This week audiences will get to hear the debut of one of opera’s brightest stars and a remastered classic.

Black & Blue

New York Festival of Song releases “Black & Blue,” the debut solo album of British-American tenor Joshua Blue on its in-house label NYFOS Records. The album was recorded at Big Orange Sheep in November 2022, and produced by Steven Blier and Jonathan Estabrooks and explores themes of racial equality and human resilience, in songs spanning over five decades.

“In the past few years, Josh Blue and I have established an incandescent musical partnership,” Steven Blier said. “This is due as much to Josh’s soaring vocalism as to our repertoire, which includes a few mainstream pieces like Black & Blue and Day Dream, but also a number of extraordinary songs that haven’t been heard in many decades, including Freedom Train, Red Beans and Rice, The Yellow Dog Blues, and Negrita. Most of the composers and lyricists on our CD are Black, and several of the songs will be receiving their first-ever recording. All of them are unforgettable, and speak to the issues of our time with surprising power.”

Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette

Warner Classics releases Berlioz’s work with John Nelson conducting the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg. Joyce DiDonato is the suicidal Cléopâtre and she is joined in Roméo et Juliette by tenor Cyrille Dubois, baritone Christopher Maltman, and the choruses of the Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Foundation and Strasbourg’s Opéra du Rhin.

Siegfried

Decca Classics rereleases Georg Solti’s famed recording of “Siegfried” featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker.