DAGMAR PECKOVÁ'S SINFUL WOMEN

Her new album features arias of such fateful heroines as Mary Magdalene, Herodias, Dalila, Medea, Elektra and Salome. The new CD will be released by Supraphon on 17 April 2015. However you can already watch album video teaser where Pecková unveils many interesting details: http://y2u.be/pFE0pzbMdPE (don't forget to switch on english subtitles).
The provocative title of Dagmar Pecková’s latest album reflects a remarkable dramaturgic idea conceived by the feted mezzo-soprano herself in tandem with the psychiatrist William Didden. All the characters Pecková portrays on the CD have a common denominator: sin. All the arias are arias sung by sinful women. Each of these women has trespassed against someone and herself alike. „My new album is about sin and forgiveness. I believe that the stories of the sinful women, the music and singing on the album will provide the listener with ample food for thought. Forgiveness is itself a therapeutic phenomenon. Both human relationships and souls need it so as to be healthy,“ says Pecková, adding: “When you look at mezzo-soprano characters, virtually all of them can be branded sinners. Perhaps it is owing to the darker voice colour…”

The CD was produced by PBS GROUP, a. s., in collaboration with the conductor Aleksandar Markovič and the splendidly accompanying Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Slovak Philharmonic Choir, and supplemented by the soprano Ivana Veberová (in the role of Strauss’s Elektra) and the legendary Slovak bass Peter Mikuláš (in the role of Herod in the final scene from Mariotte’s opera Salomé).

The origination and production of the album and gala concert were made possible by PBS GROUP, a.s., particularly the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PBS GROUP and psychiatrist William Didden.

DAGMAR PECKOVÁ ON HER NEW ALBUM „SINFUL WOMEN“

Biblical and Classical stories? Why should they interest us today?

Great emotions and tragedies, sorrows and murders, abuse and violence, corruptibility and betrayal are part of today’s human life just as they were in days of yore. Dalila, Herodias, Salome, Medea, Jokasta, Klytaemnestra, Kundry and Mary Magdalene…All the female characters on my new album are sinful! Yet we certainly cannot merely judge the outcomes of their action. I am more interested in that which has led them to behave as they do.

Why can great, all-embracing love suddenly turn into something as horrid as hatred?

And why can hatred be so powerful as to make one kill one’s own children or men previously admired or loved…? And even more intriguing is how the composers rendered in tones what takes place in the hearts and minds of the characters. They created singular, wonderful opuses.

The interpreter is part of a larger whole – together with the orchestra, the conductor and the musical work.

All of us create something together and pass it on with great humility… And it is amazing to be part of it and create. To leave the real world behind and immense oneself in Klytaemnestra for instance, in the nooks of her throes and gruesome, blood-soaked fantasies, without being aided by a costume or stage image…

Singing is not just a succession of beautiful notes for me. Quite the contrary. The human voice is capable of expressing the most tender, as well as the darkest, spaces of the soul. Tones that come into being can be glowing with faith, sharp as a knife-edge, as well as deeply desperate, like calling for just vengeance.

I am grateful to God and Fate for making it possible for me to put across works as engrossing as those featured on the album Sinful Women.