Kiri Te Kanawa
Greatest Hits (EMI Classics 56722)

All the hits are here!

Who can forget the summer when Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's reading of Cilea's "Ecco, respiro appena" ruled the Billboard charts for ten exciting weeks, only to be finally knocked off by Brian McKnight?

Er, yes, the term "greatest hit" is clearly a relative one when you're talking sopranos, but at any rate this career retrospective from Te Kanawa's EMI recordings does cover the major bases.

It's a beautiful disc, mixing opera arias and pop songs without coming off as pandering or overly crossover-conscious. Kiri's voice is one of the most magnificent things ever, supple and kind of creamy-smooth, capable of seemingly anything.

If there's a downside to her voice it's that the sheer beauty of it sometimes takes away from her ability to put across something purely emotional – something that comes across in stuff like Giordano's famous "La mamma morta," which Maria Callas truly owns. Kiri's performance is stellar, but in comparison, not as deeply stirring as Callas's. When she hits that brilliant high note, she doesn't quite grab you like Callas, and when she comes down from it, she doesn't take you with.

She is no mere technician, however – hers is a seasoned voice that really can do it all. Few vocalists have had as much success with opera as well as pop. Kiri doesn't have the panache with pop songs that Dawn Upshaw does, but she brings a stateliness to venerable songs like "Always" by Irving Berlin that seems totally appropriate.

She doesn't get at the heart of a song so much as demonstrate the ultimate beauty of a song – so a Kiri Te Kanawa disc tends not to thrill as much as cause you to simply marvel.

Particular highlights of this collection include an aria from Gluck's Die tote Stadt that shimmers like a pond on top of a mountain, and a moving version of "Greensleeves," which I always like to hear no matter who is singing it. You could fashion a recording of "Greensleeves" from samples of babies being beaten and I would still love it … possibly more, come to think of it.

The disc is rounded out by some obligatory but not too obvious Puccini, some gorgeous Charpentier, two songs by Jerome Kern, a couple of anthems. Overall, not the most essential classical vocal disc of all time, but a fine sampler of what Kiri Te Kanawa is all about.

Exceedingly pleasant, not overly dramatic, not ultimately eternal, but perfectly marvelous. You could find far worse ways to spend an hour, like frenching Pete Rose, for example.

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Review by Lula Babcock