Interview, Albina Shagimuratova and Daniela Barcellona on Semiramide

Sir Mark Elder’s vivid, entirely uncut account of Rossini’s Semiramide has proved to be one of our best-selling September releases, as well as a huge hit with the critics: Gramophone made this ‘intensely theatrical performance’ their Recording of the Month, whilst The Observer praised the ‘dazzling singing from a classy cast’, and Classical Music awarded the recording five stars for its ‘translucence and buoyancy’. During the recording-sessions in the summer of 2016 (and shortly before the Proms performance of the work which took place at the end of the season), I snatched ten minutes with the two leading ladies, Albina Shagimuratova and Daniela Barcellona, to find out more about their relationships with these incredibly demanding roles and the challenges involved in bringing this music to life under the scrutiny of the microphones and with the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The great duets between Semiramide and Arsace are really the highlights of the score: have the two of you worked together before?

DB: Yes, we did a Mozart Requiem together recently in Moscow, but this is completely different territory!

Daniela, you’ve lived with this role for a long time…

Indeed, I’ve been singing Arsace for almost twenty years now - my role-debut was in 1998. The last time I performed it was in Venice in 2007, which feels like a very long time ago!

And since then you’ve been singing a lot of heavier, higher repertoire, including verismo and the big Verdi roles – does this role feel very different after tackling things like Santuzza and Eboli?

Actually, coming back to Arsace this time round feels so much easier for me, because I’ve found so much more vocal balance – it may sound strange to say this, but I feel as if I’ve finally discovered the right way to sing Rossini through singing Verdi! The top of the voice in particular feels much freer, so I’m able to ornament upwards a lot more.

And Albina, this is your role debut?

Yes - and not only that but it’s actually my first-ever full Rossini role! I started working on it around six months ago, and the first thing I did was to listen to all the existing recordings: Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, everyone! It's also my first project with Sir Mark: he’s incredibly focused on every little detail that Rossini wrote, and I’ve honestly never worked quite as meticulously as this before. I made three trips to London in June to have sessions with maestro, and he was very helpful as well as very reassuring: this role feels like a huge responsibility for me, because in the last ten years (maybe more) nobody has done this kind of recording! Because Semiramide is such a huge piece, it’s usually recorded with lots and lots of cuts, but we sing absolutely everything! It will be cut down a little for the concert on Sunday (partly so that the audience can catch their trains!), but not for the recording itself.

Daniela, is there any music on this unexpurgated recording that’s new to you?

DB: Because I’ve always done live performances I’m actually quite used to singing the whole thing! I'm doing it in Munich and at Covent Garden next year (the 2017/18 season), in the same production by David Alden and with Joyce DiDonato as Semiramide, and there will only be minimal cuts there too.

This is the first studio recording to use period instruments – does the marginally lower pitch help or hinder?

DB: It certainly doesn't make things any easier, because for me this role is already very, very low. Even that slight change means I have to re-position my voice, especially around the passaggio – just over the course of the rehearsals and the recording-sessions I’ve had to play around a lot with that and make readjustments. We rehearsed with a piano at 442 and the recording is at 430, so that does shake things up a lot.

AS: The low tessitura is a hurdle for me too. I’m quite a high soprano, so when I was offered this role I was more than a bit cautious – I thought it over a lot and listened to recordings, and what struck me was not so much the tessitura itself, but the fact that you have to be prepared to sing high notes and then dive straight down to the lower register! I sing many difficult roles (my repertoire includes things like the Queen of the Night, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Lucia di Lammermoor), but this is without question the most daunting. It’s a huge challenge, and in learning it I’ve grown up a great deal, not only from a technical point of view as a singer but also as a musician and an actress. Semiramide is such a complex woman: she’s a queen, and at the same time she’s a mother, and because of that you have to find so many different colours in your voice besides navigating the some of the most technical, acrobatic passages in the repertoire! It’s the most difficult opera, not only for the two of us but also for the tenor and bass-baritone; perhaps that’s why it’s so rarely performed.

Is it a challenge to keep the character’s emotional journey in mind when you’re recording out of sequence like this?

AS: We are jumping around quite a lot, yes, simply because of the way recording-schedules work – so I recorded my second aria on Sunday and then the first-act one tomorrow, then I’m done! (Well, apart from the small matter of a complete concert-performance on Sunday…!). But nevertheless I try to bear in mind that in recording the single most important thing is emotion – in a session I try to ignore the microphone, because the audience who will listen to this CD need to feel our emotions without seeing us. Of course that’s important in a staged performance too, but especially for a studio recording like this finding all those different colours is so important.

DB: For me there’s the added difficulty of portraying a man on a recording! Sir Mark keeps telling me ‘You must be more masculine!’ and I say ‘Well, when I have a sword it comes naturally!’. On stage it’s far easier, because that’s all there visually: I’m costumed like a warrior, I can move and walk like a man, but on a recording it’s much trickier to convey that. Being in love like a man, taking revenge like a man…all of that’s very hard to put across to a microphone that’s picking up a female voice!