Kathleen Smith Everything Isn't Terrible

Recorded over the course of three days in Austin, Everything strikes a nice balance of consideration and spontaneity. The consideration comes from the songs themselves, which are as expertly crafted as all the songs Darden Smith has written over his past 14 albums.

It would be hard to imagine a better performance of Donizetti's comic masterpiece. If there was one role that ideally suited Luciano Pavarotti's voice and stage personality, it was Nemorino, the impoverished and not-very-bright peasant who worships the village's prettiest and richest young woman from a distance, is swindled by a traveling vendor of "miracle" medicines, but wins her hand by dumb luck. The story has comedy, pathos, and a put-down of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (or at least the Tristan story) written long before Wagner composed it.

If you could only have two Christmas CDs, Kathleen Battle's "A Christmas Celebration" would definitely be one (and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" would be the other.)While Battle has been known to be a temperamental diva (leading to a quasi-banishment from operatic roles), her pretty, soaring soprano is without peer. So good is her voice that I would consider several of the cuts on this disc to be definitive performances, not only of Battle's repertoire, but of all performances ever of that song. Case in point would be her rendition of Gounod's "Ave Maria". Haunting and stunning at the same time, it's as if the angel itself were singing.