Natalie Dessay conquered Chicago with her dazzling Lucia di Lammermoor last season at Lyric opera and gave us a memorable Morgana in Handel’s “Alcina” a few seasons before that. The French lyric-coloratura soprano is at the top of her vocal game, so to speak, in this new Richard Strauss disc, which holds extended scenes from “Ariadne auf Naxos,” “Arabella” and “Der Rosenkavalier,” plus four “Brentano Lieder.”
Dessay has it all — a diamond-brilliant top, tremendous flexibility and wonderfully specific dramatic characterization — and her voice is perfectly suited to the roles of Zerbinetta, Zdenka and Sophie. Zerbinetta’s glittering scena from “Ariadne” has long been a signature show-stopper, but her ethereal singing as Sophie in the trio and final duet of “Rosenkavalier” (in which she enjoys the luxurious partnership of Felicity Lott’s Marschallin and Angelika Kirschlager’s Octavian) is equally welcome, even if the final measures of the trio carry her smallish voice to the edge of its capabilities. Here, as elsewhere, conductor Antonio Pappano is a model collaborator.
