HENRY PURCELL (1659 – 1695) and DANIEL PURCELL (1664 – 1717): The Purcells– Vocal Works with Basso continuo—Delia Agúndez, soprano; Manuel Minguillón, archlute and Baroque guitar; Laura Puerto, harpsichord and organ; Ruth Verona, cello [Recorded in el Aula de Música de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain, in September 2014; enchiriadis EN 2042; 1 CD, 53:01; Available from ClassicsOnline HD, Amazon, and major music retailers]

Little as is known about England's greatest native-born composer of the Baroque era, Henry Purcell, even less can be cited as fact about his kinsman Daniel. Exasperatingly, it cannot be ascertained with absolute confidence whether these esteemed gentlemen were brothers or lesser relations. The conclusion that they were children of the same parents is logical, but anecdotal evidence also exists that suggests that they may actually have been cousins. Whatever the circumstances of their family ties may have been, what is undoubted is that, in the artistic milieu of late-Seventeenth-Century England, Henry and Daniel Purcell were brethren in music. Building upon the foundations laid by John Dowland, Thomas Campion, and John Blow, the Purcells furthered and refined the arts of the quintessentially English consort song and the cantata da camera. Perhaps no other tradition in Western music has proved more enduring than that honed by this pair, the basic tenets of part-writing and ground bass epitomized by the vocal music of Henry and Daniel Purcell influencing modern composers ranging from Britten, Tippett, and Adès to Howard Goodall and even Roger Daltrey. Looking across the Channel, The Purcells fascinatingly explores the reach of the Purcells' music beyond the British Isles with outstanding performances by a quartet of gifted musicians: soprano Delia Agúndez, lutenist and Baroque guitarist Manuel Minguillón, harpsichordist and organist Laura Puerto, and cellist Ruth Verona. When the music of Monteverdi, Charpentier, and Schütz is played throughout the world, why should performances of the Purcells' works be confined to locales where English is the native language? Shortchanging none of the peculiar inflections of the English texts, the charismatic, affectionate outings on The Purcells revel in the Continental accents of the music. They were perhaps as devoted a pair of denizens of their 'fairest Isle' as any artists who ever populated it, but what cosmopolitan chaps these Purcells also were!

In the works for voice and basso continuo selected for this disc, the four musicians truly cooperate as equals rather than assuming the traditional arrangement of soloist and accompanists. Playing archlute and Baroque guitar, Minguillón strums bewitching sounds from his strings, recalling both the lute-song tradition of Britain and Spain's extravagantly ritualized troubadour culture. Puerto contributes a thoughtfully-differentiated panoply of tones, the organic blending of her phrasing with the singer's conjuring thoughts of how it must have sounded when Farinelli accompanied his own singing at the Spanish court in the 1750s. Few tasks in Early Music can be more thankless than that of playing continuo violoncello, but the forthright immediacy of Verona's playing discloses that, in truth, the endeavors of many of her colleagues do not earn thanks: she, however, is a participant in the music, not a cipher merely supplying anchoring bass notes in cadence chords. Soprano included, these musicians constitute a true consort of a type now all but extinct.

Daniel Purcell is represented on The Purcells by four superbly-crafted Arcadian cantatas that display inspiration and craftsmanship not markedly inferior to those familiar from the work of his more-famous relative. Precisely when or for whom these cantatas were written is not known, but these scores hint at a familiarity with the music of Italian composers like Frescobaldi, Merula, and Barbara Strozzi—and with the mature style of the more familiar Purcell, naturally. Agúndez sails into the first of the cantatas with a brightly-hued voicing of the recitative 'Within a verdant grove poor Strephon lay.' She follows this with a gorgeously understated account of the despondent aria 'Who can bear the pangs of despair,' each sustained tone purred like a sigh from the lovesick swain. Singing of the relief of the poor lad's distress in the recitative 'The god of Love ove'heard the shepherd's sigh' and aria 'Lovely shepherd sigh no more,' the soprano's timbre glistens with the golden light of a sylvan sunset. Her musical partners surround her voice with a halo of sound that convincingly places her in Strephon's bucolic environs.

The recitative with which the cantata 'She whom above myself I prize' begins is sung—and played—with an air of ambivalence that heightens the irony of the subsequent aria 'Why was she made so fair?' Both the aria and the recitative 'Ye gods, must I for ever love?' are sung with compelling emotional directness, the laser-like focus of Agúndez’s voice reflected by the sympathetic support of her colleagues. The purity of the soprano’s line in the aria ‘See there she walks’ beguilingly buoys the images conjured by the text and gives great pleasure in a purely musical sense. Likewise, the childlike delight that ripples through her voicing of the recitative ‘The god of Love around the temple flies’ is utterly charming—fittingly so when the aria that follows demands, ‘Charmer, turn those eyes on me.’ In this music, it is Agúndez herself who is the charmer, her voice illuminating Purcell’s melodies with tones as clear as midwinter moonlight.

The pair of cantatas imparting the amorous travails of first Apollo and Daphne and then Septimius and Acme are, like their companions on this disc, coolly seductive pieces that impress both with their sophistication and the consistent level of accomplishment. Singer and musicians unite in an articulation of the recitative ‘Wild as despair the tim'rous Daphne flew’ that bristles with the stinging essence of the words, and the desperation in which Agúndez shrouds her voice in the aria ‘Dearest Daphne do not fly me’ is indicative of the soprano’s insightful, thorough comprehension not only of the text but also of the composer’s method of translating verbal sentiments into unique sonic moods. In the recitative ‘Thus said he rudely seiz'd the trembling maid’ and the concluding aria, ‘Phoebus while you're such a rover,’ Agúndez sonorously proves the depth of her acquaintance with the specific anatomies of Purcell’s musical figures. Singing of Catullus’s Septimius and Acme, Agúndez’s voice takes on a degree of grandeur that, belying the compactness of the tone, ideally heralds the lovers’ idealism. Gaining strength from her colleagues’ alert playing, she proclaims the recitative ‘Whilst on Septimius panting breast’ with energy that propels her voicing of the aria ‘My dearest Acme’ from the merely lovely to the profoundly beautiful. The urgency of her ‘Acme inflam'd with what he said’ gives way to a measured, understatedly ecstatic performance of the aria ‘My little life.’ The curiously modern sensibilities of the soprano’s sculpting of the vocal line in this celebration of Acme’s ‘little life’ transcends the conventions of Purcell’s time, admitting Agúndez’s delicate but whole-hearted characterization into the company of Puccini’s piccole donne Mimì and Liù.

In comparison with his elder relative's music in a similar vein, the foremost limitation of Daniel Purcell’s style is a sameness that undermines the individuality of these cantatas, with Strephon, Phoebus, Septimius, and their ladies ultimately sounding as though they are interchangeable. The performances on this disc make it clear that the composer is at fault for this: Agúndez, Minguillón, Puerto, and Verona laudably endeavor to differentiate each cantata from its companions, musically and histrionically, but, being too intelligent to betray the precepts of their artistry, their sterling efforts are only partially successful. Still, the opportunity to hear these cantatas—indeed, any music by Daniel Purcell—so masterfully performed would mitigate flaws far more debilitating than this.

None of the pieces by Henry Purcell on this disc is unknown, but it is rare even for performances by the same artists in the context of a single disc to be of a quality as uniformly high as is achieved here. The musicians establish an atmosphere of stylistic lucidity with a first-rate playing of the Almand de la Suite No. 2 in G minor (Z661). Enshrining lines from the unjustly-neglected Abraham Cowley’s The Mistress, the composer's 1680 setting of 'She loves and she confesses too' (Z413) was among the most popular of Purcell’s compositions during the last two decades of the Seventeenth Century, and the performance on this disc fully divulges the music’s appeal. Of an altogether different but no less attractive disposition is 'Incassum Lesbia, incassum rogas' (Z383), a sublimely heartfelt C-minor elegy from Purcell's music of mourning for Queen Mary. Agúndez sings the piece with sincerity that wholly avoids even the faintest insinuation of lugubriousness, presenting it as a very personal statement of grief. The simple, strophic construction of ‘Ah! How pleasant 'tis to love’ (Z353), so reminiscent of ‘Fear no danger to ensue’ from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, frees Agúndez’s imagination to take wing in contemplation of the untainted joy of love. Here performed in its second version, dating from 1693, 'If music be the food of love' (Z379B) is often mistaken for a setting of a text by Shakespeare, but, apart from its opening line from Twelfth Night, the text is actually by Henry Heveningham. Were the text written by an anonymous schoolboy, this performance could not be more stirring. Agúndez caresses the top B♭ with an untroubled elegance that should be studied by young Toscas facing the same note in ‘Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore.’ The intimate tone of Bishop William Fuller’s text for the glorious G-major ‘An Evening Hymn’ (Z193) inspires Agúndez and friends to a performance of disarming straightforwardness, the intelligibility of the soprano’s diction permitting the listener to bask in the warmth of Purcell’s potent word-setting. The moving C-minor chaconne ‘O solitude, my sweetest choice’ (Z406), employing verses from Katherine Philips’s lyrical translation of a French text, can justifiably be cited as the zenith of Purcell’s career as a composer of song and in this performance sounds it. The sense of wonder that floods Agúndez’s singing as the shifting harmonies decry ‘their hard fate’ is as satisfying an instance of the comforting power of music as has ever been recorded.

The Purcells is a disc that perfectly illustrates that in today’s Classical Music industry—and, for better or [mostly] worse, it emphatically is an industry and not solely an artistic entity—possessing a beautiful voice and a well-integrated technique is insufficient to lay siege to an hour of a modern listener’s time. Delia Agúndez certainly has a beautiful voice, and she and Manuel Minguillón, Laura Puerto, and Ruth Verona exhibit techniques that find in these selections by Daniel and Henry Purcell a natural habitat. These are performances, however, that, while underscoring the failings of other musicians’ exertions, also bring to mind Auden’s words in ‘Funeral Blues’: ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking.’ The Purcells demands that every device be switched off, every noise silenced, every distraction cast aside: brothers or cousins, the Purcells relate through the music-making preserved on this disc as pointedly and as memorably to Twenty-First-Century listeners as to those fortunate souls who first heard these ‘sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.’

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Don Giovanni, K. 527—William Dooley (Don Giovanni), Donald Gramm (Leporello), Beverly Sills (Donna Anna), Michel Sénéchal (Don Ottavio), Brenda Lewis (Donna Elvira), Laurel Hurley (Zerlina), Robert Trehy (Masetto), Ernest Triplett (Il Commendatore), McHenry Boatwright (la Statua); Chorus and Orchestra of the Opera Company of Boston; Sarah Caldwell, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in performance in the Boston Opera House on 21 February 1966; St-Laurent Studio Opera Volume 7 YSL T-270; 3 CDs, time?; Available from St-Laurent Studio and Norpete.com]

An oft-quoted axiom argues that repeating the same action with the expectation of different results is symptomatic of insanity. If there is any degree of diagnostic veracity in this assertion, opera is in its very essence a permanent state of mental defect. The real insanity of opera is that, with directorial prerogative guiding and misguiding the production of the art form, it is logical to expect different outcomes when scores are enacted upon the world's stages. Why not expect Rheintöchter who spelunk in one production and sport only bow ties and stilettos in another or Carmens who alternately have taurine fetishes or daddy issues? In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's and Lorenzo da Ponte's Don Giovanni, there is enough craziness in the drama itself to render further doses of zaniness redundant. There is ample fodder for interpretive misconduct in the opera's plot of unrepentant philandering, vengeful statuary, and Providential retribution, but not even the cleverest or most shocking conceits can rescue a poorly-sung Don Giovanni. It is doubtful that even the colorful, innocuously irreverent Mozart knew people who actually conducted conversations in secco recitative: nevertheless, this fact did not discourage him from populating his Italian operas with folks whose sentences are punctuated by cadence chords, exacerbating the twisted reality of the genre. Existing in versions originating with the opera’s 1787 première in Prague and its first performance in Vienna in 1788, as well as countless bowdlerizations resulting from two centuries of editorial meddling, the particular insanity of Don Giovanni is that, details of specific productions notwithstanding, one can reasonably approach any production or recording of the opera with anticipation of variety. Which arias will be included? Will the original Epilogue be performed, or will the curtain fall with Giovanni’s presumed descent into hell? The only effective therapy for this mania is to sit back and allow the tide of Mozart’s music—whichever portions of it are offered—to carry away every irregularity and uncertainty, and Yves St-Laurent’s and Jean de la Durantaye’s expert restoration of a 1966 Opera Company of Boston performance gives the listener a gift of a Don Giovanni sung with brawn and beauty by a cast including some of America’s most significant artists. Perhaps Don Giovanni is a prime model of the inherent insanity of opera as an art form, but this Don Giovanni is a potent antidote to the dementia of many recent productions of Mozart’s masterful score.

A heartening aspect of this Don Giovanni, dating from 21 February 1966, is its celebration of diversity in America's regional opera companies. Except in contexts in which the art itself prompts dialogue, why race continues to be a matter of discussion in opera in 2015 is painfully unfathomable. Why in the 1950s and '60s talented singers like Gloria Davy and Lenora Lafayette, the former engaged by the Metropolitan Opera for only fifteen performances and the latter never singing there at all, struggled for acceptance in their native country is more easily explained but no more easily justified. Founded in 1958 as Boston Opera Group by conductor Sarah Caldwell, a pioneering advocate for equality of the sexes on the podium and the first woman to conduct at the MET, the three-decade existence of the Opera Company of Boston was marked by a dedication to nurturing native-born talent and transcending conventional boundaries. Thus, first-rate international talent of the caliber of Magda Olivero and Renata Tebaldi rubbed shoulders with American singers like Richard Cassilly and Marilyn Horne. Opera Company of Boston also gave opportunities that were often not forthcoming elsewhere to artists of color, not least mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett, a singer whose voice alone should have obliterated every racial barrier and ridiculous prejudice in the Arts. The present performance of Don Giovanni featured, under Caldwell’s baton, African American singers as the flesh-and-blood Commendatore and his phantasmagoric effigy in an era in which singers of color were still excluded from many productions. The Opera Company of Boston’s chorus and orchestra, though thoroughly professional and often more involved than their counterparts in the pits of the world’s great opera houses, cannot be claimed to be the equals of the MET or Covent Garden choruses and orchestras, but the generally excellent sound achieved by St-Laurent and de la Durantaye places the choral singing, orchestral playing, and Caldwell’s conducting in a flattering acoustic in which the felicities of their collaboration are audible. On the whole, Caldwell’s tempi are satisfying, conveying the opera’s dramatic propulsion without trampling the singers. There are moments of sloppy ensemble, but this is a capably-conducted, viscerally exciting Don Giovanni.

It is unusual to split the duties of i Commendatori living and dead between two singers, but Opera Company of Boston's production engaged a pair of splendid artists to portray the intractable Don Pedro before and after his demise at the hand of Don Giovanni. In the opera's opening scene, the protective father is brought to life by baritone Ernest Triplett, a 1961 graduate of the New England Conservatory whose work in the Boston metro region was greatly admired. The nobility of his singing of the Commendatore in this performance confirms the legitimacy of the high regard that Massachusetts audiences had for him. The voice, deftly handled, makes a boldly heroic impression, this Commendatore's defense of his daughter's honor backed by the courage of his convictions: so sympathetic a character has Triplett created in a brief time that the daughter's sorrow and rage over the father's murder are shared by the listener. When the Commendatore returns in spectral form in Act Two, his crepuscular utterances are forcefully intoned by bass-baritone McHenry Boatwright. Though he sang in the 1956 première of Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga at the Metropolitan Opera House, presented by Pittsburgh-based National Negro Opera Company, Boatwright was never a member of the MET roster. Unfairly neglecting his superb singing in an extensive repertory, it is for his standard-setting Crown in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess that he is now best remembered. In the Commendatore's sepulchral music, his voice exhibits granitic strength. When Boatwright sings ‘Don Giovanni a cenar teco m’invitasti e son venuto,’ there is nothing to be done but to attend this Commendatore at table. As an instrument of divine justice, Boatwright’s Commendatore is an ideal complement to Triplett’s more sensitive reading: the character finds in death the victory and vindication that were denied him in life.

Though his brother John appeared often at the MET, baritone Robert Trehy never bowed on the MET stage. His singing as Masetto in this Boston performance makes this seem a glaring omission in MET casting. Admittedly, a poor Masetto seldom ruins a performance of Don Giovanni, but how greatly a good one can enrich a show. Trehy is here a very good Masetto, making much of his interactions with Zerlina, both in anger and in tenderness. He voices ‘Ho capito, signor, sì!’ manfully and is an atypically virile presence in every scene in which he appears, his voice more than equal to the requirements of Masetto’s music.

Describing a singer as utilitarian has a negative connotation suggesting that the voice was more hardy than handsome, but a sunny timbre bolstered by an indestructible technique rendered soprano Laurel Hurley an utilitarian singer in the best sense at the MET, where she impersonated Zerlina to critical acclaim twenty-nine times in a decade. Here, she exudes glamour and femininity, joining Giovanni in a sultry account of ‘Là ci darem la mano,’ but despite her roving eye there is no question that her heart belongs to Masetto. Hurley sings ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’ vibrantly, and her ‘Vedrai, carino, se sei buonino’ is agreeably beguiling. Hurley’s voice shines in ensembles, and she projects Zerlina’s every giggle and pout winningly.

It was not until 1982, when he impersonated the servants in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, that French tenor Michel Sénéchal enlivened the MET stage, where he was heard as recently as the opening night of the 2005 – 2006 Season as Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro. Principally known beyond the borders of his native country as a character tenor par excellence, Sénéchal was acclaimed in France as an accomplished exponent of high-flying parts such as Rameau's Platée, Rossini's Comte Ory, and Nicias in Massenet's Thaïs. In Boston's Don Giovanni, Sénéchal was regrettably deprived of Don Ottavio's 'Dalla sua pace la mia dipende,' the aria composed in Vienna for Francesco Morella, but he sings every note allotted to him with aristocratic grace, unerring stylishness, and a voice that sounds tailor-made for the music. Comforting Donna Anna and swearing to partner her in her quest for vengeance for her father’s death, the tenor summons his trademark honeyed tones followed by more robust vocal mettle than might have been expected from him. His and his Donna Anna's voices blend unusually well, and Sénéchal is among the few recorded Ottavios who actually sounds as though he is so hopelessly in love with Anna as to be willing to suffer any impediment to their union. His appalled reaction to Anna's description of her assault by the libidinous Giovanni is passionate, and the ease with which he scales the heights of Ottavio’s lines in ensembles is marvelous. Sénéchal’s performance of Ottavio’s aria in Act Two, ‘Il mio tesoro intanto andate a consolar,’ proves worth the wait (and makes the absence of ‘Dalla sua pace’ all the more lamentable), his breath control completely conquering music that defeats many tenors. In the opera’s final ensemble, Sénéchal depicts an Ottavio whose capitulation to Anna’s wishes is a token of his devotion rather than an indication of weakness. Vocally, Sénéchal is not the most opulent Ottavio on records, but he is among the most stylish and theatrically effective.

One of America's most adventurous singers, the meteoric career of Pennsylvania-born soprano Brenda Lewis included creation of Birdie Hubbard—the soprano’s own birth name was Birdie, incidentally—in Marc Blitzstein's Regina and the title rôle in Jack Beeson's Lizzie Borden, as well launching the newly-established Houston Grand Opera in 1956 as Richard Strauss's Salome. Her assignments at the MET are evidence of her uncommon versatility: remarkably, her rôles there included Puccini’s Musetta, Johann Strauß II's Rosalinde, Wagner's Venus, Mussorgsky's Marina, Barber's Vanessa, Berg's Marie (perhaps her most prized portrayal), Salome, and even Bizet's Carmen. Her sole MET Donna Elvira was sung in a 1953 non-broadcast performance, so this recording of her Boston Donna Elvira is an especially welcome souvenir of an outing in the Mozart repertory in which she made her professional début and enjoyed notable successes at her artistic home, New York City Opera. Lewis charges into the performance like a hungry tigress on the trail of meat, her incendiary ‘Ah, chi mi dice mai quel barbaro dov’è?’ exploding like fireworks. The voice is shrill and the coloratura not entirely comfortable, but the impact of the aria is like that of a lightning strike. No less dynamic is her voicing of ‘Ah! fuggi il traditor!’ In the Act One finale, Lewis sings her lines in ‘Bisogna aver corraggio’ and ‘Protegga il giusto cielo’ with real distinction. In the Act Two trio with Giovanni and Leporello, her articulation of ‘Ah taci, ingiusto core!’ is surprisingly touching. Unfortunately, like Ottavio’s ‘Dalla sua pace,’ the Act Two aria that Mozart composed in Vienna for Caterina Cavalieri, ‘Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata,’ is omitted in this performance. Lewis’s vocalism in the opera’s penultimate scene and Epilogue is feisty. There are enough moments of stress and untidiness in Lewis’s singing to remind the listener of the difficulty of Elvira’s music, but this intelligent singer puts every exertion to use in her depiction of a woman scarred to the bone by love.

