This is a considerable disappointment. Carol Vaness has recorded a programme of arias which should act as little souvenirs of the roles with which she has been delighting audiences during the last five or six years. As it is, it would be better to remember them in the imagination alone.
Perhaps it is because Vaness really does need the whiff of the greasepaint; doubtless, too, it is because she is weighed down by uninspired, lustreless orchestral playing. But these are monochrome performances, unimaginative of response and one-dimensional of realization. One finds oneself listening to ''Per pieta'' as an example of the skill and brilliance of the singer's art, not in order to be moved into an engagement with Fiordiligi's emotional state of mind. Likewise, in the recitative to ''Non piu di fiori'', the hushed and emotive repetition of the name ''Sesto'' which makes authentic the expression of grief in the subsequent aria (and which incidentally, is whispered so movingly in Cecilia Bartoli's new recording—see above) is merely another note in the line here.
Zeffiretti, lusinghieri'' is another case in point. The voice simply refuses to modulate the flow of breath, to mould any changing tone of voice through sustained notes and vowels, or across shifting harmonies. Her po-faced ''Non mi dir'', though, is as much a result of Leopold Hager's leaden movement from one tempo to another.
There are glimpses of the live and living Vaness here: in the agility and muscle of Fiordiligi's recitative, and in the ringing poles of her register through the wind and storm of ''Come scoglio''. But these instances serve only to increase the sense of let-down as aria and recital progresses. Better luck next time.'