Tonight's round illustrated perfectly the comment I made in my first post on this competition and what makes an artist stand out. Five singers tonight, all obviously good as they made it through to the 25 chosen contestants, and yet none of them set me on fire, had that X factor that is so important.
And then in the last ten minutes of the evening it happened. Ekaterina Shcherbachenko from Russia was on the platform. She had just performed an aria from Cosi fan Tutte an opera to which I have a great resistance. I have seen it several times and by the end of act one am usually climbing the wall and by the end of the evening am bored to extinction by the awfulness of the main characters and the tedium of the music. And yes I know it is Mozart so no need for all Mozart fans to excoriate me - it has all been done before I can assure you. I hasten to add, I love other Mozart and Magic Flute is one of my top favourite operas, I just cannot come to terms with Cosi.
Anyway, Ekaterina sang an aria from this opera which I thought did not suit her personality or voice and I felt that it stretched her vocal technique and did not show her at her best. Oh dear, I thought, who am I going to choose? Then out she came and sang the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin and was transformed. Of course it helps she was singing in her native language, but the rich creamy glorious tone just poured out of her, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I choked up. There it is I thought, she will go through - wonderful.
And she did.
So I have a 100% success rate but three more rounds to go.
Oh and I don't suppose for a minute it was all down to me, pretty sure I was one of hundreds to bellyache about it, but the result of tonight's round was not on the website before the concert was broadcast. There was, however, a gallery from pictures from Concert Two and at the end a picture of, yes you have guessed it, the Winner.....I will give the Beeb the benefit of the doubt and hope that it just went up but but but I wonder....
