FAIREST ISLE.(Review)

Barbara Bonney [] "FAIREST ISLE" Songs and arias by Purcell, Dowland, Byrd, Campion, Jenkins, Morley. Heringman, lute; Phantasm viol quartet; Academy of Ancient Music, Hogwood. Decca 289 466132-2

Barbara Bonney faces an uphill battle in this Elizabethan medley. After a series of tasteful but basically modest offerings, which might strike some as a waste of her considerable talents, the light lyric soprano finds herself, in the final selection, strapped with an outsize challenge -- basically miscast -- in Dido's lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

The overall strategy may not be so ill-advised as it seems, even to a listener who associates the role of Dido with the majestic resonance of a Kirsten Flagstad or a Janet Baker. The dozen pieces that precede the aria give us a sense of period context, which justifies Bonney's attempt at Dido in stylistic if not vocal terms. Christopher Hogwood's conducting and an assortment of Elizabethan specialists set a tone of idiomatic, ultra-light-textured execution.

The program doesn't ever really bog down. Amid the frilly insouciance or wry heartache of the early selections, we also encounter stronger fare in William Byrd's almost flamboyant (and beautifully accompanied) "O Lord, How Vain Are All Our Frail ...