The power and the glory

By WILLIAM DART

Two new albums by Thomas Quasthoff and Vivica Genaux would seem to indicate that, despite the clutch of tired Windsor favourites in EMI's Prom at the Palace, the days of lollipops and roses should be over.

Wagner is the centrepiece of Quasthoff's Evening Star - with a rapturous version of the famous Tannhauser aria - and he's flanked by the music of Lortzing, Weber and Richard Strauss.

Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann was praised at the time (1837) as a welcome respite from the "murder, plague, horror and misery" of the contemporary operatic stage. Hearing Quasthoff's lusty take on "O sancta justitia!" it's difficult to realise that this is not Rossini in a German translation.

Taking a break from his usual lieder, the baritone has immense fun here, especially as a pompous burgomaster trying to teach his rebellious choir a trite hymn he has written. All of which comes complete with "diddle-dum" chorus and a jolly little tune that could slip smoothly into a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

For all the almost knockabout humour, this release is serious, a tone set by Anselm Gerhard's solid booklet essay and reflected in a gripping "Wo berg ich mich?" from Weber's Euryanthe. Christian Thielemann and the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin provide the supplest of support throughout, nowhere more so than in the reflective closing monologue of Strauss' Die Schweigsame Frau.

If Quasthoff sings up for some music that history has unjustly passed by, so too does mezzo Vivica Genaux in her Arias for Farinelli.

Sample just a minute or so of the third track and you'll be fishing for your credit card. Rene Jacobs and his musicians stir up some exciting, closely miked rustle-and-bustle and the American mezzo shows that Alaskan lungs were built to cope with the almost superhuman demands of the florid arias written for the famous Italian castrato Farinelli.

And cope she does, admirably, in "Qual guerriero in campo armato" by Farinelli's brother Riccardo Broschi, even if there are moments when the tail-ends of fiery scales almost sink into the orchestra. But Genaux is more than just a powerhouse; she's genuinely affecting in Giacomelli's lament "Mancare Dio mi sento" and evokes the nightingales of "Quell'usignolo" with cadenzas that threaten to float to heaven.

Jacobs, whose passionate singing has seen him compared to Maria Callas, makes a formidable team with Genaux and contributes a thoughtful essay, "There are no castratos left: what now?", to the handsome booklet. Eight years ago Gerard Corbiau's film Farinelli had the castrato's voice reconstructed by the digitally fused Derek Lee Ragin and Ewa Mallas Godlewska. Miraculously, Genaux makes it a one-woman job.

* Thomas Quasthoff, Evening Star: German Operatic Arias (Deutsche Grammophon 471 493 2); Vivica Genaux, Arias for Farinelli (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901778)