I heard Mattiwilda Dobbs as the Queen of Shemakhan (The Golden Cockerel), Gilda and Olympia when she made her much-admired appearances at Covent Garden in 1954, also as Zerbinetta at Glyndebourne the previous summer, and can confirm what Lord Harewood writes in the booklet-notes of her beauty of voice, and expressive and exact musicianship, not to forget her arresting presence on stage. We have souvenirs of two of her Covent Garden appearances – in her account of the mysterious Queen’s ‘Invocation to the Sun’, sung in English as it was at the Royal Opera House – and performed in just the right ethereal, sensuous manner, and of her Gilda, also the role of her Metropolitan debut. The latter is remembered in the father-daughter duet from Act 1, ‘Caro nome’ and the opera’s finale. Her singing has poise, finesse and some dramatic strength. She is partnered by the thoroughly idiomatic, clearly articulated Rigoletto of Rolando Panerai, who begins the extracts with ‘Pari siamo’, which he sings with incisive character.
Covent Garden thought of staging Lakme for Dobbs. That was not to be, which is a pity given her sweet, plangent and finely phrased reading of Lakme’s two solos, just about as satisfying as you’re likely to hear. Her LP of songs wasn’t as well received as the opera disc when they first appeared. Listening to it again, I derived a deal of pleasure from such consistently lovely tone, wistful singing, such considered phrasing of a repertoire carefully chosen, probably by Legge, to suit Dobbs’s gifts. The Schubert offerings are all light and airy. Her account of Wolf’s Goethe setting, Die Bekehrte, taken more slowly than usual, has just the erotic suggestions predicated by poem and music. From her period in Paris with Bernac she probably learnt how to sing melodies so authentically, her sense of style evinced particularly in Hahn’s Si mes vers avaient des ailes and that Bernac favourite, Chausson’s unforgettably soulful Le colibri. With Gerald Moore subtle and soft-grained at the piano and a recording of the voice so much more stable than we often hear today, this is a generously filled CD any voice-lover can revel in, another commendable deed of rediscovery by Testament.'