For her third ABC Classics album ‘Cello at the Opera’, Sally Maer (aka Cello Diva) gives emotional and breathtaking performances of the great opera tunes on the instrument closest to the human voice: the cello.

Maer and her cello take the starring roles in the world’s most popular arias for all voice types – soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass – creating a new studio recording that is unique and exquisite.

From triumph to tragedy, Maer celebrates the grandeur and brilliance of great opera, with her eloquent cello accompanied by the rich sound of the full orchestra. By turns intimate and majestic, the cello proves the perfect vehicle for some of the greatest melodies by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Handel, Fauré and many others.

"The passionate music from Opera has always won my heart,” says Maer. “The dramatic tales magnify everything we feel in life from tragedy to ecstasy and the cello marries perfectly with these ingredients. In great opera, the meanings of love and loss are exquisitely captured, and for me, singing them through the cello gives the music its own new entity.”

On this album, the cello sings of love, from Carmen’s seductive Seguidilla to Madama Butterfly’s great aria Un bel di, and from the beloved Pearl Fishers Duet to Monteverdi’s Pur ti miro. It tells of heartbreak, with the baroque masterpiece Dido’s Lament and the exquisite Song to the Moon. And it embodies some of the most memorable characters in opera, from the Spanish bullfighter in Toreador’s Song to the resolute Nessun Dorma and O mio babbino caro.

Maer plays solo arias, duets and, for Mozart’s famous trio Soave il vento, regarded as one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, Maer plays all three voices in a brilliant new arrangement. This is music adored by opera fans as well as the general populace who know and love these hits from movie soundtracks and advertising.