Act II Alcina
By Sonia Prina
This is simply astonishing. Firstly, the tempo; it’s breakneck. I’ve never heard this aria performed faster. Or indeed even anywhere near as fast. The technical demands on the singer, of dispatching those crazy semi-quaver runs, while maintaining perfect pitch and accuracy of timing, at this speed, are simply immense.
On a first listen, you wonder what the hell she’ll do on the da capo section; there’s no room, space or time to improvise & turn up the virtuosity even more, surely? Ha! Hold her Pironi, folks…
Sonia Prina is an authentic Italian contralto & certainly the best Baroque specialist in this range working anywhere in the world today. Her voice is very distinctive and instantly recognizable; all smokey, dark, & burnished mahogony, with a technique to die for. Articulation & attack is perfect. Those deliciously Italian rolled ‘R’s are a joy.
This is Bradamante’s big show-stopper in Alcina and no one has ever done it better. It’s from Alan Curtis’s reference recording of the opera, is stacked out with the best Baroque singers of the last fifty years & is the reference recording. Buy or die, pop pickers.
Harry Paterson 