"ARIAS & SCENES".(Review)

Karita Mattila

[] "ARIAS & SCENES" from The Queen of Spades; Manon Lescaut, Lohengrin, Simon Boccanegra, Jenufa, Die Walkure, Elektra and Die Lustige Witwe. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sado. Texts and translations. Erato 8573-85787-2

The luminous intensity of Karita Mattila's singing works on the listener almost as smoothly as a patent medicine. The excitement she inspires does not seem to depend on any heightened emotion of her own; the effects are grounded instead in a remarkable precision. Whether reduced to a pliant, lyrical plea or bursting with exultant power -- the modes captured, for instance, in her Lohengrin excerpts here -- the tone is focused with a surgical exactitude that cuts straight to the nervous system.

It may seem unfair that with such a naturally communicative gift, little interpretive insistence is required to capture an emotion; the effect is something like the way a Garbo can steal a scene while remaining perfectly still. The dramatic gestures, while far from mechanical, exist in the gleaming timbre itself, abetted by accurate pitch and an instant forward thrust. You'll hear none of the extramusical italics some singers supply in the form of tremolo, crooning or bleats. One aspect of the listener's total surrender is an inability to explain how the effect was crafted. This singer delivers the goods rather than an inventory.

In the best performances on this set, the common denominator, programmatically, is youthful desperation -- romantic heroines pushed to the brink, caught between illusion and danger. The white heat of Mattila's style thrives in such material. The quick and incisive vocal response makes her most comfortable, apparently, when handed a full emotional plate. Sieglinde's accelerating progress from defeatism to rapturous hope; Lisa's large-scale, glamorous anguish; Jenufa's tattered emotions; and the fevered desires of Chrysothemis -- all emerge with tightly concentrated urgency and a beautiful, sensuous presence that gives special poignancy to the crisis at hand.

Even without any samples of her celebrated Mozart work, this recital testifies to considerable range, but with some curious limitations. Stylistic and linguistic confidence shows in the roles of Lisa and Jenufa. Russian and Czech seem to come naturally, and both languages are sung with great commitment and palpable affection. Admittedly, the soprano and her conductor, in the second-act Jenufa excerpt, can't match the seasoned authority of the ...