Milwaukee-born bass-baritone Donald Gramm sang Leporello, one of his most admired portrayals, twenty-four times at the MET between 1966 and 1981 and recorded the part for DECCA with colleagues including Dame Joan Sutherland, Pilar Lorengar, Marilyn Horne, and Gabriel Bacquier. From the first bar of his jocular ‘Notte e giorno faticar,’ Gramm provides a stream of comedic immediacy that flows through the performance. He interacts with Giovanni with the annoyance of a man tired of being ignored and abused. He seems legitimately horrified by the death of the Commendatore, and his broadly droll ‘Madamina, il catalogo è questo’ is not devoid of humanity and subtle empathy for Elvira. In the duet with Giovanni at the beginning of Act Two, ‘Eh via, buffone, non mi seccar,’ Gramm sings artfully, and he makes Leporello’s aria ‘Ah, pietà, signori miei’ far more memorable than many singers have done. His work in ‘O statua gentilissima del gran Commendatore’ and the Epilogue is treasurable: here, for once, is a Leporello who manages to be funny without compromising the quality of his singing.

It is not for her performances of Mozart rôles that Beverly Sills is most remembered, but she was no stranger to Don Giovanni. As early as 1953, she sang Donna Elvira at San Francisco Opera under Tullio Serafin's baton, a part that she reprised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Later, in addition to the Opera Company of Boston performances that produced this recording, she sang Donna Anna for New York City Opera both in New York and on tour, including a 1966 revival in which her Ottavio was the young Plácido Domingo, with Baltimore Civic Opera, at Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, in Lausanne opposite Gérard Souzay's Giovanni, and in a 1966 concert performance in Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium that was her first appearance with the Metropolitan Opera. At the start of this Boston performance, Sills’s singing imparts the full spectrum of Anna’s terror, grief, and indignation. Her voice stands out in every ensemble in Act One, her performance gaining momentum despite a few stretches of dullness in recitative until she unleashes a furious gale of histrionic intensity but aptly Mozartean singing in ‘Don Ottavio, son morta!’ and ‘Or sai chi l’onore.’ The luster of her top As is stunning, but the most sensational trait of her performance is the towering dramatic profile that she creates without overstretching the voice. The ascending lines of the masquers’ trio in the Act One finale are sung with tremendous poise. Sills is utterly in her element in ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio,’ singing the roulades better than almost any other soprano on records, the voice smaller than those of many Annas—of her generation, at least—but the characterization no less imposing. In the aria and in the opera’s final scene, Sills succeeds in making Anna the moral spine of the performance rather than an indecisive harridan who toys with Ottavio’s affections for her own amusement (or, as in many productions, for no apparent reason at all). That Sills sings well in this performance is hardly surprising: that she sings this well is phenomenal.

Native Californian baritone William Dooley débuted at the MET in 1964 as Tchaikovsky's Onegin opposite the Tatyana of Leontyne Price, and his Mozartean credentials at the MET encompassed a number of turns as Conte d'Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, both in New York and on national tours. A member of the generation of gifted American baritones who furthered the legacy of Lawrence Tibbett and Leonard Warren, Dooley was in Boston a Don Giovanni of technical solidity and vocal excellence. In many ways, his concept of the rôle combines elements of the much-appreciated interpretations of fellow Americans Sherrill Milnes and Samuel Ramey, amalgamating lecherous appetite with good-natured machismo. His Giovanni seems a reluctant murderer, but there is no doubt of the voracity of his amorous audacity. Dooley’s Giovanni sounds embarrassed by the near-hysterical Elvira’s sudden appearance, but his 'concern' for her, feigned to convince Zerlina of his nobility of spirit, is almost as sincere as the saccharine verse on a greeting card. The suavity of Dooley’s line in ‘Là ci darem la mano’ could charm a leopard out of its stripes—or a Zerlina out of her determined resistance. There is little menace in this Giovanni’s seducing, but Dooley’s performance of ‘Finch’han dal vino calda la testa’ simmers with testosterone-fueled fervor. He duets with Leporello arrestingly, and joins Leporello and Elvira in their trio with disquieting charisma. His traversal of ‘Metà di voi qua vadano’ is brilliantly conspiratorial. Dooley’s Giovanni meets his end unflinchingly: create hell on earth, he evinces, and the only possible destiny is infernal, and to struggle would be pusillanimous. In the course of the performance, Dooley encounters a few phrases that test his resources, but he clears every obstacle with the freedom of an Olympic pole vaulter.

That Don Giovanni is one of the greatest operas not only of the Eighteenth Century but in the whole history of the genre is an assessment that is unlikely to prompt dissent, but how many performances of the opera in the past quarter-century have unreservedly affirmed this? Opera Company of Boston’s 1966 production of Don Giovanni assembled a cast whose individual and collective efforts gave Mozart’s score the kind of treatment that it deserves. That treatment is the foremost triumph of St-Laurent Studio’s recording of the 21 February performance. In an age in which far more time is spent—wasted, really—debating how Mozart’s operas ought to be sung than preparing singers to sing them, how refreshing it is to hear a performance of Don Giovanni in which impeccably-trained singers simply let Mozart dictate how their voices should be deployed.

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): Turandot [Completion by Franco Alfano]—Jennifer Wilson (Turandot), Andrea Bocelli (Calàf), Jessica Nuccio (Liù), Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Timur), Germán Olvera (Ping), Valentino Buzza (Pang), Pablo García López (Pong), Javier Agulló (L’imperatore Altoum, il Principe di Persia), Ventselav Anastasov (Un mandarino), Carmen Avivar (Ancella di Turandot), Jacqueline Squarcia (Ancella di Turandot); Escolania de la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats, Coro de la Generalitat Valenciana; Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana; Zubin Mehta, conductor [Recorded in Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, Spain, in 2014; DECCA 478 8293; 2 CDs, 116:50; Available from DECCA Classics, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

It is discouraging and often deeply disheartening to note that the open-mindedness that is an indelible element of opera is absent from the points of view of many of those who claim to love and safeguard it. Opera is an art form that asks the observer to hear and see with the heart, not with the ears and eyes, and the listener unable or unwilling to set aside preconceptions and prejudices when taking his seat in the theatre or pressing 'play' in his own living room is doomed to frequent disappointment. By some exalted assessments, the foremost function of Art is to reflect the workings of humanity in such a way that the most clandestine failures and foibles are revealed, not in hostility but with humility and sincere hope for positive change. Such is the hypocrisy of opera that people who purport to love it complain of a dearth of important, influential singing with one breath and with the next dismiss today's finest singers because they are not the equals of favored singers of past generations. To be more drawn to and moved by certain singers than others is natural, and there are biases that are perhaps impossible to overcome. The listener who heard Flagstad as Isolde is unlikely to prefer or even accept any other singer's portrayal, but Flagstad is regrettably no longer among us. Opera should be an equalizer, its only partiality being for singers, conductors, and musicians who work hard and give of their best. Much of what has been written—by parties who are unlikely to have actually heard it, in many cases—about this Turandot is as stupid as it is insensitive and offensive. Conducting the score before studio microphones forty-two years after first recording it for DECCA, Zubin Mehta unfurls an affection for Puccini's music unfaded by time. For that reason alone, this recording earns respect. As it turns out, however, there is much in this Turandot to confound naysayers and remind listeners that, no matter how mightily it struggles to disarm misunderstanding, opera is an art of acceptance.

Mehta's approach to Turandot is documented in several recordings of radio broadcasts and audio and video preservations of live performances, in addition to the much-discussed 1972 DECCA studio recording with Dame Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, and Montserrat Caballé. In the four decades since last recording the opera in studio, Mehta's basic management of the score has changed little, but there are appreciable differences in the nuances of his interpretation that are indicative of a subtle but substantial evolution in the conductor's understanding of the music. His earlier reading has as its tonal center of gravity a focus on the sumptuous Romanticism of the quintessentially Puccinian melodic fecundity of the score. Now, the opera's tunefulness is still central to Mehta's conducting, but the atmospheric context of thematic development is decidedly that of the Twentieth rather than the Nineteenth Century. Interestingly, the principal soloists in the present recording possess voices of dimensions similar to those of Mehta's first DECCA cast: a lushly powerful Turandot confronts a straightforwardly lyrical Calàf and a silken-voiced Liù with a lean streak of steel at her command. This vocal configuration produces vastly different results in the more modern sound world of the newer recording. In Act One, the influence of Puccini's acquaintance with the music of Debussy permeates the score, and the distinctive voices of Bartók and Ravel are clearly heard amidst the cacophonies of Acts Two and Three. Under Mehta's direction, the singers of the Coro de la Generalitat Valenciana and, especially, the children of the Escolania de la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats sing idiomatically, credible as a populace first inflamed by Turandot's thirst for blood and ultimately crushed by the weight of their own zealotry when it claims Liù as an innocent victim. Their invocation to the moon in Act One is stirringly done, and the youngsters' voicing of 'Là, sui monti dell'Est la cicogna cantò’ is touching. There are subtle indications of true regret in 'O giovinetto,' the perverse funeral march that accompanies the courageous Principe di Persia—sung winningly by Spanish tenor Javier Agulló—to the scaffold. The massive walls of sound constructed by Puccini in Act Two, epitomized by 'Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore,' are recreated by the choristers with confidence that increases with every bar. The high-water mark of the choral singing on these discs is 'Ombra dolente, non farci del male! Perdona, perdona!' in Act Three, the choristers meaningfully limning the crowd's sudden recognition of its collective complicity in the relentless pursuit of Turandot's cold agenda that takes Liù's life. Like their choral colleagues, the players of the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana face no demands from composer or conductor that they are incapable of meeting. The crucial xylophone and harp parts are performed particularly well, but the overall level of playing among the instrumentalists is commendably high. Musical standards are sufficient for both the incredible originality and beauty of the composer's score and the many thoughtful details of the conductor's interpretation of it to be apparent throughout the performance.

Singing the small rôles of the Ancelle di Turandot, sopranos Carmen Avivar and Jacqueline Squarcia perform their tasks with lovely, well-schooled voices that promise future successes. [Avivar is already an accomplished heroine in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, in fact.] Agulló returns as L'Imperatore Altoum, Turandot's well-meaning father, and it is fantastic to hear a fresh, steady sound in the part rather than the typical superannuated singers' wheezing and whining. Agulló phrases 'Un giuramento atroce mi costringe a tener fede al fosco patto' with tenderness, and this 'figlio del cielo' seems genuinely thrilled when Calàf solves the three riddles. The Mandarino of Bulgarian baritone Ventseslav Anastasov is also a vocally youthful impersonation, the top C♯s in his declamations of 'Popolo di Pekino! La legge è questa!' projected with penetrating focus. The singer's distinctive vibrato adds an element of urgency to his resonant delivery of Puccini's music: he is an aptly engaging representative of an uncommonly energetic emperor.

As the chameleonic Maschere Ping, Pang, and Pong, Mexican baritone Germán Olvera, Italian tenor Valentino Buzza, and Spanish tenor Pablo García López sing athletically separately and in ensemble. From the first bars of their ‘Fermo! che fai? T'arresta!' in Act One, the gentlemen seem to be having a grand time, Olvera's fun not even slightly inhibited by Ping's frequent top E♭s and Fs. He laces Ping’s ‘Lascia le donne! O prendi cento spose’ with biting irony, and his singing of ‘Olà, Pang! Olà, Pong!’ in the Maschere's scene at the beginning of Act Two is the aural equivalent of rolled eyes and shrugged shoulders. The uncomplicated beauty of the trio's paean to their native country, ‘O China, o China, che or sussulti e trasecoli in quieta,’ is ravishing. The tenors' upper registers are alluringly bright in ‘Tu che guardi le stelle, abbassa gli occhi' in Act Three: many a weak-willed Calàf might readily surrender to their dulcet-toned entreaties. Apart from a few pinched tones, Olvera, Buzza, and García López are a near-ideal triumvirate. These young singers cause one to wonder why opera houses (and record labels) tolerate Ping, Pang, and Pong being so often poorly sung.

Timur is a study in contrasts. Still brave and proud, the deposed king is bent by age and disability, his blindness symbolic of his destroyed concentration on the common good of his people. Young Ukrainian bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk injects his portrayal of the noble old man with vestiges of his former glory that render him unusually sympathetic. Suddenly reunited with his son, this Timur imparts a sense of destiny fulfilled, a sense that is upset first by Calàf's determination to win Turandot's hand and later, irreversibly, by Liù's death. Tsymbalyuk sings ‘O figlio, vuoi dunque ch'io solo, ch'io solo trascini pel mondo la mia torturata vecchiezza' in Act One harrowingly, tacitly mourning what Timur perceives as the second loss of his son. In Act Three, the security of his tone in ‘Liù! Liù! sorgi! sorgi! È l'ora chiara d'ogni risveglio!’ makes his pain all the more moving, and he voices ‘Ah! delitto orrendo!’ with profound grief, his ringing top E♭ and F wrenchingly angry and desperate. Supported by Mehta's tempo and management of the orchestra, Tsymbalyuk's expansive phrasing of ‘Liù! bontà! Liù! dolcezza!’ expresses in a few bars the enormity of Timur's love for Liù. Timur has rarely sounded as three-dimensional on records as Tsymbalyuk makes him in this performance. Furthermore, his music has seldom been sung so handsomely even by legendary basses in their primes.

Not even thirty years old when this Turandot was recorded, Palermo-born soprano Jessica Nuccio depicts a fragile but surprisingly mature Liù. It has rarely been more obvious in a recorded performance of Turandot that Liù's servitude is a choice, not a compulsion. First heard in Act One begging for assistance in lifting the fallen Timur, clearly as much a father to her as to Calàf, the girlish honesty of Nuccio's phrasing of ‘Il mio vecchio è vaduto’ is like a ray of sunlight forcing its way through the tempestuous orchestration. She enunciates ‘Chi m'aiuta, chi m'aiuta a sorreggerlo’ with understated ardor, and there is a heartbreaking blend of pride and shame in her statement of ‘Nulla sono...una schiava.' She rises to the top B♭ on ‘mi hai sorriso’ with innocent passion that even the most dim-witted Calàf should not fail to comprehend. Nuccio's performance of ‘Signore, ascolta!’ is a highlight of the recording, her top A♭s and B♭projected with purity and spot-on intonation. In Act Three, this Liù's death recalls the ritualistic suicide of Puccini's Cio-Cio San. Nuccio spins the top As and B in ‘Tanto amore segreto, e inconfessato' with the glimmer of golden threads. Throughout the performance, she is very cautious in the lower octave, giving an impression of reserving her resources for excursions above the stave, but such self-cognizance is laudable, especially in a young singer. Another highlight of the recording is Nuccio's account of ‘Tu, che di gel sei cinta,’ her top B♭ lofted heavenward as a final gesture of devotion to the man she hopelessly loves. With informed stewardship of her beautiful, evenly-produced lyric instrument, Nuccio seems on the path to wonderful things in the footsteps of the incomparable Mirella Freni.

Andrea Bocelli is of course the raison d'être for this recording, musically and commercially. If there are listeners who hear this Turandot solely because of Bocelli's participation, what harm is there in that? If there are listeners who do not hear this Turandot solely because of Bocelli's participation, however, foolish prejudice offends composer, conductor, and cast. In truth, the tenor embarrasses neither himself nor his colleagues. The voice is a somewhat colorless, sometimes strenuously-produced instrument, but Bocelli is an imaginative, ardent singer whose excellent diction and authentic Italianate temperament lift his Calàf above the level of a number of today's tenors who sing the rôle. When Bocelli's Calàf encounters Timur in the opening pages of Act One, his ‘Padre! Mio padre!’ complements Tsymbalyuk's expressions of elation. Bocelli discloses no fear of the top B♭ on ‘O padre, sì, ti ritrovo!’ or the B♭♭ on ‘T'ho pianto, padre...e bacio queste ma ni sante!’ His voices grows steadier and more impactful as the range extends upward, in fact. Trumpeting Calàf's decision to challenge Turandot's wrath, his repetitions of her name tremble with erotic tension as they ascend to his ecstatic top B♭. Kinder to Liù from the start than many Calàfs, his voicing of ‘Non piangere, Liù!’ is comforting and shaped with silvery, elastic tone. In Act Two, this Calàf declares his intentions to the emperor with exclamations of ‘Figlio del cielo, io chiedo d'affrontar la prova!’ that become more impassioned with each repetition. The unison top C with Turandot on ‘Gli enigmi sono tre, una è la vita!’ taxes Bocelli, but once past this challenge his upper register never fails him. His vocalism in the Riddle Scene is marvelously masculine, the top B♭s on ‘Il mio fuoco ti sgela: Turandot!’ fired like missiles. The interpolated top C on ‘No, no, Principessa altera! Ti voglio tutta ardente d'amor!' is a tone worthy of Bocelli's teacher, Franco Corelli. Bocelli's performance of the ubiquitous ‘Nessun dorma’ is slightly disappointing, the bland phrasing suggesting that he is distracted by the expectation of producing a clarion noise on the most abused top B in opera. His imagination again takes flight in ‘Ah! Tu sei morta, tu sei morta, o mia piccola Liù,’ though, and the spitfire ‘Principessa di morte! Principessa di gelo!’ Scaling the heights of the opera's final scene, in which Franco Alfano's completion of the score is utilized, Bocelli sings more expressively than many tenors find it possible to do when battling such punishing tessitura. This performance is not a stunt or the indulgence of a talented amateur. Calàf is a rôle that Bocelli likely could not manage credibly in an opera house, and there are subtle indications in this recording of electronic assistance, but judged on his own terms—not those of Martinelli, del Monaco, Corelli, Bonisolli, or whichever Calàf is the darling of the listener's heart—he is a satisfying, unimpeachably musical Calàf.

In the title rôle, American soprano Jennifer Wilson continues the tradition of Gertrude Grob-Prandl, Birgit Nilsson, and Dame Gwyneth Jones by coming to Turandot with extensive experience as a Wagnerian to her credit. In recent years, good Brünnhildes have infrequently proved good Turandots, but Wilson defies that trend with a performance of prodigious and, above all, wobble-free tone. The start of ‘In questa reggia' announces that this is a Turandot whose high notes need not be dreaded. Wilson's singing of ‘Principessa Lou-Ling, ava dolce e serena’ boils with generations of accumulated ire, and her top B on ‘Quel grido e quella morte!’ is heart-stopping. The pedal-to-the-floor top C on ‘No! No! Gli enigmi sono tre, la morte è una' is galvanizing. Wilson's reserved traversal of the Riddle Scene is ignited by her piercing ‘Su, straniero, il gelo che dà foco, che cos'è?’ and ultimately tempered by the dramatic uncertainty of her ‘Figlio del cielo! Padre augusto!’ The engineers might have made detonating the pair of top Cs over the chorus on 'Mi vuoi nelle tue braccia a forza riluttante, fremente!' easier on her, but she dispatches the notes fabulously. Turandot’s capitulation to the liberating power of love courses through Wilson's voicing of ‘Che mai osi, straniero,’ and she conveys an intriguing tranquility with ‘La mia gloria è finita!' The soprano's top As and B in ‘Del primo pianto’ are as evocative of burgeoning sensuality as her top Cs in Brünnhilde's duets with Siegfried in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, but the apotheosis of Wilson's performance is the top B♭ on ‘Il suo nome è Amor!’ Here, in a single phrase, she summarizes her still-underestimated artistry: there is no power—vocal, dramatic, or metaphysical—except through dedication and understanding of oneself.

