Sondra Radvanovsky: "Verdi Arias"
Academy of Choral Arts, Moscow, and Philharmonia of Russia, Orbelian. Texts and translations. Delos DE 3404
Sondra Radvanovsky has been a welcome presence on the Met stage and elsewhere for some fifteen years, and her work deserves permanent documentation. Her soprano is lustrous and vibrant, maintaining a spinning line over a long range, with a full-throated approach to top notes. The voice is nicely anchored to the support via the low range: she tends to tread carefully on stepwise descents, but on the present disc, the low A in Amelia's big scene from Un Ballo in Maschera is firm enough.
So supple and evenly produced an instrument might seem ideally suited to bel canto, and indeed, her best singing here comes in the earlier arias most strongly influenced by that style. The singer renders "Tacea la notte" with a lovely, pure legato, sustaining music and text in long, arching phrases; she sails through a single verse of the cabaletta at a relaxed tempo, with a nice turn through the high C and a good trill. "Ernani, involami" has a buoyant lift; some of the fioriture sound a bit cautious, but in the cabaletta Radvanovsky brings the runs some sense of abandon. Again, the recurring trills at the top of the staff are excellent.
Bright, clear projection and verbal clarity suit Radvanovsky's soprano for some of Verdi's weightier heroines as well. The big Ballo scene and "O patria mia," as well as "Pace, mio Dio," from La Forza del Destino, all have a good "spoken" immediacy, with the words planted on flowing legato lines. The Ballo selection ascends to a full, clear high C, though the more exposed one in the Aida aria sounds less comfortable. There are moments of strain in "Pace, mio Dio" — at "Cotanto Iddio," for example — but the rise to B-flat is good.
Given the singer's evident sense of line in the Trovatore arias, it's odd that her phrasing in "La vergine degli Angeli" and in Medora's aria from Il Corsaro should be short-winded, caught in half-bars. The florid Vespri bolero should have been dazzling, but the first verse, particularly, is labored; Radvanovsky loosens up a bit for the second, capping it with a solid E in alt. There are mild problems throughout the program with midrange notes that don't quite speak dead center, presumably the product of tight session time rather than any technical inadequacy.
Constantine Orbelian draws solid support from the Philharmonia of Russia. The strings are sometimes scrappy, but the winds are expressive. Some moments suggest that this may not be the conductor's most comfortable métier: the rhythm in "Tacea la notte" sounds insufficiently grounded, and the brisk orchestral introduction to "Ernani, involami," while urgent, sacrifices nocturnal atmosphere. The men's chorus in "La vergine degli Angeli" is nicely blended, but the mixed chorus is frayed in the bolero.
The recorded quality is pleasing, though it handles resonance inconsistently. The ambience around voice and orchestra can be conspicuous, yet close miking exposes the soft high A-flat of "D'amor sull'ali rosee," which would have worked fine in the opera house, as tight. The booklet omits some texts and prints others in the wrong places — the cabaletta to the first Trovatore aria, for example, is printed at the start of the second, in place of the opening lines for Leonora and Ruiz.
STEPHEN FRANCIS VASTA
Send feedback to OPERA NEWS.
