The great American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne celebrated her 70th birthday in January 2004, the same year that also marked 50 years since her professional debut. Horne's debut in 1954 took place in Los Angeles. Her name and voice was brought to many more people than could ever hear her in the opera house through the 1954 film Carmen Jones in which she sang the dubbed voice of Dorothy Dandridge. But it was with Joan Sutherland that Marilyn Horne found the perfect vocal partner. Their performances in the great bel canto operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti took the opera world by storm in the 1960s and early 1970s. By the time she retired in 1998, Marilyn Horne's long and distinguished career embraced an enormous variety of operatic roles, as well as a wide variety of solo repertoire ranging from Schubert, Schumann and Mahler through to modern American songs. Such a wide repertory was due to the sheer range of her voice and its remarkable flexibility, a voice that could sustain long lines of melody as well as negotiate the most florid vocal pyrotechnics. Marilyn Horne participated in a number of complete opera recordings (among them classic recordings of Norma and Semiramide with Joan Sutherland), as well as ten recital programs for Decca. The complete recitals are now reissued in their entirety as a Collector Edition on this 11-CD set. The original LP cover art is reproduced for the CD sleeves.
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