If Anyone could bring about a White Christmas simply by singing it into existence, it would be Bryn Terfel. Whether Welsh wizardry can really reverse global warming remains to be seen: even this most entirely convincing of well-wishers tempered his sentiments with a huge wink when he dominated the stage at the second of two Christmas jamborees at the Albert Hall this week.

And dominated is certainly the word. Terfel was merely the invited guest of Kiri Te Kanawa, whose evening it was. She must have known that she would run the risk of being upstaged; and of course she was, in all matters except dewy eyes and party frocks. Where Dame Kiri, dutifully lowering her eyes to the prompt monitor, had to fight for words in Schubert’s Ave Maria and for notes in Mozart’s Alleluia from the Exsultate, jubilate, Terfel conjured within seconds a stageful of creatures and visions in his word-bright, musically faultless and irresistibly characterised Don Magnifico aria from Rossini’s La Cenerentola. His I Got Plenty of Nuttin’ could have convinced even the hardest of hearts; his Welsh carol, Tua Bethlehem Dref, was a perfectly focused, guileless miniature, reaching out to coachloads of loyal Welsh speakers who audibly thronged the Albert Hall.

We had to wait until encore time for a taste of Maori. Te Kanawa’s last encore saw the voice finally released and at peace with itself as it rose, unaccompanied, up into the dome. Adam’s O Holy Night and Carl Davis’s The Most Wonderful Birthday of All had also freed the glowing heart of that still remarkable natural voice. The less the words mattered, the more beautiful it became. So Catalani (the inevitable Wally aria) fared better than Puccini, Franck (Panis Angelicus) and Gounod (Ave Maria, with the words right this time) put together.

The English Chamber Orchestra, conducted enthusiastically by Robin Stapleton, seemed relieved to be letting go after their recent trials by fire — although the singalong English-language Jauchzet, frohlocket (from the Christmas Oratorio), offered by the London Philharmonic Choir at the start of the evening wasn’t perhaps quite the Bach they would have liked to know and love.

The previous evening had belonged to José Carreras although, by a similar token, it was the guest performer whose music-making really hit the mark. The Scottish soprano Lisa Milne, ripe and resonant, sang Son anch’io la virtu magica from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, shaping every line as if from liquid glass, and communicating palpable charm without resorting to a single coy cliché.

And, with the London Symphony Orchestra roller-blading their way through Loewe’s score like the old pros they are, her I Could Have Danced all Night made the audience wish that she would.

Carreras, for his part, vacillated between a sense of nervous unease — understandable when the voice can now only lurch into fortissimo under real pressure — and the sort of serious and exquisite artistry which still draws vast audiences. Each phrase of Cilea’s pastoral E la solita storia was tinted and half-tinted to perfection; each melancholy breaking wave of L’Oreneta, by his fellow Catalan composer Enric Morera, ebbed and flowed with eloquent musicality.

The shameless vulgarity of the evening’s presentation — scarlet and magenta light falling on two mangy, skeletal Christmas trees lit with crude light bulbs — came into its own in the holly and the ivy of the second half. The Choristers of Ely Cathedral sang two rather dank carol settings by their director, Paul Trepte, with less than immaculate blend and ensemble. And the pallid Spanish tenor Salvador Carbó, a protégé of the evening’s fine conductor, David Giménez, sang Leoncavallo’s Mattinata without moving a muscle in face or voice. After that, the melodias and mamma mias of Carrera’s concluding Neapolitan ditties proved a more than welcome send-off.

Copyright © 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd.