Of Dennis O’Neill’s previous volume in this series (2/99) I noted that ‘none of the music here is of the forceful declamatory type, which will presumably be included in another collection with another singer’ and added, parenthetically, ‘one wonders who’. And now we have the answer. Manrico, Radamès, Chénier and Otello himself are all here, in true heroic mode. Manrico rallies his forces with a confident top C, Radamès reacts to the prospects of military promotion with manly zest, Chénier declaims fiercely against the sufferings of the poor, and Otello calls aloud for blood. This lyric tenor of earlier days leaves no feeling that his resources are not up to meeting the challenges of such dramatic roles, and at the same time shows that he has not lost the ability to soften and sweeten his voice as occasion requires.

Indeed, he is one of the few who in ‘Celeste Aida’ can not only take the final B flat softly as written but have the imagination to see that the melody’s reprise calls also for the gentlest of tones. His Otello, too, is admirable: incisive in the Oath duet, warm and noble in the Death scene. I do admire all this, and yet am somehow not drawn in. It’s a hard life indeed if a singer’s virtues turn against him, but in the security of this singing and even in its good Italianate qualities of unconstricted, well equalised production there is an absence of tension – and so much of this repertoire (not all, and not all the time) lives on a kind of nervous edge, a sense of emotional danger that must somehow be infused within the voice. But perhaps that’s a peculiarity of personal response: it shouldn’t detract from the many fine qualities. It may even be that, in some perverse way, text in the vernacular makes it harder for the singers to communicate: ‘Make it amusing’ can’t possibly work on us like ‘Ridi, pagliaccio’.