“Soprano In Hollywood” by Lesley Garrett (1996)

In his excellent book “Prima Donna: A History” author Rupert Christiansen explains that for centuries, soprano prime donna was the most familiar and popular of voices - eclipsed by other forms of modern music, operatic soprano today is one of the most alien - it came to sound pompous and affected to majority of audience long removed from its popular appeal. Even with clever marketing behind classical crossover artists like Sarah Brightman, we are aware that this particular type of singing have been eclipsed by other genres, but not so far ago - precisely in 1930s and 1940s - it was still centerpiece of some of the biggest Hollywood musicals and this album is love letter to these old movies and shows that inspired them.

British soprano Lesley Garrett sounds like natural descendant of famous operatic movie stars like Grace Moore, Jeanette McDonald and Deanna Durbin who all glowed and glittered on the big screen in the golden days of Hollywood musicals. Today we might not be familiar with titles like “One Night Of Love”, “Roberta” or “Monte Carlo” but we might recognize songs that came from them - “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” or “Yesterdays” have long been adopted by Jazz musicians who turned them into standards of American Songbook. This album lovingly restores them to original sound, the way they first sounded when they were still new and fresh, authentically recreating arrangements popular almost a century ago. Conductor Paul Bateman and The BBC Concert Orchestra stand behind vivacious singer who sounds like she is having time of her life and the whole album is one perfectly tailored time travel into 1930s. Classical music purists shouldn’t have a problem with this, because it is not some clumsy step into pop music but more of a recreation of exactly the same sound cinema audiences heard back in the days when MGM and Louis B. Mayer ruled Hollywood.