Though it is an exceptionally well-crafted score that extols its composer's genius on every page, Turandot is not an opera like La bohème that can withstand poor singing. Poor singing having become debilitatingly commonplace in performances of the opera, however, what accounts for the enduring popularity of the opera after its slow start, complicated by Puccini's death before completing the score? On the surface, Turandot is essentially a clash of archetypes, but few composers were more skilled at disguising archetypes as people about whom audiences care. Beneath the surface, then, Turandot is a love story, and, whether or not they are willing to admit it, almost all opera lovers respond to plots that explore love among characters who win audiences’ affection. Insightfully conducted, enthusiastically and often superbly sung, and expertly recorded, this is a Turandot with much to love.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384—Diana Damrau (Konstanze), Rolando Villazón (Belmonte), Anna Prohaska (Blonde), Paul Schweinester (Pedrillo), Franz-Josef Selig (Osmin), Thomas Quasthoff (Bassa Selim); Vocalensemble Rastatt; Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Jory Vinikour, pianoforte continuo; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ during concert performances in Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Germany, July 2014; Deutsche Grammophon 479 4064; 2 CDs, 138:38; Available from Amazon, iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail was first performed at Vienna's Burgtheater in 1782, the first-night audience may not have fully sensed the magnitude of the occasion they were witnessing. Composed in response to Emperor Joseph II's Nationalsingspiel initiative, a concerted effort to counteract the expanding influence of Italian opera by encouraging the creation of new, innovative works in the German-language Singspiel genre, Die Entführung aus dem Serail was a sure-fire hit that pandered to the Viennese fascination with all things Turkish. By 1782, Hapsburg Vienna had for centuries been looking over her shoulder, gazing to the southeast in anticipation of Ottoman invaders. A century before Entführung's première, the Holy League expelled the besieging Turks from the walls of Vienna, the Janissaries' hasty retreat allegedly responsible for abandonment of the cymbals and timpani that were found by the conquerors and quickly assimilated into European musical traditions. When Mozart arrived in Vienna, he found a city in which westernized vestiges of Turkish culture remained very much in vogue. The marvel of Mozart's achievement in Entführung is that he produced a score in which the German Singspiel and Italian opera join hands, Osmin, Blonde, and Pedrillo emerging from Teutonic vaudeville, Konstanze a refugee from Händelian opera seria, and Belmonte an early representative of pure bel canto. Whether or not the score contains 'too many notes,' as Joseph II may or may not have observed, the intoxicating musical spirits of Entführung, diluted with splashes of strong Turkish coffee, were a concoction certain to please Viennese tastes in 1782. In a persuasive performance like this one, assembled in excellent, studio-quality sound [only Jory Vinikour's hypnotically inventive pianoforte continuo could have benefited from increased prominence within the soundscape] from recordings of concert performances in Baden-Baden's enormous Festspielhaus, Die Entführung aus dem Serail is confirmed to be not just a raucously fun ‘period piece’ but a work of genius with sensibilities as relevant in 2015 as in 1782.

Following Don Giovanni (reviewed here) and Così fan tutte (reviewed here), Die Entführung aus dem Serail is the third release in Deutsche Grammophon's cycle of recordings of Mozart's mature operas conducted by Québécois dynamo Yannick Nézet-Séguin. [Le nozze di Figaro was recently recorded in conjunction with Baden-Baden concert performances for release as the next installment in the series, with a cast including Thomas Hampson and Sonya Yoncheva as Conte and Contessa d'Almaviva, Luca Pisaroni and Christiane Karg as Figaro and Susanna, and Angela Brower as Cherubino.] The young conductor's pacing of Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte was lithe and often very impressive, but this performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail is his finest recorded outing as a Mozartean to date. In repertory spanning more than two centuries, Nézet-Séguin has shown himself to be a master of both grand gestures and finely-wrought filigree, but not even his justly-acclaimed performances of Verdi operas have displayed the command of the requisite style, artful management of orchestral and choral forces, and intuitive support of soloists as readily as this Entführung. Moreover, Nézet-Séguin here spotlights very real emotions that many conductors are content to merrily bury beneath batteries of faux-Turkish dins. A vital component of Mozart's genius from the start of his career as a composer of opera was an uncanny, virtually unrivaled ability to deal with incredibly difficult subjects—public duty and private loyalty in Idomeneo, infidelity in Figaro and Così, every imaginable vice in Don Giovanni, faith and self-reliance in Die Zauberflöte—in a manner that places the listener at the heart of the story. Similarly, Nézet-Séguin's conducting, rhythmically alert and informed by understanding of 1780s performance practices but unafraid of Romantic sweep when the score justifies it, draws the listener into this performance. Playing with effervescence that flows from the start of the Overture to the opera's last bar, the musicians of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe are participants in the performance rather than accompanists of it. When the oboe, violin, flute, cello, and clarinet introduce Konstanze in her fiendishly difficult aria 'Martern aller Arten,' they are not faceless obbligati: they are friends who seem to say to Konstanze, 'Come on, girl, you can do it!' This camaraderie emanates from the singing of the Vocalensemble Rastatt, as well, their performance of the Chor der Janitscharen in Act One, 'Singt dem grossen Bassa Lieder,' wonderfully animated. Much of the credit for this collegiate cooperation is owed to Nézet-Séguin. For singers, secondary in importance only to technique and health as a factor in the quality of performance is the knowledge that there is a supportive presence on the podium. From Mozart to the musician charged with the least-significant orchestral part, every participant in this Entführung knows that Nézet-Séguin is dedicated to facilitating everyone's success and performs accordingly.

Returning to the stage despite his retirement from singing staged opera, Thomas Quasthoff speaks one of the finest accounts of​ Bassa Selim on disc. Many productions of Entführung make the good-intentioned mistake of casting acclaimed actors who are not familiar with opera as Selim. With a speaking voice nearly as mellifluous as his hazelnut-hued bass-baritone, Quasthoff delivers his lines perfectly, complementing rather than upstaging his vocal colleagues, all of whom tastefully speak their own dialogue. Quasthoff is a Bassa Selim who is an enlightened despot without being a ham-fisted yeller. His singing is greatly missed, but he serves Mozart splendidly in this performance.

Singing the bumbling but boisterously nasty ​Osmin, Franz-Josef Selig lacks the sonorous tones in the lower octave of Gottlob Frick and the bottled-thunder timbre and spot-on comedic antics of Kurt Moll, but he voices Osmin's music handsomely and effectively, his singing more attractive than Josef Greindl's and more recognizably Mozartean than Martti Talvela's. In his Act One Lied, 'Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden,' and the subsequent duet with Belmonte, Selig sings strongly, and he copes manfully with the trills and low Fs in his aria 'Solche hergelauf'ne Laffen.' He bellows rippingly in the trio with Belmonte and Pedrillo, 'Marsch! marsch! marsch! Trollt euch fort!' and is the mean-spirited but ultimately hilariously inept henchman to the life. In Act Two, Selig duets with Blonde with gusto in 'Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir,' his articulation of the Andante 'O Engländer! seid ihr nicht Toren' exuding exasperation and flummoxing ignorance and matching his inebriated blubbering in the duet with Pedrillo. Osmin's best music is the aria 'O! wie will ich triumphieren' in Act Three, and Selig rises to the occasion with vocal power and technical acumen that encompasses good execution of his triplets and an honorable attempt at the trill. His low Ds lack the full-bodied support of the balance of his range. Selig's commitment to accurately producing the notes of his part contributes to an effective, uncaricatured portrayal of Osmin. Why do so many singers fail to realize that singing what the composer wrote is the surest method of bringing a character to life, whether comic or tragic?

Truly singing Pedrillo, a rôle far too often barked and blustered, Sachertorte-toned Austrian tenor Paul Schweinester​ is the rare exponent of this rôle who does not inspire the wish that the part were shorter. Beginning with wide-eyed, charismatic singing in the Act One trio with Belmonte and Osmin, 'Marsch! marsch! marsch! Trollt euch fort,' he is a vivacious personality throughout the opera—precisely the sort of friend for whom a leading man under duress longs. Schweinester makes Pedrillo's Act Two aria 'Frisch zum Kampfe! frisch zum Streite!' a joy, his trill and long-held top A heard with great pleasure. Then, he vigorously pairs with Selig in the hysterical duet with Osmin, 'Vivat Bacchus! Bacchus lebe!' The young tenor more than holds his own opposite his celebrated colleagues in the quartet with Konstanze, Blonde, and Belmonte. Pedrillo's Romanze 'Im Mohrenland gefangen war​' is often a trial for listeners, but Schweinester's performance gives the piece the brilliance that Mozart intended it to display. This is emblematic of Schweinester's performance as a whole: he is, as few tenors on recordings of Entführung have been, a Pedrillo who could as easily be a Belmonte.

Like similar rôles in a number of operas of all eras, the pert, perky ​Blonde​ can be a tremendous annoyance. Her music is written so that anything less than complete technical assurance amounts to failure. It almost seems too much to ask that a Blonde sing her high-wire act of a part beautifully, but that, on the whole, is what Anna Prohaska does on this recording. Though a lauded interpreter of Bach and other Baroque repertory, she possesses a more substantial voice than has often been heard in Blonde's music, and this is all to the good: there is no reason why the part must be sung by a Galli-Curci-esque chirper. Vocally, Blonde must hit the ground running, so to speak, her Act Two aria 'Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln' laden with coloratura leading her to E6. Prohaska ascends into the stratosphere with little evidence of effort and a heartening avoidance of shrillness. In the duet with Osmin, 'Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir,' the fearless soprano is equally comfortable when Blonde's line descends to A♭ below the staff. Prohaska tosses off the aria 'Welche Wonne, welche Lust' charmingly, her sustained top A a memorable tone, and, like her Pedrillo, she makes her mark in the quartet with Konstanze Belmonte and Pedrillo. There are a few patches of unevenness in the voice that suggest that her technique remains a work in progress, but she is as capable and captivating a Blonde as has been heard on records since Rita Streich.

Since devoting himself to the study and performance of Mozart repertory, Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón has not only sung and recorded Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni and Ferrando in Così fan tutte with Nézet-Séguin and recorded fine accounts of the composer's concert arias for tenor (also on DGG; reviewed here) but also conquered Salzburg in the title rôle of Lucio Silla. [He also sings Don Basilio on the forthcoming recording of Le nozze di Figaro.] From a historical perspective, it is frustrating to observe that the relatively recent notion persists that a tenor acclaimed for singing Verdi and Puccini rôles taking on Mozart parts is tantamount to a demotion in importance. Gone are the days when tenors like Richard Tucker and George Shirley regularly sang Ferrando amidst outings as Gabriele Adorno and Pinkerton without being thought to be retrograding into ‘beginners' repertory.' Villazón's voice here sounds healthy and secure, and his enunciation of German, though audibly not native, is fluent: Belmonte is a Spaniard, after all, and it should not be forgotten that one of the tenor's earliest appearances on disc was as the Steuermann in Daniel Barenboim's Teldec recording of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. In Act One, Villazón sets the high standard for the performance with a lovely, lively reading of Belmonte's aria 'Hier soll ich dich denn sehen,' the preponderance of top Gs and As​—typical of the part's passaggio-hugging tessitura—disclosing no fissures in Villazón's voice. After duetting rousingly with Selig, he voices the recitative 'Konstanze! Konstanze! Dich wiederzusehen' ardently. He devotes considerably more passion to the aria 'O wie ängstlich, o wie feurig' than many tenors are willing to venture, and the roulades hold no terrors for him. Drawing inspiration from Nézet-Séguin's perfectly-judged tempo, Villazón leads his colleagues in a bumptious but genuinely witty account of the trio with Pedrillo and Osmin, 'Marsch! marsch! marsch! Trollt euch fort!' In both 'Wenn der Freude Trä​​nen fließen' and the superb quartet, 'Ach Belmonte, ach mein Leben,' he graces Act Two with warm, Mediterranean vocalism. As might be hoped, he is at his best in Act Three, in which he offers a performance of the demanding aria 'Ich baue ganz auf deine Stä​rke' which has few peers, the aria often having been cut even from studio traversals of Entführung. Villazón crowns the aria with easy​ top B♭​s approached, as they should be, merely as notes resolving the upward mobility of the vocal lines. In the duet with Konstanze, 'Ha! Du solltest fü​r mich sterben,' he is the epitome of the golden-voiced Latin lover. Compared with the work of Mozarteans like Ernst Haefliger and Fritz Wunderlich, Villazón's is neither conventional nor conventionally beautiful Mozart singing. It is significant, sensitive, stimulating singing, however. Belmonte is not a Catechism-quoting schoolboy: he surely need not sound like one in order to be 'stylish.'​

In Nézet-Séguin's Don Giovanni for DGG, German soprano Diana Damrau​ was a Donna Anna who ruled the rôle and dominated the performance, even alongside Joyce DiDonato's no-holds-barred Donna Elvira. As Konstanze in this recording of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, there is unmistakable evidence of the toll that a frenetically-paced international career has taken on the exceptional beauty and flexibility of her voice. Still, she remains an extraordinary singer, and there are glimpses in this performance of her finest work. In Konstanze's Adagio aria in Act One, 'Ach ich liebte, war so glü​cklick' the bravura passagework extending to top D and the trills tax her, the voice sounding sluggish and under-rehearsed. In Act Two, she gives secure, insightfully-phrased performances of the recitative 'Welcher Kummer herrscht in meiner Seele' and the sublime aria 'Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose,' the repeated top B♭​s prompting no concerns, but the scale of the vocalism—and, in truth, of the voice itself—seems small for the music. The indubitably great Damrau emerges in the much-feared aria 'Martern aller Arten,' her technical aplomb in the runs  frequently cresting on top C dizzying, and she here rises to top D without a care in the world. This burst of prodigality continues in the quartet with ​Belmonte, ​Blonde, and Pedrillo, 'Ach Belmonte, ach mein Leben!' Taking the top line with distinction, she is finally every inch the performance's prima donna. She partners Villazón in their​ Act Three duet 'Ha! Du solltest fü​​r mich sterben' with temperament befitting a put-upon Spanish lady, firing her top C as a final salvo affirming her moral superiority. If the Damrau heard from 'Martern aller Arten' to the end of the opera were the Damrau of the opera's first half, this would be as near-definitive a Konstanze as is likely ever to be heard. It is interesting to consider that, when Don Giovanni was first performed in Vienna in 1788, the rôle sung by Salieri's pupil Caterina Cavalieri, for whose abilities Mozart devised Konstanze's music in Entführung, was Donna Elvira, not Donna Anna. It was for Cavalieri that the composer wrote Elvira's aria 'Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata,' the tessitura of which is, in general, higher than that of Donna Anna's music. Perhaps the models of Schwarzkopf and Steber (whose Donna Elvira is confirmed by existing MET broadcasts to have been markedly superior to her Donna Anna) are the benchmarks for Konstanze not merely because these ladies were fantastic singers but because their voices were centered in the tessitura as Mozart intended. By right of natural vocal talent, Damrau should have been their peer. In the event, she is a competent, sometimes superlative Konstanze rather than a legendary one.

Much is made in the annals of operatic history of the première of Auber's La muette de Portici having played a part in inciting the rebellion that led to Belgian independence. The first performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail may have precipitated no riots, but in those same annals of operatic history it is by a broad margin the more revolutionary work. It is not unreasonable to hypothesize that, without Entführung, there may have been no Die Zauberflöte, Fidelio, Der Freischütz, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Ariadne auf Naxos, or Wozzeck. As in Italian opera, in which vein the importance of Josef Mysliveček's work is increasingly assuming its rightful place beside that of Mozart's operas, the Wunderkind of Salzburg shares influence on the development of German opera with contemporaries like Ignaz Holzbauer and Peter von Winter. Under Yannick Nézet-Séguin's baton, though, the significance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail has never seemed more vast. In this valuable recording, Nézet-Séguin and an ensemble of artists who trust him and one another present a Die Entführung aus dem Serail from the musical pinnacle of which the perceptive listener with an appetite for the saga of opera's evolution can, as The Who’s song puts it, 'see for miles and miles.’

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Simon Boccanegra—Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Simon Boccanegra), Barbara Frittoli (Amelia Grimaldi/Maria Boccanegra), Ildar Abdrazakov (Jacopo Fiesco/Andrea Grimaldi), Stefano Secco (Gabriele Adorno), Kostas Smoriginas (Pietro), Marco Caria (Paolo Albiani), Eglė Šidlauskaitė (Ancella), Kęstutis Alčauskis (Capitano); Kaunas State Choir;Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra; Constantine Orbelian, conductor [Recorded at the Kaunas Philharmonic, Kaunas, Lithuania, 1 – 7 August 2013; Delos DE 3457; 2 CDs, 129:55; Available from Delos, ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

Captured in spacious sound with balances that occasionally seem artificial, this recording of Simon Boccanegra reunites several singers who have participated in revivals of the score at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This experience is evident in the performance preserved by Delos. On the podium, Constantine Orbelian presides with the assurance of one who knows and loves the score from cover to cover. He supports the singers instinctively but also neglects none of the oft-overlooked details of Verdi's orchestrations. In response to Orbelian's leadership, the strings of the Kaunas City Symphony often play with intimacy more typical of chamber music, their textures lean but full-bodied. The wind players also take care to blend their tones sonorously, their refinement not inhibiting the unleashing of torrents of sound when Verdi asks for them. The suspense of the Prologue's deceptively alluring opening scene is built to a crashing climax, and the mysterious sound world of Fiesco's great aria is conjured without distortion of the composer's prescribed rhythms. Here, Orbelian's acquaintance with Baroque repertory is beneficial: the ethereal atmosphere of Händel's Orlando is surprisingly close at hand. The very different moods of the successive duets in Act One are subtly but unmistakably limned by conductor and orchestra, and the monumental architecture of the Council Chamber scene is grandly but not excessively highlighted. Particularly in the Prologue and Act One, the singing of the Kaunas State Choir is an integral component of the success of Orbelian's approach to the score. The raw power of the choristers' singing in the public scenes is complemented by the carefully-managed blending of voices, especially in passages in which they are heard from offstage. Orchestra and chorus collaborate with Orbelian with the naturalness of friends assembled to make music for their own enjoyment. The conductor's tempi enable soloists, choristers, and instrumentalists alike to focus on giving of their best. Numbers like the magnificent duet for Simone and Amelia in Act Two are granted appealing lyrical flexibility but are not allowed to wallow in sentimentality. The prevailing qualities of this performance, shared by conductor, orchestra, and chorus, are unforced musicality and good sense.

In addition to the wonderful Kaunas orchestra and chorus, three native Lithuanian artists make valuable contributions to this performance of Simon Boccanegra. As Amelia's maid, mezzo-soprano Eglė Šidlauskaitė sings warmly and manages to convey sisterly concern despite the brevity of her part. Tenor Kęstutis Alčauskis is a flinty, strong-voiced Capitano, his proclamation of 'Cittadini! per ordine del Doge s'estinguano le faci e non s'offenda col clamor del trionfo i prodi estinti' in Act Three ringing with martial authority. Baritone Kostas Smoriginas is a stirringly incisive Pietro, a conspirator with a misguided but not unredeemable heart. The character is perhaps bullied by Paolo, but there is nothing weak about Smoriginas’s vocalism. Moreover, he displays considerable dramatic intelligence that marks him as a young singer to watch.

As portrayed by baritone Marco Caria, the wicked Paolo Albiani is a demonic fellow made all the more dangerous by how attractive he makes evil sound. In the opera’s Prologue, he voices the Allegro moderato 'L'atra magion vedete?.. de' Fieschi è l'empio ostello' with reptilian slyness, and he conducts his seditious affairs with solid intonation and unrelenting intensity. In the Act Two duet with Fiesco, he voices 'Me stesso ho maledetto!' vigorously. There are no regret or remorse in this Paolo as he is led to his well-deserved execution except for those of a man who has not accomplished as much mischief as he might have done. Caria's, too, is a name to remember.

Musically and dramatically, Jacopo Fiesco is one of Verdi's most demanding rôles for bass. Fiesco's hatred for Boccanegra has transformed him from a pillar of Genovese society into a broken man capable only of plotting revenge. Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov gives the character an innate dignity that fosters a measure of sympathy for the old man. His scene and aria in the Prologue, 'A te l'estremo addio, palagio altero' and 'Il lacerato spirito del mesto genitore era serbato a strazio d'infamia e di dolore,' constitute one of Verdi’s most exquisite inspirations. Abdrazakov enunciates the recitative with great focus, and he phrases the aria eloquently. The concluding low F♯ lacks resonance, and his lowest notes are the weakest part of his singing throughout the performance. He unsparingly trades jabs with Boccanegra in their scene, and he haunts the Prologue like the specter of a restless wanderer. Abdrazakov's vocal steadiness—a trait too seldom heard in Fiesco's music—is especially welcome in Act One, in which he sings the duet with Gabriele with impressive sensitivity. He phrases the Sostenuto religioso, 'Vieni a me, ti benedico nella pace di quest'ora,' with genuine tenderness, and the contrast with his imperious singing in Fiesco's Act Two duet with Paolo could not be greater. In Act Three, Abdrazakov's pointed voicing of the throbbing Largo, 'Delle faci festanti al barlume cifre arcane, funebri vedrai,' is very touching, the line punctuated by the singer's easy rise to the top F. A few strange vowels notwithstanding, Abdrazakov uses text with near-native sophistication, but it is the voice that makes the greater impact. Other singers have made Fiesco's implacability more palpable, but few have sung his music more securely.

