News on the Upcoming CD, Homage to Maria Callas

21C Media Group mentions the title of Angela's new CD in their latest newsletter. According to them, EMI CLASSICS releases Homage to Maria Callas, a new album from Angela Gheorghiu. This is a personal collection of songs that reflects the soprano’s rise to stardom as well as how the legendary Maria Callas impacted her life and career..More on the topic comes from a blog, Paul Pelkonen's Superconductor. He says the info comes from a recent press release sent by EMI Classics, that states that the new CD will be out in stores (in US) in October. It will feature arias Puccini's La bohème, Catalani's La Wally and La Mamma Morta, the aria from Giordano's Andrea Chenier.
But the most controversial addition to the disc is a digitally built duet between La Gheorghiu and the late Maria Callas. The two sopranos will sing "L'amour c'est l'oiseaux rebelle", the Habañera from Act I of Bizet's Carmen.

The new "duet" was created from the original master tape of Callas' 1961 recording of the aria. The engineers chose this over the '63 recording of the complete opera, because it lacked the usual choral accompaniment.

In the engineering booth, the original orchestra (the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française under the baton of George Prêtre) was scrubbed out. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Marco Armiliato re-recorded the music, with the players using a special click track to match the original. Ms. Gheorghiu also chose to learn Callas' particular sense of rhythm and meter, enabling the two divas to warble together, or seperately..Quotation from the same press release, according to that blog. That's all for now. More info coming soon, hopefully.