Kathy Wittman

Included are live performances of scads of Handel, along with music by JS Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, and Terradellas.

John Yohalem recently wrote about this soprano’s Boston Early Music Festival return in the title role of Reinhard Keiser’s Die römische Unruhe, od Hader Die edelmütige Octavia. I heard a later performance as well as her contribution to a wonderful 17^th century Italian “greatest hits” late-night concert there. In 2019 she participated in BEMF’s production of Steffani’s Orlando Generoso.

The same year—2011—that Baráth won the International Singing Competition for Baroque Opera “Pietro Antonio Cesti” at the Innsbruck Festival, I heard her subsequent first major international appearance as Sesto in Giulio Cesare conducted by Alan Curtis who became her early champion. The Sesto was then recorded and became the first of a sizable number of excellent CDs that Baráth has released.

Since then, her U.S. appearances have been few, but I’ve collected along the way many broadcasts, mostly of 18^th century music, some (!) of which I’m including today.

I’m very fond of her pair of solo CDs on Erato: Voglio Cantar, her Barbara Strozzi collection, and Dualità which pairs Handel arias written for male characters with those for female ones.

She also appears in several BEMF CD releases including Steffani’s Duets of Love and Passion (are there any other kind?) and in the title role of Handel’s Almira, the composer’s only surviving German opera.

She can also be heard and seen in Il Boemo, the biographical film about Czech composer Josef Mysliveček.

In August, Alpha will release yet another Baráth Cleopatra on a 3-CD set of Giacomelli’s Cesare in Egitto from last year’s Innsbruck Festival.

I apologize for the incomplete details below. I recently lost an important “cache” of such information, but I’ve done my best to fill in the blanks.

Handel: Arias and a Duet from Orlando, Admeto & Tamerlano

Orlando
Dorinda: Emőke Baráth

Conductor, location and date: ?

Admeto
Antigona: Emőke Baráth
Admeto: Sonia Prina

Conductor: Alan Curtis
Krakow 2014

Tamerlano
Asteria: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Alexis Kossenko
Poznan festival, Poland 2014

Handel: Gloria, Cantata, excerpts from Dixit Dominus & Theodora

Gloria
Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Gyorgi Veshagyi
Hungary ?

Theodora
Theodora: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: György Vashegyi
Budapest 2021

Handel: Arias and a Duet from Rinaldo & Giulio Cesare

Rinaldo
Armida: Emőke Baráth
Rinaldo: Carlo Vistoli

Conductor: Naolly
Barcelona 2024

Giulio Cesare
Cleopatra: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Andrea Marcon
Basel 2021

Mozart: Arias from Mitridate, Re di Ponto & Don Giovanni

Mitridate, Re di Ponto
Sifare: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Lars Ulrik Mortensen
Copenhagen 2024

Don Giovanni
Donna Anna: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Emmauelle Häim
Lille 2023

Vivaldi: Arias from Il Giustino

Il Giustino
Arianna: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Ottavio Dantone
Madrid, 2025

J.S. Bach: Cantata arias and duets

Emőke Baráth
Maarten Engeltjes

Conductor (of some): György Vashegyi
Locations and dates: ?

Terradellas: Arias from La Merope

Merope: Emőke Baráth

Conductor: Francesco Corti
Madrid 2025

Each of today’s Emőke Baráth collections can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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