I heard Kate Royal at the Schubertiade concerts in Austria this year and was very impressed with her singing of Lieder by Schumann and Brahms. Here, she attempts a completely different program of arias from the 20^th century.

The most noticeable feature of the disc is the beautiful sound that emerges at all times. Kate Royal’s voice is exquisite and Edward Gardner draws ravishing sounds from his orchestra. I enjoyed most the arias by Stravinsky (The Nightingale), Carlisle Floyd (Susannah), Dvorak (Rusalka), Britten (Paul Bunyan), Lehar (The Merry Widow) and Korngold (The Dead City), although in the last named Royal does not efface memories of the great singers who have sung this in the past.

Elsewhere, the arias are testimony to the inability experienced by many 20^th century composers in writing attractive vocal music. For example, the aria from Britten’s
The Turn of the Screw begins with a superbly atmospheric orchestral introduction, but the vocal part is not only uninteresting in itself, it also fails to convey the impact of the words and the mood of the dramatic situation. 

The same might be said of the extracts from the operas of Bernard Herrmann, Samuel Barber, William Walton and even Britten’s much-vaunted Peter Grimes; and in these cases the orchestral writing is not particularly interesting either. Despite the presence on the disc
of some well known items, I doubt if it will have a wide appeal except perhaps to ardent admirers of the singer. Texts are included in the booklet.