Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Handel Arias (2025 Remastered Version) Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Harry Bicket & Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment

• George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759): Theodora, HWV 68:
• 1 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: Ah! Whither should we fly, or fly from whom? (2025 Remastered Version) 00:49
• 2 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: As with rosy steps the morn (2025 Remastered Version) 08:19
• 3 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: O bright example of all goodness! (2025 Remastered Version) 00:31
• 4 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: Bane of virtue, nurse of passions (2025 Remastered Version) 06:15
• 5 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: The clouds begin to veil the hemisphere (2025 Remastered Version) 00:48
• 6 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: Defend her, Heav’n! (2025 Remastered Version) 05:42
• 7 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: Lord, to Thee each night and day (2025 Remastered Version) 06:09
• 8 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: She’s gone, disdaining liberty and life (2025 Remastered Version) 00:49
• 9 Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: New scenes of joy (2025 Remastered Version) 05:41
• Lucrezia, HWV 145:
• 10 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: O Numi eterni! O stelle! (2025 Remastered Version) 01:11
• 11 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Già superbo del mio affanno (2025 Remastered Version) 05:33
• 12 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Ma voi forse nel cielo (2025 Remastered Version) 01:04
• 13 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Il suol che preme, l'aura che spira (2025 Remastered Version) 03:40
• 14 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Ah! che ancor nell'abisso (2025 Remastered Version) 01:45
• 15 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Alla salma infedel porga la pena (2025 Remastered Version) 04:06
• 16 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: A voi, padre, consorte (2025 Remastered Version) 01:25
• 17 Handel: Lucrezia, HWV 145: Già nel seno comincia a compir (2025 Remastered Version) 02:17
• Serse, HWV 40:
• 18 Handel: Serse, HWV 40: Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdegna (2025 Remastered Version) 06:41
• 19 Handel: Serse, HWV 40: Frondi tenere e belle (2025 Remastered Version) 00:45
• 20 Handel: Serse, HWV 40: Ombra mai fu (2025 Remastered Version) 03:18
• Total Runtime 01:06:48

Info for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Handel Arias (2025 Remastered Version)

In 2003, in conjunction of a revival of Peter Sellars’production of Handel’s Theodora at Glyndebourne ,Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson went into the studio and recorded a Handel album with Harry Bicket and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. That album was released to great acclaim in 2004. It’s now been remastered and the new version will be available on October 17th.

The album contains all of Irene’s music from Theodora including superb versions of “As with rosy steps the morn” and “Lord, to Thee, each night and day”. There’s also the cantata Lucrezia where she is accompanied by Harry Bicket on harpsichord & chamber organ, Stephen Stubbs on 10-course lute and Baroque guitar, Phoebe Carrai on cello and Margriet Tindemans on viola da gamba. There are also two arias from Serse; “Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdegna” and “Ombra mai fu”.It’s fabulous and so much praise has been heaped on the original release that I’ll leave it at that and concentrate on the remaster. It’s very good.

Conductor and leading Baroque specialist Harry Bicket recalls the immediate musical connection he and Lorraine shared from the time they first met in 1996 during rehearsals for Theodora at Glyndebourne. When Peter Seller’s staging of the cantata was revived in 2003, it seemed obvious to go into the studio to record Lorraine’s Theodora arias.

A maverick musician and a riveting performer, Lorraine died in 2006 due to complications from cancer at the far-too-young age of 52. This recording, one of her last, preserves her consummate musical persona for posterity. The New Yorker’s classical columnist Alex Ross characterised the album as “pull-down-the-blinds, unplug-the-telephone, can’t-talk-right-now beautiful. She’s singing it again; I have to go.”

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano
Harry Bicket, harpsichord & chamber organ
Stephen Stubbs, 10-course lute & Baroque guitar
Phoebe Carrai, cello
Margriet Tindemans, viola da gamba
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Harry Bicket, conductor

Digitally remastered

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
The American mezzo-soprano, Lorraine Hunt, was born to musical parents: Randolph Hunt, a music teacher and a conductor of community ensembles and operas, and Marcia Hunt, a contralto and a voice teacher. Her father arranged for her to study the piano and then the violin. At 12 she switched to viola and began playing in youth orchestras and singing in the high school choir. She studied voice and viola at San Jose State University.

Upon graduation, Lorraine Hunt became a freelance player in the Bay Area noted for her expertise in contemporary music. On moving to Boston she was particularly drawn to the music program at Emmanuel Church, where Craig Smith conducted the orchestra and choir. But during these years she also studied voice at Boston Conservatory.

Lorraine Hunt began focussing on singing when she was 26. Her breakthrough came with the Pepsico Summerfare festival in Purchase, New York, in 1985 when she was cast by Peter Sellars in his production of Händel’s Giulio Cesare.

For the next decade Lorraine Hunt’s career thrived as she collaborated with the early-music conductor Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra on a series of recordings of Händel operas and oratorios (Susanna, Theodora, Ariodante); took part in Sellars’s updated production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and, later, his triumphant staging of Theodora at Glyndebourne.

