Remastered "Handel Arias" reissue reminds listeners of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's talent

A newly remastered reissue of the record Handel Arias is serving as a reminder of the talent of mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 52, NPR's Fresh Air critic Lloyd Schwartz wrote. The album, sung with Harry Bicket and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, draws mainly from Handel's oratorio Theodora, one of the composer's biggest flops in his own lifetime but now remembered for some of his most spiritual music.

Schwartz recalled first hearing Hunt Lieberson, then performing under the name Lorraine Hunt, in a 1984 production of an early Mozart opera, admitting he was not immediately as impressed as his colleagues were. That changed a year later when he heard her sing two arias of rage in Peter Sellars' landmark production of Handel's Julius Caesar. "I'd never heard them sung with such torment and such rage," he wrote. "She was hair-raising."

On Handel Arias, Hunt Lieberson sings the role of Irene, the Christian martyr Theodora's solicitous friend, on tracks including "As With Rosy Steps The Morn" and the famous "Ombra Mai Fu," which Schwartz called surely the greatest love song ever written to a tree. Across her career, Hunt Lieberson also took on roles including Bizet's Carmen and Berlioz's tragic Queen Dido, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Myrtle Wilson in the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby.

Near the end of her life, Hunt Lieberson was singing her husband Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs, written specifically for her voice. Schwartz wrote that even two decades after her death, her recordings continue to be reissued, and the new Handel Arias pressing, now logged on the release calendar, remains almost as miraculous on record as she was live.