One of the leading sopranos of her generation, Ekaterina Siurina enjoys an international career that takes her to the top opera houses in Europe and America. She made her professional debut as Gilda in Rigoletto, singing opposite the world-renowned baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Commenting on her recent performance as Violetta in La bohème, Parterre Box called her singing “deeply touching, with arching beams of tone.”

Galina Gorchakova, endowed with what London’s Sunday Times called “one of the most important dramatic voices in the post-war era”, makes her debut on Delos label with Italian Opera Arias, a collection of her signature roles that have earned her critical acclaim and an immense public following the world over. Gorchakova is accompanied by Constantine Orbelian and the Philharmonia of Russia, the Maestro’s own assemblage of Russia’s leading orchestral musicians resulting in la creme de la creme of Russian ensembles.

Yes, there was another Cleopatra! She was married to Tigranes the Great, King of Armenia, and together they created an Armenia that reached from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The resplendent and regal voice of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is perfectly suited to the role of Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian shines in arias from three rarely heard operas about King Tigranes and his queen.

This stellar production features a pair of operatic superstars, namely GRAMMY®-nominated tenor Lawrence Brownlee and soprano supreme Sarah Coburn, who continually appear in the lead roles in top houses worldwide. The remaining characters are beautifully portrayed by distinguished singers from Lithuania and Kazakhstan.

This richly rewarding album is Oksana Volkova’s first solo album on Delos, though she appeared alongside the late, great Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Delos’s GRAMMY®-nominated 2017 release of Verdi’s complete Rigoletto. Here she delivers powerful, passionate and ravishing performances of (mostly) well-known French, Italian, Russian and Belarusian arias for mezzo-soprano.