Robin Ticciati - Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Berlioz: Les nuits d'ete - Opera News

Karen Cargill...brings drama and lyric point to the music of Berlioz in a recent disc from Linn Records. The Scottish mezzo-soprano has a real feel for the composer (she was Anna in the Met's recent Troyens), with a natural response and a superb technique to meet the many vocal challenges.

The song cycle Les nuits d'eté is a perennial favourite, in spite of the difficulty of bringing definition and depth to each of the six very different songs. Cargill's voice is dramatic, not so much in weight as in impact, with access to a lot of colour. Berlioz's expansive phrases, especially the high reaching ones, pose no problem; the mezzo's top notes are thrilling, with a quick vibrato that calls to mind the singing of Tatiana Troyanos. Cargill's voice has both richness and focus, and she moves between soft-edged delicacy and a glamorous steeliness with ease, even venturing into a chilling hollowness for the low-lying open line ('Ma belle amie est morte') of ‘Sur les lagunes'.

Cargill's vocal magnetism and theatrical sense come to the fore in La Mort de Cléopâtre. Berlioz invested this supremely dramatic ‘lyric scene' with harmonic and structural daring for his fourth attempt at the prestigious Prix de Rome, for which he was considered a shoe-in. But the judges misunderstood the work, especially its subdued ending, in which Cleopatra expires haltingly and realistically rather than with a vigorous cabaletta and high C.

Cargill's huge dynamic range paints these chilling final pages, as well as the heroine's sweeping and rangy phrases, vividly, and she brings majesty to the declamation...Posed to take over the musical directorship of Glyndebourne Opera in 2014, thirty-year-old Robin Ticciati is a sensitive partner, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra takes a solo turn in the luscious ‘Scène d'amour' from Berlioz's 1839 dramatic symphony Romé et Juliette.