Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
From Idomeneo, re di Creta, K 366:
Overture
Ilia’s recitative and aria, Act I (Quando avran fine omai… Padre, germani, addio… )
Ilia’s recitative and aria, Act III (Solitudini amiche… Zefiretti lusinghieri…)

From Le Nozze di Figaro:
Susanna’s recitative and aria, Act IV (Giunse alfin… Deh vieni, non tardar…)
The Countess’s recitative and aria, Act III (E Susanna non vien!… Dove sono…)

From Cosi fan tutte:
Fiordiligi’s recitative and aria, Act I (Temerari, sortite… Come scoglio…)
Fiordiligi’s recitative and aria, Act II (Ei parte… Per pieta ben mio perdona…)

Christoph Willibald Gluck:
From Orfeo ed Euridice:
Euridice’s recitative and aria, Act III (Qual vita… Che fiero momento…)

From Armide:
Armide’s recitative and aria, Act II (Enfin, il est en ma puissance… Quel trouble me saisit ? … Ah quelle cruauté…)
Armide’s aria, Act III (Ah ! Si la liberté…)

From Iphigénie en Tauride:
Iphigénie’s aria, Act II (O malheureuse Iphigénie…)

Love plays a significant part in most operas, but all too often it is frustrated, or entangled with deception, humiliation and betrayal. With her new disc Camilla Tilling presents a near-comprehensive catalogue of the emotions that the vagaries of love can raise in the breast of an operatic heroine. And these emotions are universal and timeless, afflicting servants and countesses, Grecian princesses, a sorceress from Damascus and a young lady of 18th-century Naples alike.

Gluck’s Armide glories in having Renaud in her power – until she realizes that her feelings makes it impossible to destroy him as she had planned. Newly raised from the dead, his Euridice is defenceless against the strong emotions of the living, and beset by doubts when Orpheus refuses to acknowledge her on their way back to earth. In the bravura aria Come scoglio, Mozart’s Fiordiligi proclaims her steadfast love for Guglielmo, but in the following act of the opera she regretfully admits to having been enamoured by another. And from The Marriage of Figaro we hear Susanna inviting the loved one to a nocturnal rendez-vous (‘Deh vieni, non tardar’) as well as her mistress, the Countess, wondering in ‘Dove sono’ what happened to the loving marriage she once had.