Following the tips of various US critics, Aprile Millo's promoters are marketing her as the successor to Leontyne Price, the new Verdi soprano we've all been waiting for. She has been highly acclaimed in the States as she has stood-in for Tomowa-Sintow and Caballe; and this record gives some indication of why.
Her arias from La forza del destino and Don Carlos show a drive and concentration, a resilience in every register which matches a steely self-discipline and a controlling intelligence which one can almost feel at work. The voice itself, ''high-mezzo-ish'' as Millo herself describes it, is an exceptionally powerful engine, tuned to a nicety; her moulding of the shorter and longer period is never less than musical, her sense of dramatic pacing, particularly as Lady Macbeth, is unerring.
But—and it is a big but—as yet it is Aprile Millo to whom we are listening, not Amelia, Desdemona, Leonora or Leonora. On record, at least, the human dimension still needs fleshing out, and the full potency of Verdi's writing released by a much closer scrutiny of the pulse, inflexion, even the orchestration, of every line. ''Tacea la notte'' and Desdemona's Act 4 sequence in particular are frozen in their merely vocal accomplishment, considerable though this is: they do not betray any distinctly individual response, and therefore do not elicit one.
Even the slight awkwardness lurking behind the arching phrases of ''Tu che la vanita'', and the lack of a properly focused high pianissimo could well be put right once there is a stronger inner substantiation of the music she handles with such assured confidence. The playing of the LPO under Giuseppe Patane, flattered by the resonant church acoustic and with many fine instrumental solos, makes the record a pleasurable, if frustrating, experience.'