The cover of Elina Garanca's latest CD is designed to deceive. Paul Schirnhofer's portrait, with the singer elegantly sporting Cartier drop earrings, casts the Latvian mezzo in a retro light; a latterday Grace Kelly waiting for a nod from Mr Hitchcock, perhaps.
Forget the suspense; in reality, Romantique is a not very successful attempt to catch a twilight world between love and despair. Garanca's overly sedate Mon Coeur s'ouvre a ta voix is an online YouTube tempter (19,945 hits to date) but Saint-Saens' aria is the only familiar piece in a collection of obscure Gounod, Tchaikovsky and Lalo.
D'Amour l'ardente flamme from Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust is woefully lacking in ardour and Romeo's plodding tomb aria from Nicola Vaccai's 1825 Giulietta e Romeo makes one realise why this composer is only remembered today for his vocal studies.
To cap it off, an overly resonant recording does no favours to the valiant efforts of the Filamonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna under Yves Abel.
I'm perplexed as to why Marie-Nicole Lemieux is presented as a rather cross Papagena on the cover of her latest aria collection, but musically, it's a winner. The Canadian is emphatically contralto rather than mezzo, and you can hear it when she tinges the tragedy of Gluck's Che faro with a soulful darkness.
