As classical music moves further from the mainstream and some of its biggest stars disappear from the scene, the field’s pool of big-name draws continues to shrink.
Among the handful of artists still on that list is soprano Kathleen Battle, who opened the Colorado Symphony’s 2010-11 season Saturday with a special one-night appearance.
Battle’s once-notorious offstage behavior, which led to her controversial firing from the Metropolitan Opera in 1994, has tarnished her reputation. But as the multiple standing ovations Saturday evening made clear, her popularity remains high.
The 62-year-old singer’s voice has inevitably been affected by the effects of age. It’s darkened slightly and lost a bit of its suppleness and, though never a vocal powerhouse, she has lost some of the oomph she did have.
That said, her essential artistry is intact — the distinctive lightness and dulcet beauty that gained her international fame in the 1980s and early ’90s.
She seemed in particularly good form Saturday, coming off more in command and at ease than she did three years ago when she made her last Colorado appearance in an all-Gershwin program at the Aspen Music Festival.
As she did in Aspen, Battle limited herself to just seven selections — a carefully chosen program of operatic and Broadway favorites, starting with two famous arias: “Una voce poco fa” from “The Barber of Seville” and “O mio babbino caro” from “Gianni Schicchi.”
She invested the first with spiritedness and an apt dash of theatrical flair and offered a moving, forceful version of the second. Her intonation was impeccable, and her vocal agility remains impressive.
If her performances of Gershwin’s “Summertime” and “By Strauss” were less memorable, she ended strongly, performing a trio of spirituals with a soulful fervor bespeaking her early experience in church choirs.
Undeterred by her sometimes idiomatic phrasing, principal guest conductor Douglas Boyd capably accompanied the soprano and made sure that the instrumental selections that filled the rest of the program were more than mere throwaways.
Of special note was his vibrant, nicely shaped version of the Overture to Rossini’s opera, “William Tell.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
