Les Contraltos

Both warm and dark, the voice of contralto offers fascinating colors to many musical universes. This special product gathers baroque, classical and romantic hits performed by some of the most  restigious singers of that category: Sara Mingardo, Nathalie Stutzmann, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Sonia Prina and Delphine Galou. One hour of music featuring highlights from Vivaldi’s Gloria and operas, Bizet’s Carmen, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Gounod’s Ave Maria, Haydn’s St Cecilia Mass, Bach’s B minor Mass, Hahn’s L’Heure exquise, Schumann’s Liederkreis, etc.

‘Her voice had contralto inflexions, tender and deep’: there we have an excellent summing-up of the conception of this voice that has been traditional for at least a century and a half. One thinks of Kathleen Ferrier in Brahms and Mahler, of Erda in the Ring. The quotation (by the French novelist Roger Martin du Gard) is taken from the Petit Robert dictionary, which defines the word ‘contralto’ itself
as ‘the lowest female voice’.
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