When Robert Harkness asked me if I would choose a new rose which was to bear my name, I felt as if something was about to happen, of which I had always dreamed .

I was silenced .

I felt immensely humbled and deeply grateful that such a glorious creation could be entering my life. As I watched this rose unfold, it was her translucence which struck me most, for she opened out with a radiance that I had never seen before, in a miraculously luminous combination of ivory, transparent bronze and gold.

I grew up in a great medieval garden full of roses, and I loved them dearly, intrigued by their beauty, the perfumes, and by their extraordinary presence.

I was given my second name, Rosalind, after my Grandmother and my Mother, and early on in my life a rose as my cypher, and later as my signet ring, yet in my work as a singer, I have always had to live in the center of cities, with little access to the Nature with which I spent my childhood, and which had meant so much to me.

Last year I was invited to judge the International Rose Competition in Rome, where I had been singing at the Opera, and suddenly a new and fascinating world opened up to me, one of great beauty and of wonderful inhabitants. I went on to other competitions, eventually to Den Haag, where among my co-judges was Robert Harkness, who with the greatest patience, answered many of my questions as I tried to learn.

This collection of songs takes the Rose as its theme and is a reflection of the many influences on my singing career. The first, completely unexpected, indication of the direction that my life was to take came at school, when I won recognition for singing a simple but very beautiful Somerset folksong, collected by Cecil Sharp. Here, perhaps the most lovely of all, is the first English folksong ever to be written down - by him - The Seeds of Love. It was sung by a Dorset gardener, whose name was John England, and this song, together with the Celtic songs, are my own roots.

The passionate and radiantly ecstatic Rachmaninov is a great love from the days when I wanted to spend more time playing his works as a pianist, than I did studying the physics and pure and applied maths for which I was destined.

French songs I had studied in Paris with Pierre Bernac, the companion of Francis Poulenc who composed the haunting, and the haunted, La Reine de Coeur.

The ravishing Chausson, "Lilac Time", began its life in this version for voice and piano, although it really belongs to the orchestral repertoire and begs for that weight of singing, as does the Granados, whose magical Nightingale was written just after Stravinsky’s Firebird, yet still belongs to the era of "La Belle Epoque", and is very different from the delicacy of Chausson’s Hummingbird. I have loved the Berlioz, "Le Spectre de la Rose" since singing it at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, as part of his great song cycle, and dancing with the ballet both before and afterwards.

The American Charles Ives, I discovered in New York while watching Maria Callas giving her Master Classes - an experience burnt into my memory…. the delicious Italian ‘40’s ‘Swing’ number ;….. a string of Waltzes!… from the quick Viennese ones in the operettas, to Tosti’s sultry Neapolitan Serenade and his Barcarolle; E.A. Mario’s poignant, 1918...post-war description of the bombed rose beds, and finally, Ivor Novello’s stylish, "Careless Rapture", from 1936 ……all are reflections of my work in the Opera Houses of Vienna, Munich, Paris and Berlin, Milan, Naples and Rome, where I have always sung happily, along with the rhythms and echoes of all of the dancing that has been a vital part of my life, since I was three years old.

They are intended as a celebration of this extraordinarily beautiful new rose, and of my own joy that such a wonderful creature could have become part of my life.

I dearly hope, that she will bring as much happiness into the lives of everyone who experiences her, as she is already bringing to mine.

Milan, March 2004.