NCH, Dublin
In a market with plenty of room for singers who poach music from operas but rarely or never perform in them, popular English soprano Lesley Garrett did it the other way, succeeding in opera first. Her big break happened here in Ireland at the 1980 Wexford Festival when she sang alongside Bernadette Greevy in Handel's Orlando. Her career took off, notably with English National Opera.
She then diversified, bringing her fine voice, warmth, and extrovert, easy-going persona to the musical stage and to popular TV programmes.
Everything that makes her so appealing was in evidence during her concert with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Mornington Singers and David Brophy. I did wonder that she opted for amplification, and I was surprised that she often approached the note from below. And a stylistic quibble would be an element of theatre in Mozart's Laudate Dominum.
But these reservations did little to hold back the overall presentation which gathered momentum and oodles of feel-good factor building to a genuinely warm and appreciative standing ovation at the end.
Although she had the audience in the palm of her hand during a final trio of songs from the shows – Porter's In the Still of the Night, Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Some Enchanted Eveningand You'll Never Walk Alone– she was equally persuasive in a languorous, summer-warm selection from Cantleloube's Songs from the Auvergneand in Mercè, dilette amichefrom Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes. Both in this latter number and in Tatiana's Letter Scenefrom Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin– less powerful but more engaging in English translation – Garrett, now 30 years into her career, convincingly deployed her natural youthfulness to inhabit roles of young girls in love.
The Mornington Singers chamber choir ably provided additional texture and opera chorus parts, as well as oohs and aahs where required. They in fact opened the concert with a fine, pure-voiced account of Handel's Zadok the Priest.
Conductor David Brophy was a good partner to Garrett's big personality and also sold his band well in orchestra-only items, notably in Borodin's Polovtsian Dances(in which the Mornington women also shone) and a selection from Bizet's Carmen.
