Tim Ashley
The Guardian
January 2014

Heart-throb baritone William Berger's latest album explores the vagaries of desire as depicted in the operas of Haydn, Mozart and Cimarosa. It's a discreetly sexy disc, engagingly witty and stylish, and, for the most part, cleverly put together. His tone's a bit too light for Don Giovanni, though he makes a wonderfully rakish Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, and a very dangerous Count in Le nozze di Figaro. Haydn's wide-ranging arias show off Berger's coloratura and the beauty of his upper registers to perfection. Soprano Carolyn Sampson joins him for a handful of duets—the best of which, from Haydn's Orlando Paladino, is gloriously suggestive—while the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are on terrific form for Nicholas McGegan. The only mistake, unusual for a canny programmer like Berger, is to end with the big monologue from Cimarosa's Il maestro di capella: Cimarosa just isn't in the same league as Haydn or Mozart, and it feels anti-climactic, however well he sings it.