Gabriele Adorno is, in comparison with most of the mature Verdi's parts for tenor, a thankless rôle. Throughout much of the opera, he both is misled and misinterprets the situations in which he finds himself. He has some fantastic music, however, and uncomplicated musicality is the defining precept of Stefano Secco's performance on this recording. From his entrance in Act One, his bright timbre and straightforward interpretation of the rôle give pleasure even when the actual singing is less ingratiating. There is an engaging boyishness in his singing of 'Cielo di stelle orbato, di fior vedovo prato, è l'alma senza amor' in the duet with Amelia, and his top B♭s in unison with his beloved in 'Sì, sì dell'ara il giubilo' are tossed off with panache. Of a wholly different demeanor is Secco's singing in the duet with Fiesco, in which he voices the Allegro moderato section, 'Tu che lei vegli con paterna cura a nostre nozze assenti,' with distinction. The voice rings with impetuosity in the Council Chamber scene as Gabriele rashly accuses Boccanegra of abducting Amelia. Secco ably imparts the character's confusion and embarrassment as events he does not fully comprehend play out before him. He does not comply with Verdi's request that Gabriele should double Amelia's final trill in the scene, but he holds his own in the vast ensemble without forcing the voice too perilously. The Allegro sostenuto aria in Act Two, 'Sento avvampar nell'anima furente gelosia,' is passionately sung, and the simplicity and sincerity of the tenor's delivery of the aria’s Largo section, 'Cielo pietoso, redila, redila a questo core,' are unexpectedly poignant. In the subsequent duet with Amelia, Secco devotes an outpouring of lyrical tone to 'Parla, in tuo cor virgineo fede al diletto rendi.' Gabriele's trembling uncertainty as he contemplates murdering the sleeping Boccanegra in the opening pages of the Act Two finale is evinced by Secco's singing of 'Ei dorme!... Quale sento ritegno?' In the marvelous trio, another precious blossom of Verdi's genius, the ardor of Secco's singing of 'Perdon, perdon, Amelia, indomito geloso amor fu il mio' heightens the emotional impact of the scene. Finally knowing the truth about Amelia's parentage and past, Secco's Gabriele comforts both Amelia and the dying Boccanegra in Act Three with the compassion of a man who has at last recognized his destiny. Secco's voice is not a malleable, easily-produced instrument, but he is a shrewd singer who projects tones evenly and effectively. Ultimately, his heartfelt Gabriele is more gratifying than other tenors' self-conscious efforts at puffed-up heroics.

A versatile singer whose acclaimed operatic portrayals include rôles by Mozart, Donizetti, and Puccini, Italian soprano Barbara Frittoli follows in the tradition of singers such as Mirella Freni and Katia Ricciarelli, singers whose natural lyric voices were capable, when managed with caution, of successfully taking on parts requiring larger voices. Amelia's music is difficult to categorize: the tessitura is centered in the middle of the soprano range like that of a rôle written for a dramatic or spinto voice, but she also has trills—as does Wagner's Brünnhilde, of course. Like Secco, Frittoli manages her part in Simon Boccanegra without excessive strain. She starts Act One with a graceful but somewhat plain account of the aria 'Come in quest'ora bruna, sorridon gli astri e il mare!' Her top B♭ is secure, but the upper register often has a tremulousness that gives the voice a hard edge. In the duet with Gabriele, she soars to a blazing top B on 'gioia!' before voicing the Andantino, 'Vieni a mirar la cerula marina tremolante,' with compelling sensitivity. She and Secco combine artfully in 'Sì, sì dell'ara il giubilo,' the patina of her top B♭s blending well with the tenor's. The duet with Boccanegra is the beating heart of Act One, and Frittoli phrases 'Orfanella il tetto umile m'accogliea d'una meschina' and 'Padre! vedrai la vigile...figlia a te sempre accanto' with gleaming Italianate fervor, her long-held top B♭ cathartically crowning the duet’s final bars. Her top B♭ on 'Ferisci?' as she rushes to shield Boccanegra from his would-be assassins in the Council Chamber scene is explosive, but the terror and shame that shape her narrative in 'Nell'ora soave che all'estasi invita' are even more gripping. The crucial trills are more approximated than truly executed, but the effort is admirable. In the Act Two duet with Gabriele, Frittoli spins a silken thread of tone in 'Sgombra dall'alma il dubbio.' Her finest singing is in the trio in the Act Two finale, in which her plea for her dead mother's protection, 'Madre, che dall'empireo proteggi la tua figlia,' is deeply moving. Amelia's burden is the pain of finding her father only to lose him again, and Frittoli depicts a woman forever wounded by this pain. Hers is an imaginative portrayal only occasionally betrayed by vocal frailty.

The Boccanegra of Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is a characterization heard in many of the world's important opera houses. A strikingly handsome man with one of the few legitimately significant baritone voices to have emerged in the past three decades, Hvorostovsky has gradually added the celebrated Verdi baritone rôles to his repertory as he felt that they became comfortable fits for his voice. In larger houses, he is sometimes forced to push his fine-grained instrument to ensure that he is heard, but recording a part like Boccanegra in studio enables him to sing without the necessity of projecting to the last row. In the Prologue in this recording, there is a suggestion of genuine surprise in his articulation of 'Suona ogni labbro il mio nome,' and his nuanced reading of the Andantino in the scene with Fiesco, 'Del mar sul lido tra gente ostile crescea nell'ombra quella gentile,' is insightful. Reluctant to ascend to the Doge's throne, not least after discovering the death of his dear Maria, this Boccanegra bows to the will of the people with humility. Hvorostovsky is resplendently in his element in the Act One duet with Amelia. He is almost playful in 'Dinne...alcun là non vedesti?' as he grows more certain that Amelia is his daughter. The expansiveness of his phrasing of 'Figlia! A tal nome palpito qual se m'aprisse i cieli'—is there any more heart-stopping melody in opera?—is evidence of the baritone's formidable breath control, and his soft top F—more piano than Verdi's ppp, admittedly—on the final voicing of 'Figlia!' is superb. The declamatory style in the Council Chamber scene does not come as naturally to Hvorostovsky, but he copes manfully, the voice sounding robust but not hard-driven. The pinnacle of his singing in Act Two is his bitter utterance of 'Doge! ancor proveran la tua clemenza i traditori?' This is seconded by a bracing account of 'Deggio salvarlo e stendere la mano all'inimico?' in the trio. Hvorostovsky's performance in Act Three is epitomized by his unexaggerated enacting of Boccanegra's death. Here, as throughout the performance on this recording, he sings the part on his own terms. They are terms that Verdi would surely have endorsed enthusiastically.

Simon Boccanegra has been a frequent visitor to the world's opera houses during the past decade, and this familiarity has bred the contempt of realizing that standards of Verdi singing have declined precipitously since the era—not so long ago—when the dedicated Verdian could hear Leonard Warren, Giuseppe Taddei, Tito Gobbi, and Cornell MacNeil as Boccanegra. The magnetism of Simon Boccanegra is such that a poor Boccanegra, Amelia, or Gabriele is more willingly endured than a poor Rigoletto, Gilda, or Duca di Mantova, but this Delos recording of Simon Boccanegra is a heartening reminder that the art of singing Verdi is injured but not dead. It is not perfect, but neither are the opera itself nor those who hear it.

[1] ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841 – 1904): Alfred, B. 16—Felix Rumpf (Alfred), Petra Froese (Alvina), Ferdinand von Bothmer (Harald), Jörg Sabrowski (Gothron), Peter Mikuláś (Sieward), Tilmann Unger (Bote, Dorset), Jarmila Baxová (Rowena); Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno; Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra; Heiko Mathias Förster, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in concert in Dvořák Hall, Rudolfínum, Prague, Czech Republic, during the Dvořák Prague Festival, 16 – 17 September 2014; Arco Diva UP 0140-2 612; 2 CDs, 125:21; Available from Arco Diva, ClassicsOnline HD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854 – 1928): Jenůfa(Její pastorkyňa), JW I/4—Gal James (Jenůfa), Iris Vermillion (Kostelnička Buryjovka), Dunja Vejzović (Stařenka Buryjovka), Aleš Briscein (Laca Klemeň), Taylan Reinhard (Števa Buryja), David McShane (Stárek), Konstantin Sfiris (Rychtář), Stefanie Hierlmeier (Rychtářka), Tatjana Miyus (Karolka), Fran Lubahn (Pastuchyňa), Xiaoyi Xu (Barena), Nazanin Ezazi (Jano), Hana Batinić (Tetka, Hlas), István Szécsi (Hlas); Fuyu Iwaki, violin solo; Chor und Singschul’ der Oper Graz; Grazer Philharmonisches Orchester; Dirk Kaftan, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ during staged performances at Oper Graz, Graz, Austria, 7, 17, 21 – 22 May 2014; Oehms Classics OC 962; 2 CDs, 126:58; Available from Oehms Classics, ClassicsOnline HD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Anyone who has visited the Czech Republic or Slovakia in the years since the Iron Curtain was torn asunder can attest to the extraordinary pride these nations have in their cultural heritages. Consigned for centuries to biding their time as forced citizens of other nations and empires, the Czech and Slovak people maintained sharply-defined identities, remaining Bohemians, Moravians, and other distinct socio-ethnic societies even when their loyalties were involuntarily directed southward to Vienna or eastward to Moscow. The collective cultural legacy of the Czechoslovak nations is nowhere more vibrantly enshrined than in the region's music. Whether in the indigenous folk tunes of these intoxicating lands or in the music of their Classically-trained composers, the hearts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia beat in time with the musical expressions of the profound history and humanity of the people. Two operas could hardly be more different in scale, subject, and substance than Dvořák's Alfred and Janáček's Jenůfa, but the scores share the authentic spirit of a common cultural ancestry. One a product of its composer's artistic adolescence and the other one of the great masterpieces of its genre, both of these works embody the enterprising, unflappable soul of people whose determination has sustained them through horrors and hardships, from generations of decreed assimilation unto a new millennium in which hopes for autonomy have been realized in the thriving Czech Republic and Slovakia of the Twenty-First Century.

Antonín Dvořák's 'Heroische Oper in drei Aufzügen'Alfred dates from the period in the ​twenty-nine-year-old​ composer's creative development during which, probably by equal parts design and default, he was an earnest Wagnerian. The score contains occasional foreshadows of Jakobín and Rusalka but mostly breathes the air of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. Already, though, Dvořák's gifts for colorful orchestration are apparent in Alfred, not least in the atmospheric Tragic Overture that prefaces the opera and in the grand choral scenes that frame the action, particularly the stirring Morgengesang in Act Three. Composed in 18​70 to a German libretto by Karl Theodor Körner that had already been set by Friedrich von Flotow​, Alfred was ​neither ​performed ​nor published ​during Dvořák's lifetime​: the piece was not heard until 1938, when it was performed in a Czech translation in Olomouc. In fact, the September 2014 Dvořák Prague Festival concert in Dvořák Hall—as apt a venue as exists for the occasion—in the beautiful Rudolfínum was the first known performance of the opera in the original German. This expertly-engineered recording reveals few indications of its 'live' provenance, but it reveals much about the young Dvořák's compositional evolution, influenced as much by Bayreuth as by his native Bohemia.

In truth, none of the young cast in the concert performance recorded b​y Arco Diva​ are ideally-suited to their parts: the titular King of Wessex requires a burly baritone of the Telramund variety, the Viking warlord Harald is tailor-made for a capable Lohengrin, and the music for the long-suffering ​Alvina​ cries out for a young Ingrid Bjöner, Rita Hunter, or, most appropriately, Naděžda Kniplová. Under the thoughtfully-wielded baton of Heiko Mathias Förster​, the performance by the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno​ and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra​ nonetheless provides great enjoyment and plentiful moments in which glimmers of Dvořák's operatic future appear in the sometimes ostentatious orchestrations. At this early stage in his career, Dvořák did not yet possess the skills as a manager of orchestral balances that he would eventually display in his Symphonies or the command of choral writing that characterizes his 1877 Stabat mater. Still, there are numerous challenges for instrumentalists and choristers, and they are here met unflinchingly. Förster's pacing of the performance benefits from what might rather paradoxically be termed a measured impetuosity: there is ample but never excessive thrust, and Dvořák's Wagnerian inclinations are indulged without Alfred being made to sound like a child-sized Parsifal. Förster supports the principals without ignoring the demands made on the chorus and orchestra, and, were the performance blessed with a cast more triumphant than merely competent, the endeavors of conductor, choir, and orchestra would honor Dvořák with a near-perfect recreation of his first outing as a composer of opera.

Singing the small rôle of​ Rowena, soprano Jarmila Baxová​ discloses a voice of charm and allure and a technique little challenged by her music. First appearing as the Bote in Act One, tenor Tilmann Unger negotiates 'Ja Herr! Er traf mit seiner sieggewohnten Scharr auf Alfreds Heer' effectively, and he delivers 'Vergebens, gestrenger Gebieter, ward Alvina im Thurme bewacht' in the Act Two finale robustly. In Act Three, he transitions from the Bote to Dorset and insightfully interacts with his colleagues, especially in his scene with Alvina. Baxová's and Unger's work is matched by that of veteran Slovak bass Peter Mikuláš, who depicts Sieward with vitality that compensates for what the voice lacks in steadiness. He convincingly makes his mark in Act Two with a stentorian utterance of 'O, muß ich ihm das Gräßliche verkünden!' and alert, attentive singing in the trio with Alvina and Alfred.

As the figureheads of the invading Viking hordes, baritone Jörg Sabrowski and tenor Ferdinand von Bothmer are slyly-contrasted presences as Gothron and Harald. Much of the credit for the differentiation is owed to Dvořák. Köthner's libretto puts little flesh on the characters' bones, but, though certainly not the equals of Rusalka's Ježibaba and Vodník, the composer granted each man a distinct musical profile. Sabrowski sings Gothron's music expansively, commandeering attention in Act One with his volatile traversal of 'Im Siegestaumel schweldt das Volk.' Though a darker, more imposing sound would be welcome in Gothron's lines, more of Sabrowski's singing would also be heard with gratitude. Von Bothmer's Harald is a petulant, short-fused despot whose desire for Alvina seems inspired more by a lust for depriving Alfred of her company than by actually wishing to possess her himself. Sung by von Bothmer with slimy insouciance, Harald is here a perverse manipulator in the fashion of Richard Strauss's Herodes and Aegisth. In Act One, von Bothmer intones 'Das war ein blut'ges Tagwerk, Kampfgenossen!' persuasively, and in the Schlachtlied he shapes 'Das Los des Kampfes ist gefallen' and 'Speere blinken, Krieger sinken' with the immediacy of a man whose natural habitat is the battlefield. He is more Monostatos than Tamino in Harald's duet with Alvina, but he devotes greater intensity to the Act Three scene with Alvina. Von Bothmer produces all of Harald's notes cleanly despite strain in the upper register but does not have the vocal heft to reliably project over the orchestra: von Bothmer makes a valiant effort, but a more heroic voice is needed to fully limn the machismo bellicosity with which Dvořák infused Harald's music.

Prague-born soprano Petra Froese portrays Alvina, Alfred's queen consort [the operatic equivalent of the historical Eahlswith], with a bright, penetrating timbre that partially mitigates the relative lack of vocal amplitude. Hearing her performance in Alfred, the expensiveness of her Mozartean credentials is not surprising, but it is intriguing to note that her repertory also includes Elsa in Lohengrin and Gutrune in Götterdämmerung, parts which require a spinto's or Jugendlich-dramatische's stamina and ability to fully project over the Wagnerian orchestra. Like her Slovakian predecessor Gabriela Beňačková, the greatest Rusalka of her generation, Froese maintains presences in Czech, German, and Italian repertories. Had she a bit more of Beňačková's arresting tonal beauty and security on high, she might make a stronger impression in Alvina's lovely but mostly passive music. In her Act One duet with Harald, Froese's Alvina lifts her eyes to Providence with a nobly-phrased account of 'Allmächtiger, verlieh' mir Kraft!' She follows this with a sweetly feminine but iron-willed voicing of 'Ich bin's und war's, eh' Du Dein Wort vollendet,' its effectiveness undermined only by the thinness of the tone and a lack of authority on the highest notes. In the Act Two trio with Alfred and Sieward, the soprano sings with compelling animation and increasingly insightful management of her vocal resources. By the time that she reaches Alvina's Act Three scenes with Dorset and Harald, Froese is singing with energy and excitement. Not even her enthusiasm can rescue the opera's jubilant dénouement from an unmistakable outbreak of triviality, but the rousing resolution of Froese's performance makes amends for her tentative start.

Credited with expelling or subjugating many of the roving Danes who terrorized the British Isles in the centuries immediately following the disintegration of Roman dominion and diplomatically and militarily uniting tributary states into a form vaguely resembling modern England, the Wessexian king Alfred the Great is a figure of pivotal but likely semi-apocryphal importance in British history. More information now accepted as fact exists about Alfred than about almost any of his contemporaries, however, and he is not unworthy of operatic treatment, the suspicion that his reign was far calmer than legends assert notwithstanding. His royal mantle is here assumed by baritone Felix Rumpf, a native of Dresden who, just completing his second decade at the time of this performance, was roughly the same age as Alfred during the events depicted in the opera. Like Froese, Rumpf is an accomplished Mozartean, admired for his stylish Papageno, and Dvořák's music is sometimes a size too large for him. Also like Froese, he is an intelligent singer who knows better than to risk damaging his good-quality voice by attempting to feign a rotundity that it does not possess. Rumpf launches Act Two with a nuanced articulation of 'Wohl Euch, ihr tapfern Streiter!' He is too sensible to fall into the trap of over-emoting in 'O, welche Marter wird Dir nicht bereitet, hochherzig Mädchen!' and the ardent trio with Alvina and Sieward, but he sings with passionate abandon within the parameters of his voice. He dominates the Act Two finale with a statement of 'Des langen Kampfes müde lag unberührt der Stahl' that throbs with unflinching senses of duty and purpose. The finest music in the score is Alfred's prayer in Act Three, 'Höre unser lautes Flehen, Gott der Siege, Gott der Schlacht,' and Rumpf sings the number with understated grandeur. Rumpf is careful to convey Alfred's regal bearing via his superb diction, and he sings so aristocratically and attractively that it is frequently possible to forget that the voice is lean for Dvořák's corpulent vocal lines. Rumpf is an Almaviva rather than an Amfortas, but on his own terms he is a memorable, meaningful Alfred.

Composers' first operas have rarely been masterpieces, and Dvořák's Alfred is no exception. Many listeners' enjoyment of a piece like Alfred is seemingly complicated by a perceived necessity of analyzing every bar in search of evidence of latent genius. Alfred is clearly the work of a very talented beginner whose thoughts were affected, as were those of so many of his contemporaries, by the artistic altitude of the Green Hill. Förster and his colleagues provide a well-prepared, well-executed introduction to a score that introduces the listener to a master composer’s freshman exertion in a genre to which he would eventually contribute indelibly.

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Were it not remarkable in a myriad of other ways, Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa would be a milestone in the history of opera solely owing to the composer's libretto, an adaptation of Gabriela Preissová's drama Její pastorkyňa that was among the first prose libretti set to music. In it, the ugly visages of jealousy, lust, and damning social conformity are bared to the listener's scrutiny with music that is by turns lushly Romantic and starkly modern. In a manner of speaking, Janáček was an operatic Joseph, his coat of many colors enveloping a profound, intuitive empathy for humanity in music that translates into sound the innermost aspects of dreams that often go undetected. The product of a six-year gestational period and first performed in Brno in 1904, Jenůfa was not, like Dvořák's Alfred, it's composer's first opera, but in it the unmistakable, singular voice of Janáček—the voice that shaped Kát'a Kabanová, Věc Makropulos, and Z mrtvého domu—is heard for the first time without distractions derived from external influences. Not least because of his pattern of setting prose texts, Janáček's are among the most inventive operas in the international repertory, and Oehms Classics' recording of Jenůfa advocates powerfully for the score's continued appeal and thought-provoking social commentary. Most crucially, however, this recording establishes in Jenůfa an intimacy in which the demeaning intrusions of small-town mentalities into the everyday lives of citizens are examined as insightfully as in Peter Grimes and Der junge Lord. In Alfred, Dvořák dealt with heroic figures of lore: in Jenůfa, Janáček held a mirror to the scarred faces of common folk.

Recorded during staged performances at Oper Graz in sound of a quality that comes close to rivaling Oehms Classics' Oper Frankfurt recordings, this set documents a markedly 'modern' take on Jenůfa, the drama unfolding almost in the manner of a radio play. Conductor Dirk Kaftan exhibits mastery of the thorny score that places him in the company of Sir Charles Mackerras and Václav Neumann as an interpreter of Janáček's music. Intelligently choosing tempi in Preludes, set pieces, and conversational scenes, he highlights the manner in which the composer constructed the music upon the foundation of the cadences of the Czech language. Indeed, this is a performance that 'speaks' even when voices are silent. No matter who they are portraying in the course of the drama, the singers of the Chor und Singschul' der Oper Graz sing sonorously, the individual voices that occasionally stand out from the ensemble enhancing the choristers' credibility in public scenes. Among the ladies and gentlemen of the chorus of all ages, there are no weak links, an assessment that proves true of few performances or recordings of Jenůfa. Janáček's demands on the orchestra are no less stringent than those on the chorus, but the players of the Grazer Philharmonisches Orchester complement their choral colleagues by executing their parts with compelling concentration. Janáček's orchestrations were originally viewed with skepticism, their unconventionality deemed an obstacle to the opera's success with audiences. On a more modest scale, Janáček was as imaginative a wizard at blending instrumental timbres as his fellow Austrian-by-birth Mahler, however. Responding to Kaftan's leadership and Janáček's instructions with skill and soul, the Graz forces confirm that they are as adept at bringing Janáček's music to life as their neighbors to the north in Vienna, Brno, and Prague.

