Part of the Listen to This Audio Guide
Photo: Avie Records.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the violist turned vocal oracle, whom I describe in this chapter as “the most remarkable singer I ever heard,” died in July 2006. I was one of many people who were devastated by her death; Sidney Chen, at his blog The Standing Room, gathered a long list of memorials. Charles Michener profiled her for The New Yorker in 2004. On this blog I prepared a discography.
She sings “Deep River” :
With Roger Vignoles, piano; Wigmore Hall Live 0013.
“Ombra mai fu,” from Handel’s Xerxes :
With Harry Bicket conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Avie 30.
“Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,” from Bach’s Cantata No. 82, “Ich habe genug”:
With Craig Smith conducting the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music; Nonesuch 79692.
“Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar,” or “Because My Lord Was Born to Suffer,” from John Adams’s El Niño:
With Kent Nagano conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and London Voices; Nonesuch 79634.
“Bane of virtue, nurse of passions” from Handel’s Theodora, in a production directed by Peter Sellars:
Dido’s Lament, one more time:
With Nicholas McGegan conducting the Philharmonia Baroque; Harmonia Mundi 907110.
The beginning of “My love, if I die and you don’t,” from Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs:
With James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony; Nonesuch 79954.