The great French soprano takes her leave of the stage with a glittering three-disc retrospective. Elsewhere, moths, musk and birdsong
• The French singer and actor Natalie Dessay has stepped away from the operatic stage, alas, but stands out as one of the greatest coloratura sopranos of recent times, especially in the 1990s and 2000s. À l’opéra (Erato) is a three-CD set from across her career, with different companies from the Royal Opera House to Les Arts Florissants to Le Concert d’Astrée. One disc is of French repertoire (Gounod, Meyerbeer, Offenbach), one Italian (Bellini, Verdi, Donizetti) and the last is the rest: including Mozart, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky.
Distinguished by a bright, gleaming tone, fiery energy, nimble ornamentation and crisp, verbal dexterity, Dessay excels especially in the three Cleopatra arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Her Chanson d’Olympia from Les contes d’Hoffmann, recorded in 1996, remains a showstopper, as does Caro nome from Rigoletto. The final track is Cunegonde’s Glitter and Be Gay from Bernstein’s Candide. If there’s a sadness in having to accept Dessay’s absence from the stage, her sparkling humour, captured here, more than compensates.
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