Joseph Calleja is the latest world-class artist to be chosen as the featured soloist at the Nobel Prize Concert, held annually in Stockholm on December 8 in honor of the year's Nobel Laureates. For the 2011 concert, Calleja -- "one of the finest lyric tenors before the public today" (Associated Press) -- will perform a selection of favorite Italian and French opera arias with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic under Marcello Mottadelli. It was with a similar program that the singer's most recent solo album, The Maltese Tenor, debuted last month in the number one spot on the Billboard Classical Traditional Chart in the US, having already topped similar lists in the UK and Germany. The disc includes an aria from Gounod's Faust, and it is in the title role of a new production of this grand opera that Calleja returns to New York's Metropolitan Opera in January 2012.