Not since an unknown company singer at Covent Garden called Joan Sutherland triumphed in Lucia di Lammermoor has there been as much excitement about a young Australian soprano. Nicole Car, 30, made her Royal Opera debut last autumn as Micaëla in Carmen and returned shortly after as a passionately convincing Tatyana in Eugene Onegin. Her first album, The Kiss, confirms the exciting promise of her juicy tone, musicality and dramatic flair.
Her Tatyana is a good place to start: the role is clearly under her skin after her live performances in Sydney and London, so there’s an exciting headiness about her Letter Scene that speaks of teenage hormones (the character is supposed to be a dreamy young girl compared to the seen-it-all Onegin). “I don’t know how to begin,” Tatyana agonises as she puts to pen to paper, and you can sense passion mingling with panic.
The other treasures of this satisfying recital are also from the Slavic repertoire and suit Car’s voice delightfully well. Rusalka’s Song to the Moon, a plum of the soprano repertoire, is sumptuously done (the iridescent strings of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, conducted by Andrea Molina, are also worth a hat-tip) and Vendulka’s Lullaby from Smetana’s The Kiss, which gives the album its title, is hauntingly fragile, encapsulating the opera’s special charm and melancholy. In the rarity Tsveti moi (My flowers), from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Servilia, Car clicks into an extra level of emotional urgency.
Elsewhere and in more standard fare, there is less that is individual about Car’s interpretations, in recital staples including the Jewel Song from “Faust’’ and Si, mi chiamano Mimì from La Bohème. We finish with a risky high D as Car impersonates Massenet’s glorious heroine, Thaïs, the sexy pagan dancer suffering a crisis of spiritual confidence. Car’s future, however, probably lies less with the light-voiced airheads and more with opera’s more grown-up tragediennes. (ABC Classics)