Bartoli

Kammerorchesterbasel/Schröder. NCH, Dublin

Italian mezzo soprano Cecilia Bartoli is one of those singers who has become just too successful for her own good. No, I don’t mean to suggest that she doesn’t deserve her success. She does.

There aren’t many singers who can handle the difficulties of the castrato arias she delivered so deftly at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday. The number who can present them with the kind of musical character and allure that Bartoli can conjure up is smaller again. And, as to the matter of spending a long programme delivering one such aria after another, well, there’s really just Bartoli.

Her success is that she is enables her audience to take all her achievements for granted. She rustles up more and more rare repertoire. She performs it with exceptional bravura and probing emotion. She works with orchestras – in this case the kammerorchesterbasel, directed by violinist Julia Schröder – who match and support her with responsive refinement. And for Tuesday’s programme, she added the theatricality of elaborate costuming which allowed her to work her way by instalments from looking like a caped, high-booted man to an oddly-dressed, gold and scarlet, half-woman.

Too successful? Yes. In spite of everything she does so well, she allows you to want more. Well, Porpora, Broschi, Araia and Vinci aren’t exactly composers of the front rank. In Tuesday’s programme the arias by Handel, Carl Heinrich Graun and Antonio Caldara did rather make one wish for a higher proportion of musical meat. And the castratos were famous for the size of their voices as well as their vocal athleticism. Bartoli certainly has the nimbleness to rival their vocal agility, but not the sheer volume that would be required if some of the orchestral writing were to be allowed follow its natural course.

You see what I mean? In certain ways she's well-nigh perfect. Her delivery of the flying arpeggios of Porpora's Nobil onda,the almost moto-perpetuo virtuoso demands of Araia's Cadrò, ma qual si mira,the pathos of Caldara's Quel buon pastorson io and Graun's Misero pargoletto,and the many extreme vocal effects that were taken fearlessly throughout the evening – implausibly wide leaps, astonishingly detailed fioritura – will all remain long in the memory.

But, in the end, there’s still that niggling feeling. If she can do so much with lesser composers, what might she not achieve with the greatest?

There. You see what I mean about taking her for granted.