Presto Recording of the Week
24th September 2021

BBC Music Magazine
November 2021
Opera Choice

Gramophone Magazine
Awards Issue 2021
Recording of the Month

Michael Spyres (baritenor), Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Marko Letonja

Mozart: Fuor del mar ho un mar in seno (Idomeneo)
Mozart: Hai gia vinta la causa! (from Le nozze di Figaro)
Mozart: Deh! vieni alla finestra (from Don Giovanni)
Méhul: O dieux, écoutez ma prière (from Ariodant)
Spontini: Qu'ai-je vu! quels apprets! (from La vestale)
Rossini: Largo al factotum (from Il barbiere di Siviglia)
Rossini: Premio maggior di questo…Amor, dirada il nembo (from Otello)
Adam: Mes amis, écoutez l'histoire (from Le Postillon de Lonjumeau)
Donizetti: Pour mon âme quel destin! (from La Fille du Régiment)
Verdi: Il balen del suo sorriso (from Il Trovatore)
Thomas, Ambroise: O vin, dissipe la tristesse (from Hamlet)
Offenbach: Va pour Kleinzach...Il était une fois à la cour (from Les Contes d'Hoffmann)
Wagner: In fernem Land (from Lohengrin)
Leoncavallo: Si può? (from I Pagliacci)
Lehár: O Vaterland (from Die Lustige Witwe)
Ravel: Voilà, ce que j'appelle une femme charmante (from L'heure espagnole)
Orff: Carmina Burana: Dies, nox et omnia
Korngold: Glück, das mir verbleib 'Marietta's Lied' (from Die Tote Stadt)

An album with a mission to defy classification, BariTenor is a tour de force for Michael Spyres. It ranges wide, encompassing repertoire normally assigned to both tenors and baritones. Programming 18 arias by 15 composers, it covers three centuries of opera in Italian, French and German, setting mainstream works beside relative rarities, and rediscovering Étienne Méhul’s Ariodant, first heard in 1799. Michael Spyres has achieved renown as a multi-faceted tenor, but ‘baritenor’ is the term he uses to describe his voice, which balances brilliant high notes with a robust lower register. “Having started off as a baritone, I spent 10 years turning myself into a tenor. Voices like mine have existed as long as opera has existed, and the entire programme of this album is linked by the baritenor technique. I am making an honest attempt to explore the baritenor as a forgotten vocal phenomenon ... For me, this album is more than a dream come true.” Joining Spyres are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg under its Chief Conductor Marko Letonja, and the male singers of the chorus of the Opéra du Rhin.

"The range of roles is astonishing, but then so are these performances...Spyres really is a tenor – and a baritone, it seems – who has the operatic world at his feet." - Gramophone Magazine, November 2021.