Fairy Tales

The Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann has received high international praise for all her past albums: "A voice as bright as a bell, clear, beautiful in sound, rich in colour, and conducted with ease," said Opernwelt, and "How enchantingly beautiful the voice sounds, as if made of a gold and silver alloy..." praised Fono Forum. Mühlemann recently thrilled audiences and the press at the renowned Salzburger Festspiele in the role of "Pamina:" "she surpassed all others..." wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung enthusiastically.

For her album Fair Tales Regula Mühlemann has developed a special concept: She has selected musically "enchanting" pieces that take the listener into the world of fairies, elves and witches.  Together with the Swiss chamber orchestra CHAARTS Chamber Artists, she spans a wide range from early Baroque to Romanticism and classical modernism and slips into various fairy-like guises: as a nymph in Monteverdi's heartbreaking Lamento della Ninfa, she laments her tragic love, while in Verdi's opera Falstaff, Nannetta, disguised as a fairy queen, powerfully summons an army of air and water spirits to her. Two works by English composers inspired by Shakespeare also take the listener into the realm of fairy tales: Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen (O let me weep ever, ever weep (The Plaint), Turn then thine eyes) and Benjamin Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream (Be kind and courteous, Come, now a roundel). But also Nordic sagas are brought to life by Regula Mühlemann's voice. Not only angry trolls and demons, but also a number of enchantingly tender vocal pieces such as Solveig's Song can be heard in Edvard Grieg's composition of Henrik Ibsen's verse drama Peer Gynt. Other fantastic pieces include excerpts from Jacques Offenbach's great opera Die Rheinnixen in which the Barcarole, later reused in Hoffmann's Tales, achieved world fame, but also from Jules Massenet's Cinderella opera Cendrillon. The special arrangements of the pieces for the CHAARTS Chamber Orchestra, in which each instrument is played only once, give works by Dvořák, Grieg and Britten which were originally composed for larger orchestras, a unique new and transparent sound.

Fairy Tales is an album of "magical" music, full of wonderful stories.