Yende’s fearless, can-do singing.

23rd September 2016

Her debut recording for Sony whets the appetite, tackling as it does some of the most fearsome challenges in the bel canto repertoire with fearless attack, plenty of zinging high notes (including a splendid high E casually capping Una voce poco fa from Rossini’s Barber of Seville), and sensitivity to emotional mood and vocal colour.

San Francisco Chronicle 18th November 2016

Her singing boasts an elegant sheen that carries across a wide vocal range, and she uses it to wonderful emotional effect even as she dashes off music with demanding technical challenges...And she brings to all of it an audible vivacity that must be even more magnetic in the opera house.

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A Journey: Pretty Yende

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