Montserrat Caballe is the finest bel canto soprano of the post-Callas age. For those who prize sheer beauty of sound and true legato singing, she has no peer since Rosa Ponselle in the 1920s.
Unfortunately Caballe is now 68. Few singers can hack it anywhere at 68, never mind in the Albert Hall. Those who defy the years do so because they stay within the range of what suits their voice. Caballe always had a wide range: she was a great Salome as well as the more familiar Italian heroines, to say nothing of her Freddie Mercury period. But that was then. This is now. Caballe brought her supporting entourage and what remains of her voice to the Albert Hall for a cunningly devised evening of microphone-enhanced arias and scenes. The best that can be said is that it was a harmless lovefest between a once revered singer and her fans. Artistically, however, it was almost all a waste of time.
There were 19 items on the programme, mostly Italian and French, with some zarzuela (Spanish operetta) thrown in at the end, in which her daughter Montserrat Marti, the tenor Oscar Marin, and the baritone Youngjoo Kim took their turns. But Caballe herself took only three solos. The once great technician cannot do the brilliant stuff these days, so the emphasis was on the long arcs of legato that were always her finest accomplishment. Two were extreme rarities, so she risked little comparison, and one sensed the performances were pretty approximate. Delle nostr'anime from Donizetti's Gabriella di Vergy and l'Extase de la Vierge, a scene from Massenet's oratorio La Vierge, each have their moments, but neither presented a test, which was just as well. Decayed grandeur was the phrase that kept coming to mind.
The big challenge, though, was Desdemona's Willow Song and Ave Maria from the last act of Verdi's Otello, and she rose to it grandly. Perhaps for the last time, there was the privilege of hearing the tragic dignity and refined voice production that made Caballe special. One thought of Melba's farewell in the same repertoire, and wished that Caballe might have had the good sense to stop there too.
