At a time when fine mezzos are growing on trees, French-Canadian Marie-Nicole Lemieux stands alone as a real contralto. The vocal range remains just about the same, but the color and texture of the voice is what defines the sound; Marilyn Horne was closer to contralto than mezzo and Ewa Podles is still the standard bearer for the group. Lemieux, in a not-very-showoffy manner, is a knockout. She has shown up on various Handel and Vivaldi CDs and DVDs (and also has recorded works by Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler), but this new CD is her most impressive showcase yet.
The voice is warm and rich and is used brilliantly to show off its colors. At least half of the arias recorded here are rarities: the familiar ones—“Che faro…” from Gluck’s Orfeo, “Voi, che sapete” from Mozart’s Figaro, to name two—are well done, and listeners will have their own favorites, although Lemieux’s can stand with the best. (Conductor Bernard Labadie indulges in some wonderful tempo alterations in “Che faro….”)
The others are ear-openers. The somewhat familiar “Venga pur” from Mitridate opens the program and tells us almost everything we have to know: an impeccable technique, flawless rhythm and diction, meaning given to each word and phrase, unaspirated runs, trills, startling, correct attacks at the start of phrases (this is an angry aria), a unique tone, dark yet somehow brilliant. The second aria, a lament from Haydn’s L’isola disabilitata, is sung in long phrases with wonderful legato—a study in soft singing. By the time she sings in her native language, for Clytemnestra’s vicious third-act scene and aria from Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide, she’s overwhelming in her dramatic attack, exclamation, and dark, dark phrases—here is a great singing actress.
A 12-minute aria from Graun’s Montezuma is a perfect opera seria da capo andante with a wild, brief “B” section, and the da capo is well embellished. Mozart’s La Betulia liberata offers a showpiece, and the CD ends with an aria from Haydn’s extravagantly scored Il ritorno di Tobia, a dazzler that has wonderful dips to the nether regions of Lemieux’s voice and plenty of virtuoso coloratura. This is a great program from a great singer, and Labadie’s direction of the remarkable Les Violons du Roy is no less grand. The overture to Mozart’s Mitridate is a nice bonus half-way through the CD.