Emerging from their surroundings as both onlookers and participants in Jenůfa's tragic life, Ukrainian soprano Tatjana Miyus as Karolka, Wisconsin native contralto Fran Lubahn as Pastuchyňa, Chinese mezzo-soprano Xiaoyi Xu as Barena, Persian soprano Nazanin Ezazi as Jano, Serbian soprano Hana Batinić as the Tetka and a voice, and Hungarian bass István Szécsi as a voice all sing capably, not one of them lowering the high level of musicality in the performance with a flubbed rhythm or missed pitch. Led by Miyus's sweet tones in Karolka's 'Pánbůh rač dát dobrý den, dobrý den!' in Act Three, these intrepid singers create a formidable ensemble. As the Rychtář and Rychtářka, the mayor and his wife, Greek bass Konstantin Sfiris and German mezzo-soprano Stefanie Hierlmeier are a well-matched couple, as well, their voices resounding handsomely in every phrase that Janáček assigned to them, and Missouri-born baritone David McShane is similarly effective as the Stárek, the foreman of Stařenka Buryja's mill.

A chameleonic artist whose career includes notable assumptions of rôles as diverse as Saint-Saëns's Dalila and the Walküre Brünnhilde, as well much-discussed portrayals of Wagner's Senta and Kundry under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, Croatian mezzo-soprano Dunja Vejzović is an unexpected but inspired choice for Stařenka Buryja in Jenůfa. The voice retains much of its strength, and Vejzović remains an exhilarating performer. She sings 'Co to máš za radost!''A ty, Jenůfo, neplač, neplač!' in Act One with conviction that pulls the listener into the drama, and she continues in this vein in her every appearance. Ever a courageous, resourceful artist, Vejzović sings vigorously, conjuring memories of past glories, and in the context of this performance creates a memorable Stařenka Buryja.

Jenůfa's suitors Števa Buryja and Laca Klemeň are, like their female counterparts in Janáček's drama, two of the most challenging rôles in the Czech repertory. With almost identical tessitura and vocal writing that centers both parts in the passaggio, singers must differentiate the men largely by characterization. In the context of an audio recording, the ability to discern Števa from Laca is critical. This performance has a pair of singers whose voices are not vastly dissimilar but who manage to create distinct, distinguishable characters. As Števa, Turkish tenor Taylan Reinhard depicts a hard-edged man without artificially hardening his tone. In Števa's confrontation with Jenůfa in Act One, Reinhard spits out 'Já, já! Já! já! Já napilý? Já napilý? To ty mně, Jenůfka?' with stinging indignation, as though the character can hardly believe that Jenůfa would comment on his inebriation. Then, he tosses off his song with the farmhands, 'Daleko široko do těch Nových Zámků,' with grating insouciance but focused, ingratiating tone. The pent-up frustration that rushes to the surface in his declamation of 'Neškleb se! Vždyt' vidíš, tetka Kostelnička mne pro tebe dopaluje' is startling: it is clear both why Jenůfa is attracted to Števa and why her passion for him is ill-fated. In Števa’s scene with the Kostelnička in Act Two, Reinhard sings 'Proto, že se jí bojím, že se jí bojím' captivatingly. Czech tenor Aleš Briscein, whose repertory contains both of the tenor leads in Jenůfa, here sings Laca with simplicity and sensitivity that contrast sharply with the bolder profile of Reinhard's Števa. In Act One, Briscein voices 'Vy stařenka, už tak na všelicos špatně vidíte' and 'A on na tobě nevidí nic jiného' winningly, the character’s petulance rendered by the pinpoint accuracy of the singer’s diction. 'Chci, Jenůfka, chci Jenůfka, jen když buděs, buděs má' in Act Two also receives from the tenor a traversal of absorbing immediacy. Both Reinhard and Briscein are little troubled by their parts’ top B♭s, but they take pains to delineate the very different motives that inspire their characters’ actions. As enacted by Reinhard and Briscein, neither Števa nor Laca is wholly good or bad in a conventional sense, but good singing is a trait that they have in common.

The rôle of the Kostelnička is a histrionic tour de force, a gift for singing actresses in the performance of which far too many artists, consumed by acting the part, downplay or wholly ignore the importance of singing it. The Kostelnička gold standards on disc are both dramatic sopranos: Naděžda Kniplová, recorded in studio in Prague in 1969 and again almost a decade later, and Leonie Rysanek, documented in an incendiary 1988 Opera Orchestra of New York concert performance in Carnegie Hall. Acclaimed German mezzo-soprano Iris Vermillion of course cannot compete with her illustrious forebears in the Kostelnička's music in terms of decibels, but as an actress with a clear-sighted understanding of the part she has little to fear by comparison. She also has to her credit a carefully-trained, genuinely attractive voice, and she is the rare Kostelnička whose principal focus is squarely on meeting the musical requirements of the part. Vermillion seizes attention in Act One, voicing 'A tak bychom šli celým životem' with near-seismic intensity, and never relinquishes her grip on the performance. She uncannily propels the drama in Act Two with her stern but vulnerable singing of 'Pořád se s tím děckem mažeš' and 'Ba, ta tvoje okenička už přes dvacet neděl zabedněna.' The full spectrum of Vermillion's considerable gifts is unveiled in her account of the Kostelnička's great monologue, 'Co chvíla...co chvíla...a já si mám – zatím přejít celou věčnost, celé spasení?!' The repeated top Gs and A♭s and the climactic top B♭s here and in the final moments of Act Two tax her, but her solid, exciting singing is a victory of will. Vermillion makes the Kostelnička's decision to murder Jenůfa's baby equally appalling and heartbreaking: there is no questioning the sincerity of her distorted good intentions. In Vermillion's intuitive singing, the moment when the Kostelnička resolves to commit infanticide is as apparent to the listener as that when Tosca grasps the knife in order to stab Scarpia. In Act Three, the distress of 'Vypravuju dnes Jenůfě svatbu s hodným člověkem' is chillingly conveyed, and here Vermillion ascends to the frequent F♭s at the top of the stave with unhesitating security. Her cry of 'Ještě jsem tu já! Vy ničeho nevíte! To můj skutek – můj trest boží!' is both desperate and cathartic: hers is a Kostelnička for whom public condemnation is far lighter a burden than the hell to which her own guilt has subjected her. In many performances, the Kostelnička is portrayed as a bully and a shrew. Vermillion lends her greater psychological depth, but the particular success of her interpretation is the splendor of her singing.

Many performances of Jenůfa are understandably defined by their Kostelničkas, but Oper Graz found in Israeli soprano Gal James a Jenůfa capable of holding her own opposite a first-rate Kostelnička. With her fresh, youthful timbre and incisive dramatic instincts, James is an uncommonly engaging Jenůfa, one who is audibly a different woman after being disfigured by Laca's blade and again after learning of her child's death. In her Act One prayer, 'O Panno Maria, jestlis mne oslyšela,' James's Jenůfa raises her voice to heaven with tones that only a very stony-hearted Madonna could ignore, and her expansive phrasing is evidence of a deeply-considered understanding of the music. James sings 'Stařenko, nehněvejte se' enchantingly, the glow of a young woman's love illuminating Janáček's melodies. The slashing urgency with which she articulates 'Števo, Števo, já vím, žes to urobil z té radosti dnes' imparts the sincerity of Jenůfa's affection and the harshness of her slow realization of its futility. The Act Two monologue 'Mamičko, mám tězkou hlavu, mám, mám, jako samý, samý kámen' inspires James to singing of tremendous dramatic potency and vocal beauty, the top Bs rightly projected as organic resolutions to Janáček's complex lines and 'Kde to jsem?' cloaked in uncertainty and fear. Jenůfa's response to being told that her child is dead, 'Tož umřel – tož umrěl můj chlapčok radostný,' is sung with a delicacy that is far more evocative of the profundity of the character's shock and grief than other singers' groans and shouts. Symbolically at least, Jenůfa begins Act Three as a woman injured as destructively as can be imagined, her beauty defaced and her motherhood violated. The defining trait of James's Jenůfa is survival, however, and she delivers 'Vstaňte, pěstounko moja' with resilience typical of her reading of the part. The magnificent arc of 'O Laco, duša moja! O pojd', o pojd'! Včil k tobě mne dovedla láska – ta větsí co Pánbůh s ní spokojen!' is sculpted by James with vocal acumen akin to the touch of a Renaissance master. The fortissimo top B♭ with which she ends the opera is a starburst of reawakening hope that epitomizes this Jenůfa's battered but never abandoned worldview. Singing the rôle with polish and potency that place her in the class of Beňačková and Sena Jurinac, James is a Jenůfa whose beneficent spirit is far sharper than Laca's knife.

Performances of Jenůfa are often dramatically enthralling, but only the best of them are as musically rewarding as this recording from Oper Graz. In truth, few performances of any opera devote as much attention to fulfilling the composer’s musical requirements as the cast of this recording of Jenůfa expend in their account of Janáček’s fascinating score. Both Oehms Classics’ Jenůfa and Arco Diva’s Alfred provide listeners with breathtaking vistas of the musical wonders of the Czech Republic and Slovakia that leave no doubt that the cultural traditions of these proud nations are as rich and as enduringly valuable as those of their neighbors along the Danube and Vltava and over the Alps.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 – 1949): Die Frau ohne Schatten, Opus 65—Tamara Wilson (Die Kaiserin), Burkhard Fritz (Der Kaiser), Terje Stensvold (Barak, der Färber), Sabine Hogrefe (Die Färberin), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Die Amme), Franz Mayer (Der Einäugige, Ein Stimme der Wächter der Stadt), Björn Bürger (Der Einarmige, Ein Stimme der Wächter der Stadt), Hans-Jürgen Lazar (Der Bucklige), Dietrich Volle (Der Geisterbote, Ein Stimme der Wächter der Stadt), Michael Porter (Erscheinung des Jünglings), Brenda Rae (Ein Hüter der Schwelle des Tempels, Stimme des Falken), Katharina Magiera (Stimme von oben), Birgit Treschau (Dienerin), Alketa Hoxha (Dienerin), Yvonne Hettegger (Dienerin), Young Sook Kim (Dienerin), Hiromi Mori (Dienerin), Book-Sill Kim (Kinderstimme), Camelia Suzana Peteu (Kinderstimme), Gunda Boote (Kinderstimme), Jianhua Zhu (Kinderstimme), Christiane Maria Waschk (Kinderstimme); Chor der Oper Frankfurt; Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester; Sebastian Weigle, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ during staged performances at Oper Frankfurt, Germany, in October and November 2014; Oehms Classics OC 964; 3 CDs, 193:10; Available from Oehms Classics, jpc (Germany), and major music retailers]

Whether symptomatic of perversity or profundity, Richard Strauss's and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten is a score that engages my emotions very intensely; more intensely, in truth, than almost any other opera yet written. I do not claim that my affection for the opera fully plumbs the depths of its mystical symbolism, but I question the insightfulness of any artist, critic, or casual listener who fails to fathom the opera's pervasive, persuasive humanity. Like Mozart's and Schikaneder's Die Zauberflöte, the drama of Die Frau ohne Schatten occupies multiple planes of meaning. Taken at face value, its plot is fanciful but simple enough, recounting the necessity of a woman artificially obtaining what others naturally possess, but the collisions of privilege and privation, magnanimity and ennui, tangible and ephemeral inspired composer and librettist to look more deeply into the recesses of the psyches of the opera’s characters than in any of their other collaborations. Composed in the tempestuous years between 1911 and 1917, the dins and dissonances of World War I pockmark Strauss’s score, tempered by the strata of hope and resilience that are the most forceful weapons in an artist’s arsenal. Vitally, though, one need not wholly submerge oneself in the libretto's symbolism in order to be swept away by the surging currents of Strauss's music. The foremost majesty of Die Frau ohne Schatten is the simplicity that frolics in its depths: the characters who populate the opera's conflicting worlds are legendarily complex, but the emotions that motivate their actions—love, fear, guilt, longing—are surprisingly uncomplicated.

Like many operas with troublesome plots, Die Frau ohne Schatten has fallen victim to efforts to obviate the disconnect between the opera's singular philosophical milieu and the sensibilities of modern listeners. The desire to entice audiences with musical pageants in which their own lives are reflected is a critical component in the effort to ensure opera's continued existence and expansion, but it is a mistake to attempt to force an opera like Die Frau ohne Schatten into a mold of so-called relevance. Place the action in Revolution-era France, Nazi Germany, Franco's Spain, or some post-apocalyptic No Man's Land, and Die Frau ohne Schatten is no more approachable than when set into the temporal limbo stipulated by the libretto. Not even in Elektra did Strauss create a sound world so meticulously as in Die Frau ohne Schatten, during the three acts of which virtually every tenet of Nineteenth-Century tonality is dismantled, rearranged, and reassembled in ways that link the traditions of Brahms and Bruckner with the new directions of Schönberg and Webern. In practical terms, there is no making a work dealing with a woman transformed from a gazelle by a man who is himself on the cusp of literally being petrified relevant to audiences young or old. Die Frau ohne Schatten is an opera that requires suspension of disbelief. Recorded during staged performances at Oper Graz, this recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten establishes a context for the opera that depends upon nothing but the responses that Strauss's music and Hofmannsthal's words provoke. Ultimately, fully grasping the meaning of the opera’s metaphorical pragmatism is not as important as understanding why Die Frau ohne Schatten can be so moving.

Having shown himself to be an astonishingly versatile conductor in previous Oper Frankfurt productions recorded by Oehms Classics, Sebastian Weigle affirms on these discs that he is a conductor of incredible significance. Conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten is a task at which even conductors acknowledged as great talents have failed. Conducted at its 1919 Vienna première by Strauss's colleague Franz Schalk, a noted advocate for music by Bruckner and Mahler and a founder of the Salzburger Festspiele, Die Frau ohne Schatten has accumulated a very short list of wholly successful interpreters in the subsequent century. Karl Böhm was the opera's great champion in the Twentieth Century, followed by Joseph Keilberth, Herbert von Karajan (who took the liberty of reordering scenes), Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Since the dawning of the new millennium, few conductors have vied for the Frau ohne Schatten laurels: Christian Thielemann has perhaps been the most visible contender, but Weigle's direction of this performance is equal to the very best of Thielemann's work. [As a point of reference for comparison, I cite Thielemann's conducting of a 2001 performance of Herbert Wernicke's production at the Metropolitan Opera, attended but not formally reviewed. All of Thielemann's MET appearances to date have been in Strauss operas: Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, and Die Frau ohne Schatten.] In this performance, magnificently recorded via the ‘Oper Frankfurt Recording System’ and produced by Christian Wilde, Weigle favors the lean textures characteristic of his work, but the grandeur of Strauss's orchestrations, composed for the most extravagant instrumental ensemble required for any of his operas, is ever apparent. The scene changes, music that can easily dissolve into cacophony, are handled with unerring attention to their harmonic progressions: Weigle imparts a sense of knowing where the music started and to where it leads. Strauss made supporting the singers a difficult undertaking, but Weigle ensures that orchestral textures uplift the principals. Both the Chor der Oper Frankfurt and the Frankurter Opern- und Museumsorchester achieve extraordinary heights of excellence in their performances of Strauss’s music, every section of the orchestra playing wonderfully. The grueling celesta and glockenspiel parts are executed with special virtuosity, and Weigle oversees the weaving of tonal tapestries that serve as stunningly colorful backdrops for Hofmannsthal’s drama. Conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten requires an unique skill set, but the attention to details of orchestral timbres, rhythmic precision, and cohesion between stage and pit that are invaluable in Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini scores are no less paramount in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Weigle is a renowned master of these qualities, and he shapes a clear-sighted, logically-paced performance that focuses on the incredible allure and emotional weight of the music rather than struggling in the quagmire of extrapolated interpretations.

​The first statements of the Keikobad motif, as momentous as the motif representing Agamemnon in Elektra, that raise the curtain bellow menacingly in this performance, focusing the listener's attention for the introduction of one of the production's greatest strengths, the Amme of German mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. Though the Amme is one of the most challenging rôles in the German repertory, she has often been entrusted to singers in the final phases of their careers: indeed, perhaps it is because of the incredible difficulty of the part that it has so often been sung by aging artists with nothing left to lose. Among recorded Ammen, only Irene Dalis, Mignon Dunn, and Ruth Hesse rival the histrionic intensity of Baumgartner's interpretation of the rôle, and neither they nor Elisabeth Höngen, Reinhild Runkel, and Hanna Schwarz sing the music more comfortably. Simply in terms of range and tessitura, it is a hellishly demanding rôle, essentially one for a lady with the range of a contralto, the sensibilities of a lyric mezzo-soprano, and the power and stamina of a dramatic soprano—in short, Erda, Carmen, and Isolde in a single throat. The Amme's first phrases following 'Licht über'm See - ein fließender Glanz' take her to top A♭, followed in short order by an exchange with the Geisterbote that, traversing the dramatically-vital phrase 'Er wird zu Stein,' descends first to low E♭ and then climbs two-and-a-half octaves to A on 'Er wird zu Stein!' Later, in her conversation with the Färberin, she is asked to unleash an explosive B♭♭ in 'Ach! Schönheit ohne Gleichen!' Baumgartner not only meets these demands with ease but manages to do so with absolute security and often revelatory beauty of tone. One delights in rather than dreading this Amme's lines. In Act Two, Baumgartner delivers 'Komm bald weider nach haus, mein Gebieter' with manipulative sweetness, followed by an account of 'Es sind Übermächte im Spiel, o meine Herrin' that exudes barely-concealed contempt. At the act's end, she unleashes a mighty 'Übermächte sind im Spiel! Herzu mir!' and brings down the unseen curtain with a top B♭ that charges the atmosphere like summer lightning. Catapulting to her demise in Act Three, this Amme is fearless, phrasing 'Fort von hier! Hilf mir vom Fels lösen den Kahn!' and 'Fort von der Schwelle, sie zu betreten, ist mehr als Tod' with unhesitant haughtiness that extends to her ringing top B♭. The same tone reverberates in her meteoric 'Fressendes Feuer in ihr Gebein!' Baumgartner indulges in none of the foolishness in when many Ammen mire their final moments. What need has she of melodramatics when she is capable of singing her music so idiomatically? Baumgartner is a hair-raising Amme not because there is constant fear of the voice unraveling but because she sings Strauss's music as written, eschewing the cawing and cackling that have become typical in the part. Simply put, she sets a new, drastically elevated standard for recorded Ammen.

American soprano Brenda Rae, the delightfully full-toned Zerbinetta in Oper Frankfurt's 2013 Ariadne auf Naxos, also conducted by Weigle and recorded by Oehms Classics, is an atypically glamorous Falkenstimme and Hüter der Schwelle des Tempels. The historical precedents for such luxurious casting of the Falkenstimme—the very young Christa Ludwig for Hessischen Rundfunks, Lucia Popp in Vienna, and Linda Roark-Strummer in San Francisco—are splendidly upheld by Rae’s glistening singing of 'Wie soll ich denn nicht weinen?' in Act One and 'Die Frau wirft keinen Schatten, der Kaiser ​muß versteinen!' in Act Two. She is no less persuasive as the Hüter der Schwelle des Tempels. Franz Mayer, Björn Bürger, and Hans-Jürgen Lazar cannot hope to match Rae’s vocal resplendence as Barak’s one-eyed, one-armed, and hunchbacked brothers, but they sing characterfully. Bürger and Mayer are joined by Dietrich Volle, the granite-voiced Geisterbote, in a lovely performance of the city watch’s 'Ihr Gatten in den Häusern dieser Stadt.'Katharina Magiera delivers the Stimme von oben’s 'Auf, geh nach oben, Mann, der Weg ist frei' authoritatively, and the ensemble of Dienerinnen—Birgit Treschau, Alketa Hoxha, Yvonne Hettegger, Young Sook Kim, and Hiromi Mori—make easy going of their high-flying music. Likewise, the well-integrated ensemble of Kinderstimmen—Bock-Sill Kim, Camelia Suzana Peteu, Gunda Boote, Jianhau Zhu, and Christiane Maria Waschk—might stir the maternal instincts of the most reluctant mother with their rendition of 'Mutter, Mutter, laß uns nach hause!'

Singing the one-dimensional Kaiser [in many performances, he might well be stone from the start], tenor Burkhard Fritz works hard in a rôle in which mere survival is admirable. The assertion that Strauss detested the tenor voice persists even in academic circles, and his music for the Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten is not an inappropriate example to present in defense of the allegation. The Kaiser has daunting episodes in each of the opera’s three acts, beginning in Act One with 'Amme! Wachst du?' This is music that has defeated a number of otherwise capable singers, but Fritz sings strongly, manfully weathering the problematic tessitura. He sings with audible tenderness as the Kaiser describes his first encounter with the Kaiserin. Notes at the top of the compass are not ideally projected, but Fritz sings the rôle without compromises. His performance in Act Two is a model of dramatic fortitude, the sentiments of the text expressed with imagination that takes flight on the wings of Strauss’s music. His accounts of 'Falke, Falke, du wiedergefundener' and the harrowing 'O weh, Falke, o weh!' are spellbinding. In Act Three, Fritz voices 'Wenn das Herz aus Kristall zerbricht in einem Schrei' forcefully but with elasticity of line. Like Baumgartner, Fritz sings rather than shouting his music, and the benefits to both Strauss and Hofmannsthal are phenomenal.

