Marking the 30th anniversary of its founding, this year's Cardiff Singer of the World gave us one of its most exceptional and startling finals. The winner was 31-year-old American mezzo Jamie Barton, who, in an unusual though not unprecedented move, had also carried off the song prize the night before.
She is a great artist, no question, with an imperturbable steadiness of tone, and a nobility of utterance that invites comparison not so much with her contemporaries as with mid-20th century greats such as Kirsten Flagstad or Karin Branzell. Sibelius's Was it a Dream ideally demonstrated her voice's generosity and weight. The dynamic control of Je Vais Mourir from Berlioz's Les Troyens was exceptional. At the song prize final, which I watched on TV, her performance of Unbewegte Laue Luft, marked her out as one of the great Brahms interpreters of our times.
Yet the competition was not without its controversies. The main prize could with equal validity have been awarded to Marko Mimica, a striking Croatian bass baritone with an ability to inhabit fully the characters he portrays, or to Argentina's Daniela Mack, whose Rossini in the final and Gluck in the heats (again seen on TV) revealed a virtuoso technique second to none.
Many thought the song prize should rightly have been awarded to Ben Johnson, representing England, for his outstandingly sung programme of sonnets, culminating in a beautifully introverted performance of Liszt's I Vidi in Terra Angelici Costumi. In the event, he was awarded the audience prize, richly deserved. And one was also forced to wonder why shrill Italian soprano Teresa Romano made it through to the main final when a number of finer singers - including Johnson, Portugal's Susanna Gaspar and Hungary's Mária Celing - were more worthy of a place.
