YVONNE KENNY
Great Operatic Arias
LSO, cond Richard Hickox
Chandos CHAN3099
THE TITLE doesn’t do justice to the scope of the Australian soprano’s “solo” album, which includes duets with Rebecca Evans (from Mozart’s Figaro and Strauss’s Arabella) and Bruce Ford (from Così fan tutte and Emmerich Kalman’s Gypsy Princess). Kenny stretches the term operatic to embrace Gershwin’s song By Strauss (the one of Blue Danube fame) and Ivor Novello’s Some Day My Heart Will Awake. At fiftysomething, her peachy soprano remains in mostly glorious shape, and she gives British fans a taste of what we have been missing from her Australian repertoire — Armida from Handel’s Rinaldo, Fiordiligi, and the Countess in Strauss’s Capriccio. Her Vilja from The Merry Widow is a classic. Two stars