For the latter half of the Twentieth Century, one name was synonymous with the Kaiserin in the minds and affections of many admirers of Die Frau ohne Schatten: Leonie Rysanek. Recording the rôle for DECCA under Karl Böhm’s direction in 1955 and portraying the Kaiserin in staged productions in Europe and America, including in the score’s Metropolitan Opera première in 1966, the Viennese soprano quite simply was the Kaiserin for generations of listeners. The marvels of Rysanek’s vocal endowment notwithstanding, her enduring dominance in the Kaiserin’s music was due in part to the paucity of singers capable of rivaling her level of excellence in the rôle. Oper Frankfurt found in American soprano Tamara Wilson a Kaiserin to uphold and enrich the Rysanek legacy with singing of superb immediacy and tonal attractiveness superior even to what her great Austrian predecessor offered. At her first entrance in Act One, the girlishness of Wilson's singing is arresting, her management of the trill and top A♭s and B♭s in the bars following 'Ist mein Liebster dahin' allied with a slightly self-conscious naïveté. Then, though, Wilson's staccato D6 dispels any suspicion that this is going to be a shrinking violet Kaiserin. Wilson launches the top B on 'Er hat uns vergeben' with brilliance, but even this is scant preparation for the potency of her ascent to top B♭ on 'Amme, um alles, wo find ich den Schatten!' and the massive top C on 'Der Kaiser muß versteinen!' Heard in the scene with the Färberin, Wilson's voice radiates poise and purity up to the shining top B in 'Willst du um dies Spiegelbild nicht den hohlen Schatten geben?' In Act Two, this Kaiserin's conflicting emotions subject her to debilitating inner turmoil that the singer expresses devastatingly in 'Weh! Muß dies geschehen vor meinen Augen?' and 'Ach! Wehe! Daß sie sich treffen müßen' without upsetting the balance of the voice or the admirable security of her top C. She proves a first-rate singing actress in the act's third scene, limning the eloquent feelings of 'Es gibt deren, die haben immer Zeit' with subtlety and detonating another awe-inspiring top C on 'Ach! Weh mir, wohin!' The sheer beauty of the soprano's voicing of 'Vor solchen Blicken liegen Cherubim auf ihrem Angesicht!' is breathtaking, the ascent to top B♭ again achieved seemingly without effort. Wilson's singing of 'Ihm keine Hilfe, dem andern Verderben!' is nothing short of exquisite: her gleaming top D♭ alone is a mesmerizing reason to hear and treasure this recording. Her spoken passage in Act Three discloses a comfort with Hofmannsthal's German, but it is Wilson's comfort with Strauss's music throughout the performance that renders her Kaiserin a magnificent portrayal. Few are the singers past or present who have equaled Rysanek in any of her best rôles, but Wilson here establishes herself as the new paragon in the Kaiserin's music.

Listeners familiar with the Die Frau ohne Schatten discography have been spoiled by the presence of Fritz Wunderlich as the Erscheinung des Jünglings​ in a 1964 Wiener Staatsoper broadcast performance conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Young tenor Michael Porter creates a golden-voiced charmer in the Wunderlich tradition with a rhapsodic voicing of 'Gäb' ich um dies Spiegelbild doch sie Seele und mein Leben!' in Act One. Returning in Act Two, he beguiles his listeners on stage and over the airwaves with 'Wer tut mir das, daß ich jäh muß stehen von meiner Herrin!' The Erscheinung des Jünglings is superfluous if he lacks fetchingly handsome tones to lure the Färberin into the Amme’s and Kaiserin’s bargain: Porter’s singing could tempt her into committing far direr sins.

The Färberin’s first note is a top B♭, immediately announcing that her part is destined to be a trial for even the most gifted dramatic soprano. In the course of this performance, German soprano Sabine Hogrefe verifies the legitimacy of her answering to that description. Sparring with her husband’s deformed brothers when she is first heard in Act One, the annoyance and frustration in Hogrefe’s singing of 'Schamlose ihr!' erupt from her voice, and the disillusionment of her voicing of 'O Welt in der Welt! O Traum im Wachen!' is epitomized by her grumbling descent to low F. Completing her circuitous journey thought Act One, Hogrefe soars to the top B♭ in 'Was winselt so gräßlich aus diesem Feuer?' with panache. The life-changing trajectory of Act Two draws from Hogrefe dazzling accounts of 'Ich weiß von keinem Manne außer ihm' and 'Meinen Pantoffel in dein Gesicht,' the sinewy brawn of her singing contrasting with the poetic wonder of her 'Es gibt derer, die bleiben immer gelassen.’ Lustrous tonal pulchritude is not always Hogrefe’s to command, but the unexpected beauty of the character she creates is tremendously affecting. In Act Three, Hogrefe unlooses a tide of anguish with 'Schweiget doch, ihr Stimmen!' that annihilates the Färberin’s former querulousness. Her recitation of 'Barak, mein Mann, o, daß du mich hörtest' is unspeakably poignant. The transformation that Hogrefe depicts in the opera’s final scene is jubilantly resolved in her singing of 'Trifft mich sein Lieben nicht.’ Sailing to the top C in unison with the Kaiserin, Hogrefe’s Färberin clearly finds complete fulfillment, not in the external sources to which she was dedicated in Act One but within herself and her love for her husband.

This production of Die Frau ohne Schatten served as the vehicle for Norwegian baritone Terje Stensvold's farewell to Oper Frankfurt, a company that witnessed many of the singer's greatest triumphs, including his Wotan in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Solely as a document of this occasion, this recording is valuable, but Stensvold, not an artist content to accept accolades without earning them, sings Barak with such grace and gravity that it is his performance rather than his reputation that garners appreciation. Often bringing the unforgettable late-career work of Hans Hotter to mind, Stensvold's vocalism is no longer wholly steady, but his intonation remains exact and his dramatic instincts unimpeded. The part's range strains him, but the Barak who sings effortlessly is likely not worth hearing. Though the vibrato has loosened, the timbre possesses a lovely russet patina that lends an appealing autumnal glow to the baritone's singing, apparent from his first notes in 'Hinaus mit euch!' The Cs, Ds, and E♭s that litter Barak's vocal lines are produced by Stensvold with heartening solidity and thrust. Barak's unassailable good humor is apparent in Stensvold's singing of 'Trag' ich die Ware mir selber zu Markt,' but the sadness of his unexaggerated 'Hörst du die Wächter, Kind, und ihren Ruf?' is wrenching. Stensvold condenses the whole panoply of Barak's emotions into two words with his weary but hopeful declamation of 'Sei's denn!' Stensvold devotes a veteran Wotan's world-weariness to his depiction of Barak's straits in Act Two, phrasing 'Was ist nun deine Rede' and especially 'Komm her, du stillgehende Muhme, da ist für dich!' with emotional directness and sincerity that tear at the heart. The feat that he brought off in Act One is repeated with his soul-searching utterance of 'Wer da?' in Act Two. The poetry of Stensvold's account of 'Mir anvertraut, daß ich sie hege, daß ich sie trage' in Act Three is complemented by the unfettered joy of his singing of 'Steh nur, ich finde dich' in the opera's final scene, his top Fs and Gs demonstrative of Barak's exultation at being reunited with his beloved wife. In an era in which emerging singers are often assigned rôles for which their voices and techniques are not ready merely because their faces will appear youthfully appealing to audiences, Stensvold's Barak—and his career as a whole, for that matter—should be a model to be studied. In this performance, the voice does not function as flawlessly as it did a decade ago, but this is a Barak who shirks nothing. In reality, Stensvold gets right at the heart of the character and why Die Frau ohne Schatten is so touching: love is as imperfect as the people who feel it but also more perfect in its abilities to heal and bind even perilously-injured hearts than the astounding symmetry of nature.

Die Frau ohne Schatten is a journey. The peculiar marvel of the opera is that, from an interpretive perspective, the points at which it begins and ends are different for every artist who performs it and every listener who hears it. Under Sebastian Weigle’s baton, Oper Frankfurt’s Die Frau ohne Schatten begins with discord and ends with harmony. Between these states, a performance of staggering eloquence is consummated by a group of artists for whom Strauss’s music and Hofmannsthal’s words are not esoteric symbols but components of the collective human experience that any individual with the gift of hearing can appreciate.

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo—Sandra Piques Eddy (Angelina), Andrew Owens (Don Ramiro), Sidney Outlaw (Dandini), Donald Hartmann (Don Magnifico), Timothy Jones (Alidoro), Julie Celona-VanGorden (Clorinda), Clara O’Brien (Tisbe); Chorus and Orchestra of Greensboro Opera; Willie Anthony Waters, conductor [David Holley, Director; James Bumgardner, Chorus Master; Anna Geer, Stage Manager; Costumes by Malabar; Wigs by Trent Pcenicni; Make-up by Deborah Bell; Sets by Tony Fanning; Lighting Designs by Jeff Neubauer; Greensboro Opera, Aycock Auditorium, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina; Friday, 28 August 2015]

For reasons that often defy easy explication, some stories capture the imaginations of legions of people with little more in common than shared humanity. By the time that Giambattista Basile and Charles Perrault gave first Italy and then France written versions of her saga in the Seventeenth Century, poor Cinderella's strife had likely already been winning hearts for generations. Responding to the philosophical sensibilities of his time, Perrault made an irrepressible self-reliance and a worldliness born of both experience and intellectual curiosity central to the character of his Cendrillon. A bit more than a century later, when Jacopo Ferretti wrote his libretto for Gioachino Rossini's 1817 opera La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo, the long-suffering girl's resilience remained the pillar upon which her tribulations and triumphs were balanced. Rossini almost surely had a softer heart than he was inclined to show to his contemporaries, but there is no doubt that he lavished his every sigh and adoring smile on his Cenerentola. Clichéd damsels in distress are frequent guests on the operatic stage and are often forgettable, but Rossini’s Angelina possesses the potential to transcend the limitations of a droopy-eyed maiden whose troubles are sorted out in pretty tunes. Geltrude Righetti-Giorgi, Rossini’s first Angelina, also created the rôle of Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1816, but little contemporary comment on her Cinderella survives. Was it some euphonious quality of her Rosina shape Rossini’s depiction of Cenerentola? What did Rossini see in Cenerentola that inspired him to make his operatic incarnation of her so engaging? The musical Poet of Pesaro left few accounts of his compositional process, but the emotional atmosphere of La Cenerentola speaks for itself. If presented with a modicum of sincerity tempering the comedy, La Cenerentola can be one of those stories that refuse to relinquish their places in audiences’ memories. Greensboro Opera’s La Cenerentola was just such a presentation: drawing from Rossini’s music every laugh, wink, and furtive plaint with which the composer infused his incandescently bittersweet score, this production was like a favorite bedtime story read by a cherished voice that forever sounds in the heart.

Those who debate the ways in which opera should and should not be staged in order to ensure its survival would do well to spend less time spouting rhetoric and dedicate themselves to observing what Artistic Director David Holley is achieving at Greensboro Opera, both administratively and directorially. It seems abundantly logical that a fine singer should have an intuitive talent for directing opera, but this logic is trusted by far too few opera companies, especially those with the greatest resources to expend—and, in many cases, waste—on extravagant spectacles devised by directors with little [or no] knowledge of opera. Without in any way lessening appreciation for Holley's efforts, it is disheartening to be compelled to assert that focusing on faithfully executing a composer's score and fostering performances that are enjoyable for artists and audiences—the realm in which Holley is most successful—should be the cornerstones of any opera company's endeavors. At the helm of Greensboro Opera's Cenerentola, Holley assembled a team of artists and artisans whose common goal was making Rossini's music the centerpiece of a thriving, thrilling theatrical experience. Rossini’s two acts were divided into three: taking an interval before Angelina’s arrival at the ball was sensible, but breaking after Dandini’s and Magnifico’s duet impacted the opera’s dramatic flow. [For this review, musical numbers are referenced as they appear in Rossini’s original two-act scheme.] Holley’s directorial judgment is clearly influenced by his own acclaimed work as a tenor, but the intelligence of his staging of Cenerentola was notable by any standard. There was an obvious reason for every action and reaction: the singers were not aimlessly ambling about the stage but were watching, listening, and responding to one another. The comedy was broad but not nonsensical, owing both to Holley's concept, in which the scene at the prince’s ball gave new meaning to playing with one’s food, and to the cast's uniformly skillful acting. Described by Rossini as a dramma giocoso, a designation shared with Mozart's Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, Cenerentola is neither a farce nor an opera seria disguised in buffa garb. In this performance, Holley's direction enabled the Bontà in trionfo specification of the opera's full title to be enthusiastically fulfilled without indulging in didactic moralizing.

‘Kleider machen Leute,’ wrote Gottfried Keller, and M​alabar​’s sumptuous costumes lent the singers in Greensboro Opera's production credence in every social station they were meant to portray. Characters were sufficiently contrasted to make them immediately discernible even when identities were being swapped, and the Eighteenth-Century ‘shabby chic' of the residents of Casa Magnifico was achieved without seeming to interfere with the task of singing. Angelina's exodus from rags to riches was limned with insightful use of color, the earthy blues of her peasant frock giving way first to her robin's-egg dress at the ball and finally to the snowy brilliance of the bow-bedecked gown in which she became the princess consort. Trent Pcenicni’s wigs and Deborah Bell’s make-up were delectable: with Clorinda and Tisbe paragons of snobbery, Don Magnifico a fop straight out of a Hogarth engraving, Angelina a vision of glamor even in tatters, and Don Ramiro and his court evocative of storybook chivalry, Rossini’s comedy came gloriously to life. The delicate floral motifs of Tony Fanning’s lovely scenery were complemented by Jeff Neubauer’s flattering lighting. Everything on stage looked as one expects La Cenerentola to look, which is to say that Greensboro Opera offered a physical setting for the production that honored Rossini’s and Ferretti’s brainchild.

So familiar are their melodies and infectiously high-spirited are their celebrated crescendi that Rossini's operas often seem to virtually conduct themselves. Still, more Rossini performances than anyone might care to acknowledge are mutated into musical travesties by poor conducting. Miami native Willie Anthony Waters was this Cenerentola's ace in the hole. Artistic Director and principal conductor of Connecticut Opera, a deservedly-lamented casualty of the recent Great Recession, and a much-admired pedagogue whose work with Martina Arroyo's Prelude to Performance program is incalculably significant in the quest for the survival of opera in the United States, Waters presided over the musical components of this performance with the complementary humor and seriousness of a man encountering a beloved old friend known to make mischief if left unsupervised. From the first bars of the opera's Overture, borrowed pursuant to Rossini's usual custom from the earlier La gazzetta, Waters exhibited an unmistakable affinity for extracting the bel canto elegance from even the zaniest passages. Rossini's score was in expert hands under Waters's baton, his clever management of Rossini's trademark crescendi distinguishing his work as that of a natural Rossinian. The personnel of the Greensboro Opera Chorus and Orchestra, the former ensemble trained by Chorus Master James Bumgardner, benefited from the conductor's no-nonsense style: his firm beat and masterful cuing both indicated what he wanted and provided the musicians and singers with tools needed to meet his goals. Instances of clarity and precision of ensemble falling victim to opening-night jitters were laudably few aside from some squeaks and squawks from the woodwinds at the start of the Overture and a handful of passages in which coordination between stage and pit was imperiled, and choristers and instrumentalists found in Waters an ally and a catalyst. The gentlemen of the chorus made an especially robust showing. In the Vivace of the ensemble that ends the composer’s Act One​, Rossini's madcap energy electrified the theatre without blowing any fuses. The Temporale in Rossini’s Act Two [Greensboro Opera’s Act Three] was wonderfully animated, but the pinnacle of Waters's performance was the Maestoso in the ingenious Sextet. Waters here maneuvered the intertwining voices with the certain grasp of an accomplished weaver. Witnessing his wholly organic pacing of La Cenerentola made Waters's absence from the podia of a number of America's best opera companies all the more unconscionable: when the products of a musical brand as reliably top-quality as Waters's conducting are not being made available to consumers, who is minding the store?

Sorelle [not so] simpatiche: Soprano Julie Celona-VanGorden as Clorinda (left) and mezzo-soprano Clara O’Brien as Tisbe (right) in Greensboro Opera's production of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

From her first 'No, no, no, no: non v'è, non v'è chi trinciar sappia così leggerissimo sciassè,' in Act One, lyric coloratura soprano Julie Celona-VanGorden was a Clorinda of crystalline high notes and even higher spirits. A member of the faculty of Elon University's School of Music, she filled the top line in ensembles with sparkling tone that retained its slightly tart presence up to her bell-like top B. She delivered the sustained top As in Rossini’s Act One finale with effortless aplomb. Clorinda's aria 'Sventurata! sventurata, sventurata! mi credea comandar seduta in trono' is the work of Luca Agolini, to whom Rossini entrusted composition of the secco recitatives in Cenerentola and is admittedly not even first-rate Agolini, but the fluency of Celona-VanGorden's singing made its omission regrettable. Her partner in the crime of tormenting Angelina was sung and acted to perfection by mezzo-soprano Clara O'Brien, an esteemed professor on the UNCG Voice faculty and, in the context of this performance, as satisfying a Tisbe as one might hope to hear. Answering Clorinda's opening tirade with her own 'Sì, sì, sì, sì: va bene lì,' O'Brien was the model of impeccably-sung sisterly contradiction. Like Celona-VanGorden, she contributed attractive, ably-projected tone to ensembles and created a character whose moments of spite were products of insecurity—lovable quirks rather than aspects of an unpleasant nature. Both Celona-VanGorden and O’Brien embraced the jocose spirit of the production without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. Most importantly, they were wholly at ease with Rossini’s music.

Alla testa della classe: Bass-baritone Timothy Jones as Alidoro (center) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

B​ass-baritone Timothy Jones​ created an Alidoro that any hero and heroine with obstacles complicating their courtship would want in their corner. Epitomizing what Shakespeare dubbed the 'lean and hungry look' in Alidoro’s first appearance as a beggar in Act One, Jones exuded the tranquil dignity of a man on a righteous mission. His singing of 'Un tantin di carità' suggested the rattle of bones starved of their flesh. When Alidoro returned in his guise as Ramiro's moral and philosophical compass, Jones declaimed 'Qui nel mio codice delle zitelle, con Don Magnifico stan tre sorelle' with the piercing authority of Verdi's Grand Inquisitor. Laudably, Rossini's 1821 aria 'Là del ciel nell'arcano profondo' was preferred to the aria by Agolini that was sung in the 1817 première, and the performance that it received from Jones was a wonder of expansive phrasing and even tone. Jones's sharp diction enlivened recitatives, and he presided over the scenes in which he appeared like a puppet maker lovingly manipulating his beloved creations, all while singing splendidly. A few pitches in recitatives were suspect, especially in his exchange with Clorinda and Tisbe just before the opera's finale, but his performance as a whole was suave and stylish.

Padre e figlia: Bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Don Magnifico (left) and mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy as Angelina (right) in Greensboro Opera's production of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

Is it possible that his students in UNCG's School of Music, Theatre, and Dance are fully cognizant of the treasure that they have before them in bass-baritone Donald Hartmann's tutelage? It is one thing to lecture effectively on fine points of operatic interpretation, but this performer's characterizations are invaluable lessons in the art of combining unflappable musicality with an adroitness upon the stage that can be observed and thus honed but only very rarely taught to those who do not possess it. Hartmann is a consummate charmer who can make slapstick comedy seem like the very definition of sophistication, and Greensboro Opera's Cenerentola gave him opportunities to impress with both buffoonery and heartwarming sincerity. Hartmann’s singing of Magnifico’s aria 'Miei rampolli, miei rampolli femminini' fizzed with vocal wizardry and uproarious bafflement. The singer’s comic timing, reminiscent of Red Skelton at his best, was a marvel throughout the performance, but there was a frivolity that seemed to surprise even him in his assertion that the third daughter attributed to Don Magnifico in the prince's registry was dead. As with Norina's browbeating of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, this can be a sudden, disquieting indication of the game having been carried too far, but the moment in this performance was primarily an egregious affront to Angelina’s dignity. In the subsequent quintet, Hartmann skipped through 'Nel volto estatico di questo e quello si legge il vortice del lor cervello' with the cluelessness of a man with just enough gumption about him to be slightly dangerous. Porky Pig would have been proud of Hartmann's sputtering 'Signor...Altezza, in tavola, signor...Altezza, in tavola...che...co...chi...sì' in what Rossini positioned as the Act One finale: one almost expected him to reappear after the number’s close to say, ‘That's all, folks!' Hartmann voiced Magnifico’s aria 'Sia qualunque delle figlie' with aptly absurd pomposity conveyed by his raven-hued timbre. Propelled by Hartmann’s singing of 'Senza batter, senza battere le ciglia,' the duet with Dandini was a grand slam in a game filled with home runs. The softening of Magnifico’s demeanor in the opera’s final scene was in this performance less a begrudging surrender than a return to the sort of man he perhaps was before loss of fortune and life partner metamorphosed him into an embittered father struggling with feisty daughters. Hartmann phrased 'Alfine, alfine sul bracciale ecco, ecco il pallon tornò' with breathless excitement, but his jocularity faded as rapidly as his acknowledged daughters’ prospects for making princely matches. His ultimate acceptance of Angelina as his daughter and savior was poignant. Hartmann is the kind of performer who immeasurably enriches the offerings of regional opera companies, and he confirmed anew with his Don Magnifico for Greensboro Opera that his flair for comedic bel canto is major-league-worthy.

