Scheherazade

This album offers a fresh approach to the character of Scheherazade, with Rimsky-Korsakov's musical masterpiece transcribed for Ensemble K and a previously unpublished text freely adapted from the Arabian Nights and ancient love poems to tell the story of Scheherazade. French-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani plays Scheherazade, while Kristin Winters plays her sister Dinarzad: "For me, this story is a literary and historical treasure of humanity. But our collective imagination has seen Scheherazade as a seductress or a subservient woman who told stories to survive. The greatness of this figure goes far beyond that and actually represents the ancient figure of the 'hero' or rather the heroine," says Simone Menezes, the artistic director of this project. In this second collaboration with Alpha Classics (after Amazonia, ALPHA990), she presents two versions of the program, one with music and text, the other with Rimsky-Korsakov's music alone.