Lucy Kay
Lucy Kay
Fantasia
(Sony)
THE ersatz democracy of television's Britain's Got Talent has given us "The People's Soprano" in Leicester's Lucy Kay, in the same way as the mother of the heir to the heir to the throne was declared The People's Princess, as some sort of consolation prize.
It does not bode well for the long-term career of Royal Conservatoire of Scotland-trained and Glasgow-settled Ms Kay, and neither does this arias-by-numbers debut disc which gathers together most of the tunes everyone knows from the opera canon and presents them with an orchestral garnish on an identikit production platter. The hits from Tosca, Turandot, Norma, Madame Butterfly, the Marriage of Figaro and that Ennio Morricone tune from The Mission soundtrack that was Sarah Brightman's before Kay approporiated it as her talent show theme tune are all here. Her style is old school, with an unfashionable vibrato that threatens precise pitch, although she has a tendency to sing slightly flat anyway.
But we live in a short-term world when Kay can declare her inspiration to be Charlotte Church, just three years her senior. She might do well to seek then advice of tenor Nicky Spence (now in his 30s) and learn how fickle this sort of stardom can be - and how to work your way back from it.
Keith Bruce
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