Kathleen Battle at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

With a top seat price of $245 and the Town Hall packed to the choir stalls, I doubt if the venue had ever made as much money in a single night as for Kathleen Battle's Saturday recital. This must have been the status event of the year, with punters sauntering along Queen St 45 minutes before the show, brandishing programmes.

The American diva was 10 minutes late and made every member of the audience, from stalls to Gods, feel they were long-lost friends as she made her star entrance, appropriately regal in diamonds and black.

The opening Handel bracket tested that friendship. Let the bright Seraphim, dull without trumpet, was marred by her constant gasping for breath, poor consonants and some flat singing. Piangero la sorte mia from Julius Caesar fell more easily on the ears, but only if you're happy with a noble Handel Largo being turned into some sort of Baroque torch song.

Three Lieder selections were variable. She performed alchemical miracles on Mendelssohn with the cradlesong Bei der Wiege transformed into a miniature opera, complete with kittenish smiles to the balcony. On the debit side, Auf Flugeln des Gesanges had its wings on quarter speed, its self-indulgent tempo showcasing little but dicey intonation.

A selection from Richard Strauss exemplified the throwaway style in which the soprano excels, although the cancellation of the promised Amor suggested that Battle was not feeling at her most confident.

Once again, in Standchen, pianist Sharolyn Kimmorley valiantly followed Battle's extraordinary gloss on the Strauss original.

After the interval, three Liszt Lieder selections were less-successful, with a distressing tendency to cut short their rapturous long-held notes in mid-flight. Comment disaient-ils suffered most. After a false start, we were given French-ordinaire and extraordinarily mangled rhythms.

Here, as elsewhere, there was a tension between singer and accompanist. Throughout, Battle had been foot-tapping, piano-slapping and conducting to keep the patient Kimmorley in line.

An aria from Donizetti's Linda de Chamounix counted for little, isolated from the opera, sans orchestra. Tonally insecure and unable to sustain the piece's structure, Battle hit the final top C, but the strain was evident.

The real magic came at the end of the evening, with a selection of Negro spirituals and encore after encore (most of them, apart from an ill-advised and overbreathy Mozart Alleluia, were in the same vein).

Unaccompanied, in Over my head and Amazing Grace, she was inspirational, and it was during one of the encores, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, that Battle suddenly reminded me of the late Billie Holiday.

The whole evening was recontextualised and some of the musical liberties almost justified. Piangero as Gloomy Sunday? There's a concept in there somewhere.