Mozart Mozart x 3: Opera arias Elsa Dreisig (soprano); Basel Chamber Orchestra/Louis Langrée Erato 9029641225 58:27 mins
Elsa Dreisig’s Sifare in Mark Minkowski’s recent recording of Mitridate whets the appetite for more Mozart from this young Danish-born soprano. If ambition were enough then her decision to sing arias by the three principal women characters in Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas (hence the title) would deserve bravas and bouquets. Yet, you need rather more – especially a voice that naturally encompasses what we now think of as the soprano and the mezzo ranges.
Dreisig has a winningly silvery tone for Countess Almaviva in ‘Dove Sono’, which is by turns lyrical with hints of nostalgia. However, in ‘Come scoglio’, Fiordiligi’s hymn to rock-like constancy, you need to hear the voice hitting the chest register with a thump. And is Dresig a tad too toothsome in Donna Elvira’s ‘mi tradi’? Where’s the woman who has endured so much in pursuing Giovanni? The lower notes are there, but they lack gravity.
Dreisig knows how much Mozart’s recitatives tell us about his characters, and she makes the most of Dorabella’s histrionics in the introduction to her aria ‘Smanie implacabili’, even if her diction here and elsewhere is a little smudged. She has splendid theatrical partners in Louis Langrée and the Basel Chamber Orchestra, who field a stylish basset clarinet player in ‘Non più di fiori’ from La Clemenza di Tito.
Christopher Cook
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