Soprano Nicole Cabell, who won the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, is a singer to watch. Her debut solo CD on Decca presents her in a wide variety of arias, from "Summertime" to Juliette's "Ah, Je veux vivre." Her voice is bright, and while she is capable of the required pyrotechnics, she has just a little edge that becomes more pronounced in the coloratura passages at the top of her range. She doesn't yet quite have the effortless warmth to make "Summertime" or "Depuis le jour" bloom with the limpid radiance that makes those arias magical, but that quality may well come. If she doesn't push herself (as she promises not to do in the album's program notes), it's easy to imagine her growing into a singer fully at ease in any of these roles, even knocking them out of the ballpark. Here, she is stunning in Menotti's "What a curse for a woman is a timid man," not usually a showstopper, but she makes it into one. The Delibes song "Les Filles de Cadiz" and the arias from Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, Donizetti's Don Pasquale, and Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi lie ideally for her, and in them, she is splendidly secure. Andrew Davis, conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, offers unusually sensitive support, and Decca's sound is exemplary. It will be exciting to hear Cabell's voice mature; her debut CD gives every reason to believe that she could become one of the brightest lights in opera.
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