"KARITA LIVE!".(Review)

Karita Mattila

[] "KARITA LIVE!" Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, cond. Ondine ODE 96-2 (Koch, dist.)

Karita Mattila turned forty on September 2, 2000, and decided to throw a little party for herself and 11,000 guests at the Helsinki Arena. Backed by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, she spent the night singing whatever she damn well pleased, from "Dich, teure Halle" to "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend." Judging by the evidence on this disc and the knockout photos in the accompanying booklet, it must have been one memorable night.

Mattila is a bona fide international operatic glamour-puss in the tradition of Anna Moffo and Kiri Te Kanawa. Like those two sopranos, she's got the goods to back up the beauty. But she has one thing they never did: the ability to cut loose. Whether tearing up the stage in Fidelio or Queen of Spades or turning a Carnegie Hall recital into a sophisticated star turn that leaves the audience screaming, Mattila is an original. If this were Hollywood in the 1930s, she would have been snapped up by the studios right along with Grace Moore and Lily Pons -- and she would have acted and sung circles around both of them.

This Streisand-sized concert in Helsinki was undoubtedly one of those great you-had-to-be-there nights. "Dich, teure Halle," the opener, is indeed striking. If Mattila were to sing Elisabeth in an opera house Tannhauser, the character wouldn't be the saintly bore she too often is in other hands. Rusalka's "Song to the Moon" is made especially poignant by the tear-in-the-voice sound Mattila imparts. "Ritorna vincitor" emerges unevenly, compromised at the beginning by the lack of declamatory force in Mattila's lower register but rising ...