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Surrender Voices of Persephone
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Gaetano Donizetti

Surrender Voices of Persephone

Ilona Domnich

Label: Signum Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0635212041925
barcode
Catalog number: SIGCD 419
Releasedate: 24-04-15
Ranked among Opera Now’s ‘Top 10 High Flyers – a new generation of sopranos destined to have impressive careers in 2014’, rising operatic soprano Ilona Domnich releases her debut Signum album.
Comprising arias and songs from her operatic heroines, including Gilda from Verdi’s Rigoletto; Magda from Puccini’s La Rondine; and Rosina from Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia,
Domnich is joined by Italian baritone Leo Nucci and Southbank Sinfonia conducted by Simon Over. 
I see the word ‘surrender’ as an active/dynamic rendering force. I have an image of someone who climbs the mountain, who surrenders to
listen to his body and to connect with nature in order to progress. To ‘surrender’ is to fully engage with our own self. For me ‘surrender’ is not letting go in a passive way and floating in a spiritual blissful peace, but a force that one needs courage to consciously tap into, in order to prosper.
The word prosper shares its root with Proserpine or Persephone, the goddess of the underworld.
Persephone’s story is a complex Greek myth of abduction into the underworld. But perhaps in the words of modern psychology, Persephone accesses the ruins of her female underworld in search of the inner balance between the dark and light, the underworld and the earth. When she finds it she reaches a stage where she can draw on vast experience and see things as they are, neither a meadow of flowers nor a vale of tears. Not so much robbed of innocence as awakened to complexity, to the cycle of life and death.
For me ‘surrender’ is also a journey of choices, the courage of listening to the inner voice and connection to myself, to the deepest resources of hope, energy, confidence, trust and love. I guess it is part of growing for me and the beauty of facing the wilder and innately instinctual self. One of the most blissful spiritual surrenders for me is in singing.
The process of recording this CD was also a journey of surrender, discovering the freedom together with huge strengths. ‘To surrender makes you feel how music is, life is, beauty is, nature is.’