Almost no woman singer calls herself a contralto these days. The very word has a dated, matronly feel. Instead, most low-pitched female voices are forced into the flashier mezzo tessitura rather than being allowed to cultivate the luscious, bosomy regions below the stave. Sara Mingardo is a shining exception, and the Venetian demonstrates with every performance the contralto beauties that the musical world is missing. Her voice is velvety smooth and beguilingly sensual, and she has a technique capable of tackling the most florid Baroque arias with grace.
But it’s a delicate instrument, easily drowned by strident accompaniment. And in this BBC lunchtime recital (broadcast again by Radio 3 on Saturday at 2pm) her Handel and Vivaldi didn’t seem best served by the over-assertive and not always sweetly tuned playing of the seven-strong Accademia degli Astrusi.
One couldn’t fault the players for pungent characterisation or attack. Their prestissimo stomp through the stormy finale of Vivaldi’s cantata Cessate, omai cessate was a white-knuckle ride. Perhaps that should be applauded in an era when many period bands prefer play-safe blandness. And they romped vivaciously through their big showcase — one of the exuberant sinfonias by the 18th-century Padre Martini that they have rediscovered and recorded. But in the Handel arias too many of Mingardo’s low-lying runs and ornaments were masked. And the players’ rendition of the sublimely chromatic Ombra cara, from Radamisto, lacked both emotional sensibility and subtelty.
Mingardo was at her best in Stille amore, portraying with an exquisite pianissimo what the suicidal King Tolomeo imagines to be his last gasps. What a pity, though, that she sang everything behind a music stand, like a professor delivering a lecture.