ETERNAL CABALLE: Songs and arias. Montserrat Caballe,...

ETERNAL CABALLE: Songs and arias. Montserrat Caballe, soprano; various orchestras and conductors. BMG 09026-61044-2. From the title of this two-disc set, one would think it an “in memoriam” recording. In a way, it is. About half the selections date from the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the Caballe soprano was in its prime. The voice was all dark Iberian velvet, of ample lyric size, with some limited coloratura facility (she never could trill or manage runs with ease). But there were those otherworldly pianissimo tones and the sheer glow of the sound. The other half was made two years ago when the singer was 58. In some popular Spanish songs, crooned in lower keys, where the top is not exposed, the tone is still appealing, although the bottom range is breathy and usupported. An oddity is a song taken from the second movement of Rodrigo’s “Aranuez” for guitar.

It is in her atrociously accented French selections that Caballe achieves near travesty. “Pleurez mes yeux,” the Habanera and “Mon coeur” are sung with uncertain pitch, a wobble throughout the range, an absense of musical line and (in the Massenet) desperate lunges at the top that are as painful to hear as they must have been to sing. She throws in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Wishing you were somehow here again” from “Phantom” in imcomprehensible English. At last, Caballe in her current estate has found a composer worthy of her.