Il Principe ed il suo valletto: Baritone Sidney Outlaw as Dandini (left) and tenor Andrew Owens as Don Ramiro (right) in Greensboro Opera's production of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

With a voice like that of baritone Sidney Outlaw having emerged from its environs, it is hardly surprising that the town of Brevard should have become a Mecca of musical life in North Carolina and the Southeastern United States. Having already amassed a repertory spanning three centuries of opera’s history, Outlaw has excelled in parts as diverse as Ariodate in Händel’s Serse, Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Rambo in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer and the title rôle in Anthony Davis’s X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X. His Dandini for Greensboro Opera revealed that his abilities include plucky instincts for Rossinian comedy. Of course, the best histrionic intentions are of little importance if the voice is not equally refined, but Outlaw’s first notes withered this concern like Dandini’s deflated pride. Singing the cavatina 'Come un' ape ne' giorni d'aprille va volando leggiera e scherzosa' with unctuous self-approbation, discharging top F​s like firecrackers, the baritone sauntered through Act One like a great sprinter entering the home stretch without a competitor in sight. It is doubtful that any gentleman upon the operatic stage has ever sported rouge and metallic eye shadow more dashingly. Outlaw uttered ‘Sotto voce a mezzo tono’ as though plotting to infiltrate Fort Knox and then unleashed a torrent of spot-on coloratura in the duet with Ramiro. He and Hartmann squabbled and swashbuckled through Dandini’s and Magnifico’s Act Two duet [the Act Two finale in Greensboro Opera’s production], 'Un segreto d'importanza,' Outlaw matching his colleague roulade for flawlessly-executed roulade. Outlaw’s blazing coloratura in the Sextet brilliantly imparted Dandini’s rôle as the fulcrum upon which the drama pivots. Perhaps the greatest flaw of Ferretti’s libretto and Rossini’s score is the manner in which, like Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma, Dandini’s part in the drama seems unresolved. He has nothing to do in the opera’s final scene but stand by, looking on, but Outlaw managed to make even his character’s inactivity interesting. Musically and dramatically, Outlaw’s Dandini was a sidekick who scored many of the performance’s most spectacular runs.

Do di petto: Tenor Andrew Owens as Don Ramiro in Greensboro Opera's production of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

Looking athletic enough to have hoisted the broken-down carriage that serendipitously landed him on Don Magnifico's doorstep onto his shoulders, tenor Andrew Owens was a debonair Don Ramiro who in affairs of the heart was disinclined to accept anything but unconditional victory. A recent recipient of an Encouragement Award in the prestigious George London Foundation Competition and winner of the Zarzuela Prize in the 2015 Francisco Viñ​as International Singing Competition, Owens is a young artist whose presence on the international circuit is rising faster than the tessitura of Ramiro's music. Unlike some of his colleagues in today's parade of pretty-boy tenors, Owens can deliver the vocal goods, and he delivered capitally in Greensboro's Cenerentola. The quality of the voice was immediately apparent as he sang 'Tutto è deserto,' the flourish to top A♯ managed with boyish nonchalance. The tenor's piano singing upon encountering Angelina was often exquisite and projected so that even his quietest whisper of adoration was audible. Owens's 'Una soave non so che in quegl'occhi scintillò' was a lovesick sigh, and his wide-eyed ebullience and satiny timbre made the duet with Angelina a profound joy, the coloratura in unison with his future bride inspiring this Ramiro to dulcet rhapsodizing. In the duet with Dandini, Owens and Outlaw were like a patter-spouting Laurel and Hardy, Owens voicing 'Zitto, zitto: piano, piano' as though the words were occurring to him on the spot. In the incredibly demanding scene in which Ramiro resolves to locate the unknown girl who has stolen his heart, he articulated 'Ah! questa bella incognita, con quella somiglianza all'infelice' with aristocratic grace before launching 'Sì, ritrovarla io giuro' with stirring energy, his negotiations of the top Cs almost ridiculously easy. His voice glowed in the Andantino 'Pegno adorato e caro che mi lusinghi almeno,' but it was his account of 'Dolce speranza, freddo timore dentro al mio core stanno a pugnar' that galvanized. In addition to knocking the two further written top Cs out of the park, he not only added a third at the aria's close but punctuated the passage between stanzas of the aria with a shining top D, as well. Reunited with Angelina and defending her from her stepfather's abuse, this Ramiro had the vocal muscle to make good on his promises of justice for his betrothed's persecutors. After all, when one swears to have vengeance with an upper register as exhilarating as Owens's, who could doubt the sincerity of the sentiment? Caressing his melodic lines and proudly presenting his new bride to his friends and courtiers, he was the rare Ramiro who was noticed in the opera's final scene. Throughout the performance, Owens was a prince who looked, behaved, and sounded like one.

La bontà in trionfo: Tenor Andrew Owens as Don Ramiro (left) and mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy as Angelina (right) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, August 2015 [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

By turns dainty, demure, and delightfully indomitable, the Angelina of Sandra Piques Eddy was a grab-the-bull-by-the-horns lass who was not content to languish in squalid obscurity in tranquil anticipation of her prince. Sure, her ​'Una volta c'era un re'​ was touchingly despondent, but this was no Annie-esque, 'the sun will come out tomorrow' Cenerentola: this was a Mama Cass-style, 'make your own kind of music' dynamo with dreams that she meant to fulfill.​ Offering alms to Alidoro masquerading as a beggar while fending off her stepsisters’ verbal barbs, this Angelina’s sympathetic heart was obvious from the start. When Ramiro unexpectedly appeared in her stepfather’s crumbling house, Eddy figuratively dug her heels into 'Io vorrei saper perchè il mio cor mi palpitò,' unmistakably portraying Angelina’s sudden recognition of her infatuation with the disguised Ramiro as love and plummeting blissfully to her low B in the subsequent duet with Ramiro​. Her shy reluctance to embrace her newly-found swain was heartwarming, the singer wholly embodying the fiery young girl whose deplorable but stable world has been disquieted by unfamiliar feelings. Phrasing 'Sprezzo quei don che versa fortuna capricciosa' in Rossini’s Act One finale with panache, she traded top B♭​s with Ramiro in passagework as though it were as natural as breathing, and she and all of her colleagues joined in the food fight with childlike glee. The reprise of 'Una volta c'era un re' was tinged with expectancy of future happiness, and Eddy’s face beamed more brightly than the sparkle of her bejeweled bracelet when her prince found her. In the opera’s final scene, she voiced the Andantino 'Ah! signor, s'è ver che in petto qualche amor per me serbate'​ movingly, and she injected the Andante 'Nacqui all'affanno e al pianto' with vocal and charismatic warmth. In the celebrated rondò, 'Non più​ mesta accanto al fuoco starò​ sola a gorgheggiar, no,' Eddy’s commendable efforts at trills fell short, and her top B was uncomfortable. Her ornaments, though basically stylish, seemed formulated principally to simplify rather than to enhance Rossini’s bravura writing. Still, her performance was invigorating. As both a singer and an actress, Eddy fully deserved the tiara—borne, in a precious detail of Holley’s staging, by the mezzo-soprano’s daughter Beatrice—with which she was crowned.

La Cenerentola is not a complicated opera. Almost without exception, efforts to make La Cenerentola an ostensibly pertinent piece in the modern sense have resulted in productions that rob the opera of the simple pleasures with which Rossini suffused it. The ingredients required to prepare an effective Cenerentola are sympathetic conducting, virtuosic singing, and a staging in which these elements are allowed to fuse uninhibitedly. Greensboro Opera’s production of La Cenerentola provided all of these facets in abundance, and the resulting performance shone with the twinkle of Rossini’s genius, illuminated by a septet of outstanding American voices and one of America’s most gifted conductors.

In un nodo di perplessità: Mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy as Angelina (left), tenor Andrew Owens as Don Ramiro (center), and baritone Sidney Outlaw as Dandini (right), with (from left to right) soprano Julie Celona-VanGorden as Clorinda, mezzo-soprano Clara O’Brien as Tisbe, and bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Don Magnifico visible at the rear, in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola [Photo © by Artisan Images/David Wilson, used with permission]

FRANCESCO BIANCHI (1752 – 1810), LUIGI CHERUBINI (1760 – 1842), DOMENICO CIMAROSA (1749 – 1801), JOHANN SIMON MAYR (1763 – 1845), JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK (1737 – 1781), GAETANO PUGNANI (1731 – 1798), GIUSEPPE SARTI (1729 – 1802), and NICCOLÒ ANTONIO ZINGARELLI (1752 – 1837): Arias for Luigi Marchesi– The Great Castrato of the Napoleonic Era—Ann Hallenberg, mezzo-soprano; Francesca Cassinari, soprano; Stile Galante; Stefano Aresi, conductor [Recorded in Sala Piatti, Bergamo, Italy, 5 – 9 April 2015; Glossa GCD 923505; 1 CD, 71:45; Available from Glossa, ClassicsOnlineHD, fnac (France), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

If, a popular conceit being accepted as a valid analogy, castrati were the Rock stars of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Luigi Marchesi was surely the Mick Jagger of his time. Born in Milan twenty-four years before the 1778 inauguration of Teatro alla Scala established his native city as an epicenter on the operatic fault line spanning continental Europe, Marchesi’s 1773 operatic début in Rome was the foreshock of a career of seismic proportions that would rattle theatres from London to St. Petersburg for four decades. Discovered in Munich and influentially advocated in Naples by 'the Czech Mozart,' Josef Mysliveček, Marchesi was not just a performer but a personality whose life of excess and extravagance is reported to have occasionally come near to spiraling out of control. Like Mick Jagger in the turbulent environment of the 1960s and '70s, Marchesi was likely subject during the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century and the first decade of the Nineteenth to public perception founded equally upon fact and hype. Partisans of a rival singer may or may not have actually attempted to poison him, but the preponderance of evidence existing in the music composed for him affirms that the assertion that Marchesi possessed a voice extraordinary both in range and in technical acumen is anything but apocryphal. An offspring of an unprecedented initiative to collect, interpret, and preserve primary- and secondary-source materials related to the castrato's life, career, and lingering cultural footprint, Glossa's Arias for Luigi Marchesi unites mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg, period-instrument ensemble Stile Galante, and conductor Stefano Aresi in a recital of diverse arias composed for Marchesi and painstakingly prepared for modern performance by Holger Schmitt-Hallenberg. Intersections of song and scholarship do not always engender ingratiating music-making, but the collaborations that conceived Arias for Luigi Marchesi have succeeded in giving life to a truly phenomenal recording.

If contemporary accounts of him are to be believed, Marchesi was a temperamental man who enjoyed the attentions of virtually every lady of culture with whom he came into contact, owing not only to a castrato's relative 'safety' as an amorous partner but, even more magnetically, to what was deemed in the Eighteenth Century an exceptional handsomeness among singers of his artificially-altered condition. It is not unexpected that composers should have been eager to capitalize on the commercial viability of Marchesi's unique talents. Within a few years of conquering Munich in Mysliveček's Ezio in 1777, Marchesi had charmed audiences—if not his on-stage colleagues, it seems—throughout Italy. Though early successes prior to his Munich breakthrough were in comic rôles, it was primarily as a tragedian that Marchesi excelled, and it is music for some of his finest dramatic parts that forms the foundation of this disc.

Upon that ingeniously-laid foundation, it is the voice of Ann Hallenberg that constructs the magnificently ornate Rococo edifice of Arias for Luigi Marchesi. The artistry of the Swedish mezzo-soprano is a study in contrasts, her blinding virtuosity combining with voluptuousness of timbre rare for a singer with such a​n​ astounding bravura technique. She can shake the pillars of Rome as Monteverdi's Ottavia, silence the din of ​revolt​ as Händel's​ Siroe​, out-bloom the hanging gardens of Babylon as Rossini's Arsace, and find the heart of music by Mahler as though she wrote it herself. In this disc's program of arias specially-crafted for Luigi Marchesi's singular capabilities, Hallenberg accomplishes the difficult feat of making this music entirely her own. It is not only because much of this music has here been recorded for the first time that it is virtually impossible to imagine these pieces being sung by any other voice. Hallenberg does not endeavor to 'become' Marchesi in some misguided Stanislavskian sense but quite simply lives this music. This level of submersion in music is rare even in the suspended reality of opera: Melchior's Lohengrin, Flagstad's Isolde, Mödl's Brünnhilde, Albanese's Cio-Cio San, Callas's Violetta, and Sills's Manon are models of definitive interpretations to the ranks of which Hallenberg's accounts of the arias on this disc must be added.

Credited, not least in Mozart's correspondence with his father, with having played a significant rôle in the development of Marchesi’s career, Prague-born composer Josef Mysliveček was exponentially more important to opera in the Eighteenth Century than his renown in the Twenty-First suggests. There are indications that modern esteem for Mysliveček's work is gradually increasing: performances and recordings of his music in recent years have shifted focus from consideration of the composer as a craftsman in Mozart's shadow to appreciation of his pioneering genius. Several notable recordings of his music and an acclaimed production of his opera Motezuma have recently restored Mysliveček's name to wider circulation. The composer's interaction with Marchesi is represented on this disc by Megacle's aria 'Se cerca, se dice «L'amico dov'è?»' from L'Olimpiade, a setting of one of Pietro Metastasio's most popular libretti—two further settings are also sampled on Arias for Luigi Marchesi. The aria receives from Hallenberg one of the loveliest performances on the disc, her hypnotic singing seconded by the superbly stylish playing of Stile Galante. Created with the specific mission of performing music of this vintage as it is likely to have been played when new, the ensemble's sound can be entrancingly intimate and as richly-textured as the playing of orchestras with twice as many musicians in their ranks. So thoroughly prepared is Aresi's direction that he seems almost to anticipate Hallenberg's every breath without sacrificing the excitement of spontaneity. Mysliveček's cosmopolitan, gallant idiom both resembles the styles of contemporaries like Dittersdorf, Joseph and Michael Haydn, and Salieri and prefigures works of Mozart's maturity. Hallenberg traverses the dramatic landscape of 'Se cerca, se dice' with broad strides, the solidity of her tone making the​ anguish​ of the text all the more telling. Musically, Hallenberg sings the aria with absolute proficiency.

Giuseppe Sarti's Giulio Sabino was one of the foremost operatic 'hits' of the second half of the Eighteenth Century​; so much so, in fact, that it was the object of Salieri's ​mostly good-natured parody in his Prima la musica e poi le parole. This and Mozart’s use of a melody from Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode in the banquet scene in Don Giovanni secured Sarti’s place among the footnotes of musical history, but, like Mysliveček, his significance during his lifetime suggests that Sarti deserves greater prominence among Twenty-First-Century evaluations of Eighteenth-Century opera. Hallenberg focuses her inquisitiveness on Sarti’s work with fantastic performances of three well-crafted arias. She opens her recital with Rinaldo’s ‘Vedo l'abisso orrendo onde ritrassi il piede’ from Sarti’s 1786 Armida e Rinaldo, first performed at the Hermitage during Marchesi’s tenure in St. Petersburg. Employing Marchesi’s own ornaments, Hallenberg gives a dazzling account of the piece, negotiating the demanding divisions with poise. No less impressive is her voicing of ‘Lungi da te, ben mio, se viver non poss'io’ from the same opera, a cornerstone in Marchesi’s repertory, in which she utilizes ornaments devised by the castrato’s pupil Angelica Catalani and a cadenza by Domenico Corri. Megacle’s aria ‘Rendi, oh cara, il prence amato a quest'alma, al mio dolor’ from Sarti’s L'Olimpiade, first heard in Florence in 1778 and revised for Rome five years later, is the finest of the Sarti arias on this disc, and Hallenberg sings it handsomely. Marchesi's embellishments are here—and elsewhere, frankly—too much of a good thing. There is no doubt that, even among the most celebrated exponents of his Fach, Marchesi possessed a stupendous technique, one that he was evidently eager to show off. His ornaments, though undeniably clever, often distract from the greatest strength of Hallenberg’s singing, its uncommon beauty. Her own technique enables her to manage every maneuver in Marchesi’s playbook, every roulade and interval within the nearly-three-octave compass of this music, with élan that would surely have impressed the great castrato, but, as recorded, the unfettered pyrotechnical exhibitions sometimes overshadow the better qualities of both the music and the singer.

​​The Naples-born Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli shared with Marchesi a distaste for Napoleon that was most memorably manifested during his service as maestro di cappella in the Sistine Chapel in his refusal to lead a musical celebration honoring Napoleon’s newborn son, proclaimed at his christening as the king of Rome. Ironically, Zingarelli was arrested for his refusal and transported to Paris, where Napoleon, an ardent admirer of his music, promptly freed him and even granted him a state pension. Despite devoting much of his career to liturgical positions, Zingarelli’s fame—a fame that numerous sources cite as having been sufficient to inspire Bellini to compose music for Zingarelli’s funeral upon his death in 1837, despite the fact that Bellini died in 1835, perhaps confusing the attribution of the Sinfonia funebre composed by Francesco Florimo, a pupil of Zingarelli, in response to Bellini’s death—relied primarily upon his prowess as a composer of opera. Premièred in 1791, Zingarelli’s Pirro, re di Epiro was espoused by Marchesi in Milan in 1792. The title rôle was obviously one that the castrato found especially congenial, having performed it in a further five Italian cities—and twice in Venice—between 1793 and 1798. Hallenberg is joined in her performances of excerpts from Pirro on this disc by soprano Francesca Cassinari, who voices Polissena’s lines with attractive tone and noble phrasing that make her an ideal partner for Hallenberg. Marchesi’s ornaments in the aria ‘Chi mi dà consiglio, aita, o mi squarcia in petto il cor?’ again shift attention from the incredible evenness of Hallenberg’s singing to her technical dexterity, but the radiance of her lyrical singing cannot be wholly obscured by Marchesi’s over-enthusiastic adornments. Hallenberg and Cassinari spellbindingly inhabit the rôles of Pirro and Polissena in the gripping scene ‘Qual mi sorprende e agghiaccia insolito terror!’ The ladies alternate lines in recitative with greater communicativeness than many singers achieve in live, staged performances. Then, Hallenberg delivers Pirro’s aria ’Cara, negl'occhi tuoi si pasce il mio desire​’ with such sincerity that the character’s words seem her own. The harmonic idiosyncrasies of Zingarelli’s music benefit immensely from the singer’s exact intonation.

Johann Simon Mayr is now remembered almost exclusively for having mentored Donizetti in the art of composing opera, but he was a gifted composer in his own right, one whose intuition for dramatic expression was powerfully reintroduced to modern listeners by the laser-voiced soprano Marisa Galvany in her too-little-known studio recording of his 1813 opera Medea in Corinto. First performed in 1798 at Venice's storied Teatro La Fenice, Mayr's Lauso e Lidia was one of the refined scores that bolstered the composer's reputation as a burgeoning master of bel canto. Composed only seven years after the première of Die Zauberflöte, Lauso's aria 'Oh qual contento, oh qual dolcezza' displays stylistic kinship with Mozart's mature vocal writing. Though she has been lauded for her portrayals of the title rôle in Ascanio in Alba, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, and Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Mozart rôles have not figured conspicuously in her operatic repertory to date, but the fluency with which she sings ‘Oh qual contento, oh qual dolcezza’ hints at tantalizing Mozartean prospects, perhaps on disc if not on stage—not least Idamante in Idomeno. Hallenberg draws Mayr’s melodic lines with great feeling, the flourishing joy described by the text finding an outlet in the controlled ardor of her singing.

Known more for his music for the violin, on which instrument he was a widely-acknowledged virtuoso, than for his operas,​ Gaetano Pugnani was nonetheless a well-qualified composer of music for the stage. Born in Torino, his talents took him throughout Europe, and he was particularly admired as both violinist and composer in Paris and London, where he counted Johann Christian Bach among his respected—and respecting—friends and colleagues. Pugnani's opera Demofoonte, his treatment of another of Metastasio's most widely-traveled libretti, was launched at his hometown's Teatro Regio, where Marchesi created the rôle of Timante in 1788. The singer's surviving ornaments in the aria ‘Misero pargoletto, il tuo destin non sai’ are considerably more restrained than in other selections on this disc, and, in truth, Hallenberg’s performance of the aria is all the better for the castrato’s relative prudence. Pugnani’s music proves a vehicle for Hallenberg’s most moving singing on the disc, Timante’s trepidation poignantly conveyed by the burnished core of her sound. Marchesi’s embellishments being less flamboyant should not imply that ‘Misero pargoletto’ is in any way less difficult than the other selections on Arias for Luigi Marchesi. In fact, subtler sentiments are often far more burdensome for singers, and it is in this element of her artistry that Hallenberg is most triumphant: her emotional directness, always at the service of both composer and librettist, here reveals the potency of music some listeners might be inclined to dismiss unheard as merely decorative.

