With her new album "Rebirth", star soprano Sonya Yoncheva spans a wide range from the music of Monteverdi to Dowland and Gibbons to folk songs from her Bulgarian homeland and a hit by Abba. In recent years Sonya Yoncheva, who is celebrated worldwide for her fantastic voice, has thrilled audiences with important roles such as Norma, Violetta in "La Traviata", Elisabetta in "Don Carlo" or Tosca at the world's most important opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Royal Opera House London, the Bavarian State Opera, the Berlin and Vienna State Operas, La Scala in Milan and the Paris Opéra. She is considered the best Violetta (Traviata) at the moment, but her repertoire is broad. She actually started her singing career with Baroque music, and at the Salzburg Festival she successfully returned to her Baroque, even early Baroque roots back in 2018 with Poppea from Monteverdi's masterpiece. In 2020 she had great success with a baroque program, which is the basis for her new album. On "Rebirth", her fourth solo album for Sony Classical, Sonya Yoncheva spans a wide, fascinating range of centuries - from some of the most haunting arias of 17th-century Italian opera, baroque music from Spain and English songs from the period by Dowland and Gibbons to folk songs and music by Abba. Sonya Yoncheva confesses, "certain musical styles have remained surprisingly close to us over 500 years, combining their emotional radiance with great simplicity. I want to emphasize this timeless quality, the feeling of unlimited freedom. It's like a call to rebirth, to renewal, which the world desperately needs." Programmatically, "Rebirth" leads from the beginning of opera from Italy with music by Monteverdi (from "Poppea"), by Francesco Cavalli (from the opera "Xerse"), his pupil Barbara Strozzi and his heir Alessandro Stradella to England - to John Dowland ("Come Again, Sweet Love") and Orlando Gibbons ("The Silver Swan") as well as to the English composer of Italian descent Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, whose father brought the Italian art of madrigal to England. Rarely heard music from 17th century baroque Spain is also heard on "Rebirth" - by Santiago de Murcia, by Thomás de Torrejón y Velazco and by José Marin. Yoncheva deftly combines Baroque music with a Bulgarian folk song, an instrumental piece by Spaniard Simon Diaz (1928-2014) and an aria from a modern Spanish opera ("El Prometeo" by Leonadro Garcia Alarcon, b. 1976). For the album's closing, Yoncheva chose the Abba song "Like an Angel Passing through my Room," which she finds thematically related to the motet "Hear Me, O God" by Alfonso Ferrabosco. Sonya Yoncheva is accompanied on her successful musical journey through the centuries by the Cappella Mediterranea under the direction of Leonardo Garcia Alarcon.