We are surely a favoured generation that has three singers – Renee Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu and Karita Mattila (and perhaps more that don’t come quite so easily to mind) – who satisfy so pre-eminently the taste for a soprano voice that has these sensuous virtues of richness, smoothness, firmness and purity. It makes us appear very sybaritic, we voice-lovers in the community of musicians. And maybe we are: I’m very inclined, for instance, to enjoy the present recital for its sheer beauty of sound in the knowledge that it’s not such a soft touch after all (the diaphragm is working hard down there to support these blissful phrases, years of work on scales and other exercises have gone into the preparation of this easy flow, and a serious discipline of musical and linguistic study has made possible the performance of such a demanding repertoire). And indeed perhaps I will do just that, for why risk the pleasure inherent in such beauty as this because of ghosts of other singers that play in the mind, invoking a richer coloration at one point, a subtler inflection at another, a charge of impulse, a flash of passion?
On their own, and number by number, the performances are delightful. A lovelier voice one could not wish for, and it suits all of these operatic characters in turn, for all, whatever the nationality and present mood, presuppose a lyric soprano with powers of generous expansion, a warmth of tone in the essential middle register, and resources on high that can match the excitements of an emotional climax with a voice rich in its reserves of range and volume. Mattila has all of that, and the mastery to turn from Russian to Italian, German to Czech, Puccini to Janaeek, Wagner to Lehar. She phrases well (hear the start of ‘In quelle trine morbide’), commands a mature tone and manner (try Sieglinde’s narrative) and is scrupulous over matters of detail (getting the climax of Lisa’s ‘midnight’ aria right, for instance, where many don’t).
If that is enough – and it is certainly a great deal – then this recital (well recorded and with admirable orchestral work) will give unspoilt pleasure. If something additional is wanting – and those who are accustomed to read between the lines will probably sense that there is – it is at least not so urgently wanting that its absence should spoil the pleasure of what is present