During the 1996-1997 season Lorraine Hunt appeared in the roles of Charlotte in Werther at the Opéra de Lyon under the baton of Kent Nagano; Sesto in Giulio Cesare at the Opéra National de Paris; Phèdre in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie at the Palais Garnier in Paris and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with William Christie and Les Arts Florissant; and Triraksha in Ashoka’s Dream, a new opera by Peter Lieberson, at the Santa Fe Opera. Concert appearances included performances of Bach’s Magnificat with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas; Berg’s Seven Early Songs with the Berlin Philharmonic and Nagano; Händel arias with the Händel & Haydn Society at Tanglewood; and a program of Mozart and Brahms at the Mostly Mozart Festival with members of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center. Performances of the 1997-1998 season included the title role in the New York City Opera’s production of Xerxes; Jocasta in Oedipus Rex with the Netherlands Opera; Ottavia in L’Incoronazione di Poppea at San Francisco Opera; a return engagement with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and a program of music dedicated to John Harbison at Weill Hall.

Lorraine Hunt met the composer Peter Lieberson in 1997 when he selected her to sing in the premiere of his opera Ashoka’s Dream at the Santa Fe Opera. They were married in 1999. In Boston’s Symphony Hall in November of 2005 she performed her husband’s Neruda Songs, Lieberson’s setting of five Spanish sonnets by Pablo Neruda, each a reflection of a different aspect of love. The performance, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine, was repeated a few days later at Carnegie Hall. It would be her last New York performance.

Successes of the late 1990’s included the role of Irene in Händel’s Theodora at the Glyndebourne Festival in a new production by Peter Sellars (a selection of Irene’s arias and other Handel vocal music were recorded on AVIE ); the title role of Charpentier’s Médée with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants in Europe and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; the title role of Ariodante with Nicholas McGegan at the Göttingen Festival; the title role of Xerxes with the Los Angeles Music Center Opera; and Haydn’s Scena di Berenice with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Festival under the Baton of Jeffrey Tate.

It was typical of the self-effacing Lorraine Hunt Lieberson to be drawn to the secondary role of Myrtle Wilson, the mistress of wealthy Tom Buchanan in John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby for her 1999 Metropolitan Opera debut in New York. In the early 2000’s Lorraine Hunt Lieberson also gave a series of shattering performances of two Bach cantatas for solo voice and orchestra, semi-staged by the director Peter Sellars, with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music conducted by Craig Smith. These concerts were performed in Lincoln Center’s New Visions series, in Paris, Berkeley, and at the Barbican in London.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson had a maverick career. She was a consummate recitalist and concert singer and a riveting operatic performer; her repertoire ranged from the Baroque to the contemporary. On the opera stage she excelled in roles as diverse as Médée (Charpentier), Sesto (Mozart), Carmen (Bizet) and Xerxes (Händel). She preferred to work in close-knit conditions with directors and ensembles who shared her artistic aims, especially at festivals like Glyndebourne in England and Aix-en-Provence in France.

For the last 18 months of her life Lorraine Hunt Lieberson had sung only sporadically, cancelling most performances due to ill health. Her last professional activity had been touring with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2006, singing music by her husband, Peter Lieberson.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died on July 3, 2006 at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the height of her musical and expressive powers, aged only 52.

Harry Bicket
Internationally renowned as an opera and concert conductor of distinction, Harry Bicket is especially noted for his interpretation of baroque and classical repertoire and in 2007 became Artistic Director of The English Concert, one of the UK’s finest period orchestras. He became Chief Conductor of Santa Fe Opera in 2013 and opened the 2014 season with a critically-acclaimed Fidelio. Born in Liverpool, he studied at the Royal College of Music and Oxford University and is an accomplished harpsichordist. Plans for the 2017/18 season include his debut with RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, return visits to Lyric Opera of Chicago (Orphée et Eurydice), Metropolitan Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro), Royal Northern Sinfonia, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony and a masterclass with the Juilliard School. Plans with The English Concert include European and US (Carnegie Hall) performances of Rinaldo and recording work, and with Santa Fe Opera, performances of Bernstein’s Candide.

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
makes old music new. Far from being an attempt to recreate the past, it instead uses historic information to create something that’s exciting now.

Founded in 1986, the orchestra’s name refers to the common term for the explosion of science, philosophy and culture in Western Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment. It was the time of Isaac Newton and Voltaire, and a quest for liberty. The period also found its voice in music as composers sought more freedom in the way they worked to promote their (often socially subversive) ideas.

In performance, the OAE is a collective that’s about collaboration between brilliant musicians. As the orchestra isn’t led by any one conductor, it gives players the artistic freedom to collectively take on that role. And they do so playing instruments and using techniques from the period in which the music was written. So if they’re performing Bach they do so on the instruments that would have been familiar to the conductor himself.

Booklet for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Handel Arias (2025 Remastered Version)