Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at www.amazon.com.

It’s a big world and artistry represents a big world within that world. There’s room in all of this, thank the Creator, for Sarah Brightman and her multiple musical personae. You can’t fit Brightman into a single genre and you’ll only become bitter if you try.

Just enjoy the music.

It’s difficult to say whether, if Sarah had not chosen to sing so many duets with male vocal stalwarts, we would have pegged her voice as made for that format. But there’s no turning back now. She simply shines in concert with the likes of Bocelli and Cura. The little heart of this reviewer, at the least, soars as she does so.

Some of the ire that Brightman draws from music critics of more defined criteria is generated by her gift for self-promotion, perhaps even as much as by her cross-genre peregrinations. Alas—and I say this as a fan of opera and a lamenter of its declining claim on our Western culture—that reflects more a failing of opera to convince its potential audiences of its need to exist than of a bare excess on Brightman’s part. Who is to say? And why worry about it. The world, indeed, is a very big place and music is no zero sum game. I say bring it all on!

Just don’t bring it on without Sarah Brightman. She’s a piece of the furniture now, a beguiling, surprising, melodic piece of the room’s personality.

This album is nearly too good to be true. ‘Just Show Me How To Love You’, with José Cura, is almost overwhelming in its pathos and power. Singing in several languages, Brightman’s timbre seems to change dramatically with each. One could almost swear there’s more than one female lead on the CD.

There is not. Brightman has simply chosen to lend her voice to the project of making it her specialty to be eclectic. Given the artistic and cultural silos and barrios in which we confine ourselves, we could use a little more of that around here.

Meanwhile, just enjoy the music. There is most emphatically room for this splendid album in this big, beautiful, troubled world of ours.