Russian at top end of the diva market

By WILLIAM DART


It's hard to imagine two CD covers less similar than those on the new albums from Anna Netrebko and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

While the Russian soprano is foxed-up by Escada fit for Vogue, the austerely dressed American mezzo seems to come from another world.

Netrebko is hot property in the diva market, and on Sempre Libera she brings an insinuating and often Slavic-tinged beauty to standard Italian repertoire.

The album opens and closes in vulnerable mode (Ah, forse lui at one end of the disc, O mio babbino caro at the other), although she does show enviable dramatic skills in substantial extracts from Otello and Lucia di Lammermoor.

Occasionally, Netrebko's very Russian voice seems a little at odds with the material, particularly in Verdi's Willow Song, but it brings weight to the "Mad Scene" from Lucia di Lammermoor. Here, the other-worldly, Scottish gothic atmosphere is heightened by the use of eerie glass harmonica.

Deutsche Grammophon has captured the music in the warmest of ambiences, complementing the vivid palette of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Claudio Abbado. Nevertheless, it seems unbelievable that on track 2 non-musical clatter has been allowed to impinge on the enchantment that Netrebko and Abbado concoct for us.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is a mezzo who has embraced everything from Bach to John Adams' El Nino, where, on CD and DVD, she forms a transcendent trinity with Dawn Upshaw and Willard White.

Her new collection of Handel arias from Theodora and Serse, along with his cantata La Lucrezia, has all the emotional truth that the singer has made her trademark. Theodora's great aria As with rosy steps the morn has the unaffected nobility it deserves, with the singer perfectly partnered by the Orchestra of the Enlightenment under Harry Bicket.

The short English recitatives exemplify naturalness, and although the singer's approach is a restrained one, Handel's flights of virtuosity hold no fears for her.

The album ends with the familiar - the Largo from Serse, in which Handel, using a text that is little more than a haiku, creates one of the soaring glories of Baroque song. Hunt Lieberson does the composer and his music proud.

* Anna Netrebko, Sempre Libera (Deutsche Grammophon 474 8002);Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Handel Arias (Avie AV 0030, through Ode Records).