Gevorg Hakobyan is a rising star on the international operatic stage. His deep, resonant voice brings drama and color to every aria on this album. Three unusual selections in Armenian – including Mosi’s Aria from Anoush, the most important opera in the Armenian language – enhance this debut recording. Drawing from favorite operas such as Verdi’s Otello and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Arias of Love & Sorrow joins recent Delos releases including Oksana Dyka’s In Questa Reggia, Oksana Volkova’s Poison D’Amour and Kristian Benedikt’s Tenore di forza in bringing new and captivating voices to fans of opera.

REVIEW:

Armenian baritone Gevorg Hakobyan has a wonderfully rich, colorful, dark baritone with a solid lower register and a ringing top that can only be a boon for the contemporary opera world. He has not yet sung in this country; we can hope that will be change soon. Comparisons with Ettore Bastianini and Anselmo Colzani are fully justified. He also has some timbral similarity to Sergei Leiferkus, but Hakobyan has his own unique sound as well.

We are given arias from Verdi’s Otello, Nabucco, and Ballo in Maschera, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, and Puccini’s Tabarro as the Italian portion of the program. He sings these all with imagination and a solid legato. His Russian arias (from Aleko, Prince Igor, The Tsar’s Bride, The Queen of Spades) benefit from his fluency in Russian. Incidentally, he sings Tomsky’s harrowing aria from Act 1 where he tells the Countess’s back story rather than Yeletzsky’s more romantic aria later on. With the baritone’s precise diction and exciting high G at the end, it’s one of the best selections on the program. Hakobyan also treats us to three arias by Armenian composers Levon Khodya-Eynatyan and Armen Tigranian, displaying his consumate legato and keen ability to create a character through song.

Delos habitually employs the Kaunas City Orchestra and for good reason. There are two conductors, John Fischer and Constantine Orbelian, probably because of the gap in recording sessions.

-- American Record Guide (David Reynolds)