No one has ever accused
Callas of being a "non-interventionist"
interpreter, but her "Vissi d’Arte"
is a fairly direct affair compared with
the one which opens this disc, every
note squeezed for effect, every syllable
preened as though Kiri Te Kanawa wants
to give the lie to those who say she
makes a beautiful sound but passes over
the words (at least when she is not
singing English). Yet the effect, rather
than heighten the emotions, is mannered
and decorative; Liberty-style Puccini
with festoons of sumptuous flowers around
him. Was it ever thus?
Well, turning back
to her 1981 "Vissi d’Arte"
under the more no-nonsense but far from
insensitive baton of John Pritchard
(Nagano is perhaps too sympathetic to
her wishes), I have to say it was not.
The voice itself was better focused
– by 1996 it was beginning to wobble
around the note instead of going directly
to it – and the interpretation was straightforward,
maybe a little cool but attractive and
surer in the high notes. If I want to
hear a "Vissi d’arte" from
Te Kanawa, then of the two it would
be the earlier one (about half-way between
them she recorded a complete Tosca with
Solti which I don’t know).
Then comes the charming
piece from Le Villi, with so much swooning
around the line that it is hard to hear
what the line actually is. On an old
Cetra set of this opera Elisabetta Fusco
under the well-versed Arturo Basile,
at a slightly slower tempo, gives a
much clearer idea of what the piece
is about (but to be fair, near the beginning
of the second stanza Fusco comes out
with a high A the likes of which a paying
public has a right to be protected against
and nothing Te Kanawa does is in that
category).
Why does this have
to happen (it so often does)? It’s the
old story, I suppose, of taking a beautiful
(nay very beautiful) but not
especially large voice and trying to
make it just a little bigger than it
really is.
But all is not lost.
The voice in 1996 was still a very beautiful
one and, when drama was not on the agenda,
it could still sail to the heights as
of yore, as in the Rondine piece, carrying
the listener’s heart with it. I enjoyed
"Sì, mi chiamano Mimì"
and I am not sure that this "O
mio babbino caro" is not an improvement
on the 1981 version. I disliked her
way of playing with the rhythm of the
repeated notes at the beginning but
thereafter she perhaps builds it up
better than before.
So if you are a Te
Kanawa fan (twenty-plus years ago I
was myself but somewhere along the way
she lost me) you should find more to
enjoy than regret here. If you are principally
a Puccini fan then maybe this is not
the singer to add more than a gloss
to what you already know, and that includes
the three rare songs with piano, in
which she does not sound entirely at
her ease.
Christopher Howell
Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), Orchestre de l’Opéra
National de Lyon/Kent Nagano, items marked * with
Roger Vignoles (piano) 
