Katherine Jenkins 'La Diva' album

Katherine Jenkins - the biggest classical sensation in the UK this past year - is set to release her American debut CD, LA Diva, in-stores April 12th from Decca.

A mezzo–soprano with stunning looks and a voice
to match, Katherine has taken the singing world by storm. Her two
recordings were released in the United Kingdom in 2004 selling in
excess of 500,000 copies, making her one of the fastest and biggest
selling opera singers since the likes of Maria Callas. The six record
deal she signed with Universal is one of the largest ever for a
classical singer. Now, on the heels of her CD release, the radiant
Ms. Jenkins will embark on a U.S. concert tour, sharing the stage
with the incomparable Irish tenor, Ronan Tynan (dates attached).

24-year-old Katherine was
a public school teacher in her native Wales just two years ago before
becoming a superstar. She won a scholarship to London’s Royal
Academy of Music at age 17, where she was the youngest honors
graduate ever. She later went on to sign the lucrative
record-breaking deal that catapulted her to stardom. The UK media
have been buzzing ever since. Hello Magazine declared,
“Katherine Jenkins is set to take the U.S. by storm after
conquering the classical world,” while The Daily Telegraph
cited her as “a treat for the dads and the lads… and women like
her too.”

In the past twelve months
she has performed live to over a million people at venues as far
ranging as Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Millennium Stadium
in Cardiff, Wales.

Her CD, La Diva,
is a mixture of opera, sacred songs and hymns that showcase her rich,
lustrous voice. Highlights include the contemporary hit made famous
by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, “Time To Say Goodbye,” the
Rodgers & Hammerstein anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and
audience favorite, “Caruso.”

“Diva”
means “goddess.” Pure and simple: Think
lovely and luminous, gracious and serene, classic in every sense.
Such words might have been coined to describe Katherine Jenkins, the
Welsh mezzo-soprano whose talent, passion and model-gorgeous presence
make the whole idea of a “diva” sublime once again. It is
fitting, somehow, that she makes her U.S. debut with an album called
La Diva – the first in her exclusive new agreement with
Decca – a collection of popular songs and operatic arias that
introduces a singing phenomenon who already rules the charts in her
native United Kingdom.

At
24/25, Jenkins is on the brink of a major international career –
she can now safely leave behind her days as a music teacher – and
it promises to be a unique one. Not long ago,
she was happily working as a schoolteacher, when fame and fortune
suddenly intervened, in the form of a record-breaking contract with
Universal Classics. La Diva
is designed to appeal to a vast popular audience, the listeners who
continue to embrace Andrea Bocelli, Russell Watson and Hayley
Westenra. But Jenkins’s ambitions are as high as they are broad.
A scholarship student at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she has
every intention of pursuing a serious career in opera when her voice
is ready and the time is right. (She already has her sights set on
title role in Carmen.) Her model in this is fellow Welshman
Bryn Terfel, the bass-baritone whose wisely managed core-classical
success is balanced with his acclaimed forays into popular and folk
music.

La
Diva showcases Jenkins’s rich, lustrous voice in everything
from the contemporary hit “Time to Say Goodbye” and the Rodgers &
Hammerstein anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” to beautiful
arias and songs by Dvorák, Bizet, Verdi, Mozart and Rodrigo.
That’s diva territory, for sure, and she navigates it with the
artistry and aplomb of, well … a diva.

Katherine Jenkins has been singing since the
earliest days of her childhood in Wales, a land and a culture
virtually synonymous with singing. At seven, she auditioned for her
church choir in the town of Neath, in the south of Wales near
Cardiff, and was head chorister by the age of 10. Somewhere in
between, in 1988, she became something of a local legend when – in
a performance of “O Holy Night” in Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall –
the intensity of one of her soaring high notes literally shattered a
crystal chandelier. Otherwise, her childhood was typical and happy,
shadowed only by the death of her beloved father when she was only
15. Like many a Welsh child, Jenkins sang in choirs throughout her
childhood and adolescence, but she won a mantel full of awards and
prizes and a place in the National Youth Choir, as well as twice
representing Wales in (and winning) the competition for BBC Choirgirl
of the Year. A scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music was the
crowning achievement in her preparation as a singer.

The
serious, studious side of Katherine Jenkins barely hints at the
glamorous, passionate singer whose audiences have even included the
cheering fans at last year’s Rugby League Challenge Cup Final in
Cardiff, whom she led in an unforgettable rendition of “You’ll
Never Walk Alone” – a long way from those holiday renditions of
“I’m a Little Teapot” that once delighted her family. Jenkins
made her international debut at the Sydney Opera House in Australia,
she has toured with Hayley Westenra and fellow Welshman Aled Jones,
and – just last August – sang in Cardiff at a dinner celebrating
the 50^th anniversary in show business of another daughter
of Wales, Dame Shirley Bassey. In March and
April, she will tour the U.S., opening for Irish tenor Ronan Tynan.

North
London is now home to Katherine Jenkins, and she shares her life
there with singer/songwriter Steve Hart, himself a star from his days
in the boy band Worlds Apart. Chart-topping album sales in the U.K.
herald her arrival in the U.S., and the beginning of a truly
international success. You’d expect nothing less than from a
genuine diva. La Diva. Pure and simple.

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Katherine Jenkins - La Diva