This magnificent album is masterfully performed by Lisette Oropesa, who carries this music in her heart. Her versatile voice masters even the most demanding vocal passages with impressive ease. Zarzuela music is very dear to Lisette and reminds her of her roots. The tracks on this album have been carefully chosen by Lisette and feature some of her favorite zarzuelas. This album opens with the Cuban zarzuela María la O (1930) by Ernesto Lecuona. Cuba, with more than 2,500 zarzuelas composed, is the second great homeland of the genre, and Ernesto Lecuona and Gonzalo Roig are two true pillars of Cuban zarzuela. It also has a more dramatic profile, bringing to the stage the harsh social problems of slavery, racism, and so on. The album concludes with the Catalan composer Gonzalo Roig (1890-1970) and his legendary zarzuela, Cecilia Valdés, which anthropologist Fernando Ortiz defined as the quintessential Cuban zarzuela, “full, heartfelt, conscious, and desired.” Cecilia Valdés is a zarzuela with strong racial themes, with slavery as one of its central subjects. In it, Roig reaffirms the symbiosis of Black music, Creole folk music, and Spanish music.

This album brings together two unpublished pieces and an indisputable masterpiece, the Concierto de Aranjuez composed by Maestro Rodrigo who, with its sublime Adagio, has become his most famous work. Extraordinarily powerful is the orchestral version of Quatre pièces brèves for solo guitar composed by Frank Martin. Echoes of Rodrigo’s works can be heard on the cinematic romanticism of Leo Brouwer in his Concierto de Benicàssim.

The soprano Mariola Cantarero and the bass-baritone Simon Orfila present ”Bel Canto”, the album they have recorded accompanied by the Real Filharmonia orchestra of Galicia, conducted by Óliver Díaz. The CD includes arias and duets from operas composed by Mozart (Don Giovanni), Rossini (‘Semiramide’ and ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’) and Donizetti (‘Lucrezia Borgia’, ‘Anna Bolena’ and ‘L’elisir d’amore’). Orfila is excited about the result: ”Earlier this year I presented my first solo album, ‘My dream’, in which I sing a little of everything, including zarzuela; but I avoided the opera to reserve myself for this record, singing arias and duets with Mariola, who is splendid, so much that I was moved when I heard the final result.”

A musical tribute to Baltasar Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Gijón 1744-Puerto de Vega, Navia 1811) in commemoration of the bicentennial of his death. The Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias and the Coro de la Fundación Príncipe de Asturias conducted by Oliver Diaz perform this composition by Jorge Muñiz.

CD+DVD. This is the most careful, smart and ambitious composition of Javier: a wonderful fusion between popular and classical music. His biggest works as ‘Agualuna’ or ‘El Naufrago del Sahara’ and some new ones. Guitarist Javier Ruibal with the Orquesta de Córdoba and conducted by Oliver Diaz recorded live 18 songs for this album entitled “Dream”. The orchestral arrangements are made by Javier López de Guereña.