Kaleidoscope

Few singers have had so great an impact on the classical music scene in recent years as velvet-toned Egyptian soprano Fatma Said. In 2016, she became a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, the same year she made a breakthrough appearance at La Scala Milan as Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Since then, her life has been a whirlwind of top-flight engagements, including acclaimed debuts at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the BBC Proms, singing Mozart’s Requiem. Said sounds as beguilingly authentic in pop and jazz standards as she does in the classics of opera. And now, her multi-faceted artistry can be savoured on Kaleidoscope, the keenly awaited follow-up to her acclaimed 2020 Warner Classics album, El Nour. Celebrating song and dance in all its glorious variety, Said takes us on an exhilarating musical journey, encompassing a breathtaking variety of styles from different eras. “I wanted to create something original and personal,” she tells Apple Music, “and since dance has always been an important part of my life, it seemed the obvious choice. I love to dance, and as a singer, I feel that, in a sense, we are always dancing. “The best way to combine classical music with popular genres is through rhythm,” she continues, “and that became my main inspiration for the album. I open with two of the earliest forms of dance—the gavotte and the minuet—and then waltz my way through France, Germany and Austria, with a bolero and tarantella along the way. I then transition into the world of tango and swing.” Most striking is how completely at home Said sounds in everything from opera and operetta to Piazzolla and a magical rethink of the Whitney Houston classic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”. “I sang a lot of musicals when I was younger,” she explains, “My mother’s favourite album was Phantom of the Opera, which we would listen to all the time in the car. I grew up loving the classic ‘oldies’ such as Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vau