Lydia Caruan. Photo: Raymond Vella

Born in 1965 and still going strong, Din l-Art Ħelwa celebrated its 48th anniversary with a concert by Lydia Caruana. The concert was followed by a lavish dinner at St John’s Cavalier, Valletta, which was made available by Umberto di Capua, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta’s Ambassador to Malta.

Caruana was accompanied at the piano by Yvette Galea, who started off the evening with a solo work, Handel’s very famous Sarabande from his Keyboard Suite in D Minor. Handel was well-handled in this piece. Unfortunately, one could not say the same of the other solo keyboard piece, Haydn’s Fantasia in C Major, Hob. XVII: 4. This sounded rather patchy and indecisive, which was a pity, as a mere week earlier I had heard the pianist perform the same work much better elsewhere. However, on the whole, the singer had a supportive rapport with Galea.

Caruana’s first piece was a very well-phrased and admirable foray into the baroque world of Handel, singing his Tornami a vagheggiar from Alcina. There was also a very good projection of mood and lyrics in two arias by Mozart. The first was the very witty and savvy Una donna a quindici anni from Così Fan Tutte, and the second was Cherubino’s ardently confused Non so più cosa son cosa faccio from Le Nozze di Figaro.

Singing by heart as she did throughout her performance this evening, there was an unfamiliar hiccup midway through the former piece. This was either the fault of a very unlikely memory lapse, or simply an unfortunate rospo in gola, as our neighbours up north would say. However, to both singer’s and pianist’s credit, the whole thing was smoothly and quickly overcome.

There was a change of language and style when Caruana sang two French pieces with utter conviction and projection of the lyrics, no doubt thanks also to her expressive way of singing and clear diction. This applied to both l’Air des bijoux from Gounod’s Faust and Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante from Carmen.

Not so happy was a slightly uncertain intonation in some of the long, sustained notes and some rather shrill top notes in both of them. Perhaps this was slightly less the case in Verdi’s teasing Saper vorreste from Un Ballo in Maschera, and in the encore, the highly spirited brioso nature of Les Filles de Cadiz by Delibes.