The house was crammed to capacity to receive two bona fide vocal stars, English soprano Dame Emma Kirkby and countertenor Daniel Taylor, along with the exceptional instrumentalists of the Theatre of Early Music. In a manner reflective of the...

One hundred people have sung it that way before, it falls absolutely within the acceptable frame, but it’s nothing personal’,” says Scholl. “A soprano might try to sound like [British early-music specialist] Emma Kirkby, but I’ll say, 'Emma is unique,...

Her singing also seemed rooted in a deeply internalized sense of time and place. All good singing has a sense of its own purpose. Hers had more. The spring-water-fresh soprano of Figueras’s early-music contemporary Emma Kirkby conveyed an ideal world...