Kate Royal - Midsummer Night (2009)

For her second solo album for EMI, lyric soprano Kate Royal has created an ambitious program: songs of love or longing from twentieth century opera and operetta, excluding the obvious choices of Puccini or Strauss, and more than half are in English. She has come up with a gorgeous selection of arias, ranging from the very popular ("Song to the Moon" from Dvorák's Rusalka and "The trees on the Mountain" from Floyd's Susannah) to the very obscure (the rhapsodic "Midsummer Night" from Alwyn's Miss Julie, Rossignol from Messager's Monsieur Beaucaire, and "I have dreamt" from Bernard Hermann's Wuthering Heights). Some of the arias are not infrequently heard in recital, including "Vilja-Lied" from Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe, "Do no utter a word" from Barber's Vanessa, and "Mariettas Lied" from Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, but the rest are rarely sung apart from the complete opera, and it's a pleasure to hear how effective they are in a recital setting. This is especially true of two stunning Britten excerpts, "Embroidery in childhood" from Peter Grimes, and "How beautiful it is" from The Turn of the Screw. Royal's voice is pure and strong, with a silvery sheen, and she brings a wide expressive range to these selections. The quality of the repertoire and the warmth and depth of Royal's interpretations make this an album that should be of interest to any fan of modern opera. Edward Gardner leads the Orchestra of English National Opera and Crouch End Festival Chorus in intensely passionate performances that emphasize the Romantic lyricism of the music. The sound is warm and clean, with an excellent sense of presence.