A native of Cremona, Francesco Bianchi was a revered pupil of Niccolò Jommelli whose existence away from the theatre was laden with misfortunes that likely prompted his suicide in London in 1810. It is post-Freudian over-analyzing to seek in Bianchi's music discernible traces of the turmoil that complicated his life, but Castore's aria 'Sembianze amabili del mio bel sole' from his opera Castore e Polluce is a beautiful piece that speaks volumes about the composer's keen adeptness at musical portraiture. Though his idiom is very different from that of his French predecessor, Bianchi obviously learned much during his time in Paris from Rameau's Castor et Pollux, music from which remained popular until the end of the Eighteenth Century. There is an atmosphere of serenity in Hallenberg's singing of 'Sembianze amabili' that goes straight to the soul. There are moments on Arias for Luigi Marchesi in which Hallenberg's technique is direly challenged, and there are occasional notes at the top of the range that sound forced, but there are stretches of singing such as that in Bianchi's music that overwhelm with liquid, luminous tone. However affectingly Marchesi might have sung this music, it is regrettable that a composer who endured such unhappiness cannot hear Hallenberg sing his creation.

Like several of the composers advocated on Arias for Luigi Marchesi, Domenico Cimarosa's enduring operatic legacy was until recently reliant upon a single work, in his case the delightful Il matrimonio segreto. Cimarosa, too, was among the musical moths lured to the flame of Metastasio's L'Olimpiade, however, and Hallenberg, Stile Galante, and Aresi give a compelling performance of Megacle's aria 'Superbo di me stesso andrò portando in fronte' from Cimarosa's setting. The vitality of Stile Galante's rôle in not just accompanying but genuinely participating in Hallenberg's performances on this disc demands recognition: violinists Eva Saladin, Rossella Borsoni, Isabella Bison, Claudia Combs, Elisa Imbalzano, and Olga Popova, violists Nadine Henrichs and Isabel Juárez, cellist Agnieszka Oszańka, double-bassists Szilárd Chereji and Daniele Rosi, oboists Aviad Gershoni and Claudia Anchini, horn players Pierre-Antoine Tremblay and Ricardo Rodríguez García, bassoonists Giovanni Battista Graziadio and Niki Fortunato, flautists Silvia Tuja and Mattia Laurella, clarinetists Jānis Tretjuks and Matthias Deger, trumpeters Matteo Frigé and Matteo Macchia, and harpsichordist Andrea Friggi contribute playing that individually and collectively enhances the pleasure of hearing this disc. Even in an age of virtuosi, it is difficult to imagine Marchesi having enjoyed the cooperation of musicians as committed to his success as the ladies and gentlemen of Stile Galante are to Hallenberg’s. Without this teamwork, the mezzo-soprano’s singing of Cimarosa’s aria would be merely excellent.

The most recognizable name among those of the composers whose music is sampled on Arias for Luigi Marchesi is that of Luigi Cherubini, who is principally familiar to opera lovers owing to Maria Callas, whose portrayal of the title rôle in an Italian version of his Médée is justifiably legendary. Callas's intense singing of Medea's famous 'Dei tuoi figli la madre' is matched by Hallenberg's performances of Poro's aria 'Quanto è fiero il mio tormento nel vederti lacrimar' from Cherubini's Alessandro nelle ​Indie. Interestingly, the disc offers two versions of the aria, each with different ornamentation meticulously written out by Marchesi. In the first version, the bravura grandstanding threatens to reduce the aria to mere showmanship, but Hallenberg's thoughtful singing rescues the music from banality. Naturally, she is more than equal to Marchesi's most outrageous inventions. The second version is appended as a bonus track, and it is a suitably spirited finale to the disc. The temerity of Hallenberg’s singing ignites Cherubini’s vocal lines: even in the context of a single aria, Callas’s Medea has a peer in Hallenberg’s Poro.

Writing three decades after Luigi Marchesi’s 1788 London début in the title rôle of Sarti’s Giulio Sabino, Lord Mount Edgcumbe recollected in his Musical Reminiscences of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe that the castrato’s ‘acting was spirited and expressive: his vocal powers were very great, his voice of extensive compass, but a little inclined to be thick. His execution was very considerable, and he was rather too fond of displaying it; nor was his cantabile singing equal to his bravura. In recitative, and scenes of energy and passion, he was incomparable, and had he been less lavish of ornaments, which were not always appropriate, and possessed a more pure and simple taste, his performance would have been faultless: it was always striking, animated, and effective.’ Lord Mount Edgcumbe’s words might have been written to describe the music on Arias for Luigi Marchesi. Many recitals of music composed for particular singers leave listeners with generic impressions of both those singers and the composers who wrote for them. Arias for Luigi Marchesi leaves no doubt of the momentousness of Marchesi’s artistry or its significance as an inspiration for the composers of his time. Still, the performances on Arias for Luigi Marchesi leave one fundamental question unanswered: can Marchesi possibly have been as marvelous a singer as Ann Hallenberg?

Marchesi miracle workers: Conductor Stefano Aresi (left) and mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg (right), photographed by Minjas Zugik [Photo © 2015 by Minjas Zugik; used with permission]

It is not solely owing to its association with the consort of King George III that Charlotte is known as the Queen City. In past seasons, ladies wielding vocal crowns—ladies like Lisa Daltirus and Denyce Graves, Leonora and Azucena in the 2011 production of Verdi’s Il trovatore, Brenda Harris, Abigaille in 2014’s Nabucco, and Othalie Graham and Dina Kuznetsova, the eponymous Princess and Liù in 2015’s Turandot—have lent Charlotte’s regal epithet an added layer of meaning. Thanks to the endeavors of these artists and their colleagues at Opera Carolina, Charlotte is gloriously enthroned as the Queen City of opera in the southeastern United States. Opera Carolina’s reign as one of America’s most enterprising and musically-accomplished regional companies will be further secured with a new season that brings Charlotte audiences both pillars of the international repertory and the local première of a masterful score still too infrequently performed.

James Meena, Opera Carolina’s General Director and Principal Conductor, the Opera Carolina Orchestra, and a lineup of fantastic singers from Opera Carolina’s roster launch the company’s 2015 – 2016 Season at 7:30 PM on 3 October 2015, with Art • Poetry • Music– a Gala Benefit Concert, highlighting both the company’s impeccable musical standards and Maestro Meena’s status as one of America’s artistic treasures.

Later in October, Meena and a world-class cast take on Ludwig van Beethoven’s sole opera, the profound paean to conjugal devotion Fidelio. With performances scheduled for 8:00 PM on 17 October 8:00 PM, 7:30 PM on 22 October 7:30 PM, and 2:00 PM on 25 October, Charlotteans have three opportunities to hear Meena’s red-blooded but poetic pacing of Beethoven’s splendidly-crafted score, one over which the composer toiled for years until producing the masterpiece that wrings the hearts of listeners today. In the title rôle of Leonore, the paragon of spousal fidelity disguised as Fidelio in order to infiltrate the prison where her husband is unjustly incarcerated, Opera Carolina introduces local audiences to the beautiful voice of Mexican soprano Maria Katzarava, 2008 winner of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition and a student of the legendary Mirella Freni. Florestan, the husband she is determined to free from political bondage, is sung by versatile tenor Andrew Richards, whose accolades to date include first prizes in both the Enrico Caruso Competition and the prestigious Liederkranz Vocal Competition. The young lovers Marzelline and Jacquino are portrayed by fast-rising Chinese soprano Xu Lei, also featured in the Art • Poetry • Music gala, and tenor Brian Arreola, whose singing as Ismaele contributed significantly to the success of Opera Carolina’s 2014 Nabucco and who also lends his talents to Art • Poetry • Music.  A pair of accomplished low-voiced gentlemen anchor Fidelio: bass Andrew Funk interprets Rocco, the kind-hearted jailer, and baritone Kyle Pfortmiller voices Don Pizarro, the tyrannical prison governor.

The cold January air will be set ablaze by Opera Carolina’s performances of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, presented in a co-production shared by Opera Carolina and Virginia Opera. [Performances in Virginia Opera’s Norfolk, Fairfax, and Richmond venues follow in February.] Meena again presides from the podium, returning to the French repertory of which he proved himself a master in Opera Carolina’s 2008 production of Gounod’s Faust. Shakespeare’s ‘star-crossed lovers’ are brought to life by tenor Jonathan Boyd, a much-admired Alfredo in La traviata for Opera Carolina, and Canadian soprano Marie-Eve Munger, acclaimed both on the stage and in competitions. Roméo’s page Stéphano is impersonated by velvet-voiced mezzo-soprano Kimberly Sogioka, and bass Kevin Langan, heartbreaking as Timur in Opera Carolina’s Turandot, is the benevolent Frère Laurent. Young baritone Efraín Solís unleashes his sinewy voice and soulful presence as Roméo’s plague-uttering friend Mercutio. Brian Arreola returns as the treacherous Tybalt, and Juliette’s nurse Gertrude is sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Nicely, who was riotous as the Marquise de Birkenfeld in Greensboro Opera’s January 2015  production of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment. Performances are scheduled for for 2:00 PM on 24 January, 7:30 PM on 28 January, and 8:00 PM on 30 January.

The greatest novelty of Opera Carolina’s 2015 – 2016 Season is the April double-bill of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s perennially-popular Pagliacci and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s underappreciated Aleko. Leoncavallo’s tale of adultery and murder in a traveling Commedia dell’arte troupe needs no introduction, but Rachmaninoff’s exhilarating examination of similar themes in the context of a gypsy community into which an outsider has been accepted enjoys far less familiarity among American audiences than it deserves. Opera Carolina’s performances, scheduled for 2:00 PM on 10 April, 7:30 PM on 14 April, and 8:00 PM on 16 April, will tellingly examine the relationships between the two dramas by featuring outstanding singing actors who take central rôles in both operas. Under the baton of conductor Xu Zhong, Canio in Pagliacci, one of the most demanding parts in the tenor repertory, is entrusted to Jeff Gwaltney, a lauded veteran of both Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists program and Glimmerglass Festival’s similar initiative. The imagination of gorgeous soprano Elizabeth Caballero takes flight as the unfaithful wives Nedda in Pagliacci and Zemfira in Aleko. Young baritone Alexey Lavrov, a native of the Komi Republic in northwestern Russian, a region with a population smaller than that of metropolitan Charlotte, sings Silvio in Pagliacci and the title rôle in Aleko, and dashing tenor Joshua Stewart, heard in October in Art • Poetry • Music, portrays Leoncavallo’s Beppe and Rachmaninoff’s Young Gypsy.

Shakespeare famously wrote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth,’ and the operas in Opera Carolina’s 2015 – 2016 Season, exploring unassailable devotion, ill-fated clandestine passions, deadly jealousy, and life-shattering betrayal, offer fascinating glimpses of that twisting, confounding course. Shakespeare also wrote, in Antony and Cleopatra, ‘Give me some music; music, moody food of us that trade in love.’ In its presentation of that ‘moody food,’ prepared by some of the genre’s most gifted musical chefs, Opera Carolina’s 2015 – 2016 Season is a feast fit for a true gourmet.

To learn more about Opera Carolina’s 2015 – 2016 Season, please visit the company’s website. Tickets and subscriptions can be purchased online or by phoning the Box Office at 704.372.1000.

All casting is subject to change without notice. Graphics © by Opera Carolina; all rights reserved.

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732 – 1809), GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868), FRANCESCO SANTOLIQUIDO (1883 – 1971), ERNESTO DE CURTIS (1875 – 1937), et. al.: Joyce & Tony Live at Wigmore Hall—Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Sir Anthony Pappano, piano [Recorded ‘live’ in performance at Wigmore Hall, London, UK, 6 and 8 September 2014; ERATO 0825646107896; 2 CDs, 94:29; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Provided that a listener has ears that hear and a heart that feels, any doubt of Joyce DiDonato's status as one of the world's greatest singers is eradicated by the first twenty minutes of Joyce & Tony Live at Wigmore Hall. Singing Franz Joseph Haydn's cantata Arianna a Naxos (Hob.XXVIb:2), DiDonato leaves prima donna affectations and opera-house melodramatics to lesser artists. In the course of those twenty minutes, seconded by Sir Antonio Pappano's intuitively-attuned piano accompaniment, she walks the shores of Naxos, searching the horizon for her beloved Theseus, not artfully portraying Ariadne but truly experiencing every pang of her panic, fear, and sorrow. DiDonato makes 'Teseo mio ben, dove sei, dove sei tu?' much more than an introductory recitative. Her first notes are breathless with exhaustion and disbelief as though Ariadne has struggled through miles of inhospitable terrain in search of her absent lover. She enunciates Italian with near-native inflections, avoiding the exaggeratedly trilled r's and other typical Americanisms, but the real joy of this performance is her affinity for Haydn's music. She never deviates from Classical poise in her singing of the aria 'Dove sei, mio bel tesoro,' but there is nothing dainty about her depiction of Ariadne's despair: her perfectly-judged phrasing places the aria in the company of Brünnhilde's Immolation, Isolde's Liebestod, and Richard Strauss's music for his Ariadne. [It is significant that DiDonato is an accomplished Komponist in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. She has experienced Ariadne's predicament from both sides of the music desk, as it were, and her empathy is unmistakable.] The depth of emotion that the singer conveys with only the first four words of 'Ma, a chi parlo?' is extraordinary. Comparing the economy of means with which DiDonato limns Ariadne's staggering psychological trauma with the histrionic excesses to which many singers resort in this music, thoughts of Abraham Lincoln arise, recalling his following of Edward Everett's two-hour oration at Gettysburg with perhaps the ten most eloquent sentences spoken in America in the Nineteenth Century. When DiDonato intones the cantata's closing aria, 'Ah, che morir vorrei in sì fatal momento,' her voice gleams with a focused purity that elevates Ariadne's utterances from self-pity to world-weariness worthy of Dido and Maria Stuarda. The weight of tragedy emanates from her performance without ever depriving the voice of its natural buoyancy. Depicting Ariadne's dark sentiments with her bright timbre, DiDonato gives a performance that, with its surging passion within the parameters of the appropriate style and absolute surrender to both music and text, conjures memories of Leyla Gencer at her estimable best. This is a reading of Arianna a Naxos in which the singer's artistry fully reveals the wondrous dimensions of Haydn's genius.

DiDonato is one of the world's busiest mezzo-sopranos, her repertory spanning nearly four centuries of musical history, and there are occasional signs in the performances on Joyce & Tony of the effects on the voice of her fast-paced career. Tones at the extreme top of the range can be shrill, tremulous, and slightly blanched in quality, but DiDonato's intonational accuracy remains formidable even in the most challenging passages of bravura writing. The voice remains a fresh, evergreen instrument over which its owner exercises near-perfect control, and DiDonato is an artist who is too shrewd to venture into territory that is foreign to her natural gifts. In this performance, she is partnered with wit and impeccable pianistic technique by Pappano, who takes the rôle of conversationalist rather than that of the eyes-on-his-scores accompanist. He and DiDonato carry on lively banter through music, piano and voice teasing, cajoling, and comforting one another in the course of the recital. It is apparent, though, that Pappano views this recital not as vocal chamber music but as an opportunity for one of Classical Music’s finest voices to shine in the spotlight of ideally-chosen repertory. Produced by Alain Lanceron and Stephen Johns and recorded and edited by Jonathan Allen, ERATO’s discs allow DiDonato to do just that. Balances between voice and piano are managed with intelligence that prevents either instrument from being unduly prominent, but the warmth of the Wigmore Hall acoustics is retained. Audience noise is essentially non-existent, but every moment on these discs pulses with the energy of live performance.

The music of Rossini is DiDonato's natural habitat—or, rather, one of this impressively adaptable artist's natural habitats. Composed in 1821, 'Beltà crudele' is among Rossini's loveliest songs and one of a handful written before the death of Franz Schubert, upon whose work Rossini exerted an often-underestimated influence. DiDonato sings 'Beltà crudele' with the same intensity that she might devote to Schubert's most tuneful inventions. As in Arianna a Naxos, her splendid diction highlights the cleverness of the composer's setting of the text, the open vowels used as springboards for launching Rossini's characteristic vocal lines.. 'La danza,' the eighth song in Rossini's Soirées musicales, dates from 1835. This ebullient tarantella requires the vocal equivalent of an acrobat's dexterity, and DiDonato delivers a scintillating account of the piece without making it seem like a carnival act. Rossinian patter is a mother tongue for DiDonato, and she speaks it in this performance with the proud elegance of a Parisian reciting Baudelaire.

Francesco Santoliquido’s 1908 I canti della sera glisten with an autumnal, restrained melancholy that is not unlike the wistful resignation that courses through Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder. The wide-eyed wonder with which DiDonato phrases ‘Vieni, ti voglio dir quel che non dissi mai’ in the opening song, ‘L'assiolo canta,’ discloses the expanse of her imagination, the slightest hint of capriciousness spicing the intoxicating elixir of her interpretation. Similarly evocative of untold feelings is her articulation of ‘Che pace immensa!’ in ‘Alba di luna sul bosco,’ her voice seeming to take on the weight of eternity without being artificially inflated. Then, she voices ‘Dimmi: è un tramonto o un’alba per l’amor?’ with the innocence of a little girl quizzing her father about some unfathomable aspect of life or nature. There is no artifice in DiDonato’s singing of ‘Tristezza crepuscolare’: this is a reflection on unhappy memories, not a wallow in hopelessness. The quiet solemnity of DiDonato’s voicing of the closing ‘L'incontro’ is profoundly moving. The dulcet utterance of ‘Ma oggi forse m’amate un poco’ contrasts sharply with the shuddering, suddenly uncertain statement of ‘Non sorridete più. Ah! La vostra mano trema.’ Santoliquido’s late-Romantic idiom suits DiDonato as organically as Haydn’s eloquent Classicism and Rossini’s effervescent bel canto, and she sings I canti della sera with beauty and poetry redolent of Claudia Muzio.

Ernesto De Curtis's 'Non ti scordar di me,' composed in 1935 for Beniamino Gigli, finds in DiDonato and Pappano interpreters as attentive to the song's seldom-explored nuances as any who have ever recorded it. Like some of the American repertory in this recital’s second half, ‘Non ti scordar di me’ has suffered in the past eighty years from the effects of over-exposure and indifferent performances, but DiDonato and Pappano approach it as though discovering it anew. The familiar themes here sound unhackneyed, and the expressive impact of the song is as great as when Gigli first sang it.

Operatically-trained singers performing musical theatre standards and folksong settings can be dangerous collisions of over-singing, condescension, and overwrought histrionics. Operatically-trained to be sure, DiDonato is unfairly restricted by being designated an ‘opera singer.’ There is no question that she could convincingly sing chart-topping pop songs were it her prerogative to do so, and she here sings Art songs and gems of the Great White Way with the soulfulness of Joan Baez, the unpretentious textual clarity of Kate Smith, and, above all, the inimitable voice of Joyce DiDonato.

The godfather of American popular song Stephen Foster (1826 – 1864) rarely receives the affectionate treatment that his gifts for melody warrant, especially on disc, but DiDonato’s singing of David Krane’s arrangement of ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ cloaks one of the composer's most familiar melodies in the golden garment of a great voice. Here and in all of the selections on Joyce & Tony's second disc, DiDonato resists the temptation to over-sing in a concerted effort to make the music sound important. This is important music, and she simply sings it according to each number's style and mood, just as she sings music for any of her operatic rôles. The potency of her sensibilities for American song is even more obvious in her performances of five selections by Jerome Kern (1885 – 1945). A more alluring exponent of 'The Siren's Song' from 1917's Leave it to Jane than DiDonato is difficult to imagine, and the mezzo-soprano's gift for storytelling in song is no less delightfully exercised in 'Go Little Boat' from the little-remembered Oh, My Dear! of 1918. Show Boat is perhaps Kern's greatest score, and the performances on this disc of 'Life Upon the Wicked Stage' and 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man' throb with humor and devotion. For once, it is possible to believe that the singer truly cannot help repeatedly falling in love with that certain someone. Stirring as every selection on Joyce & Tony is, DiDonato's singing of 'All the Things You Are' from the 1939 show Very Warm for May, Kern's last Broadway score, is truly special. Not even Mildred Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald sang the song more lovingly than DiDonato. Trade Pappano's deftly-played piano for lute or theorbo, and this could be a ballad by John Dowland or an aria for Händel's Dejanira.

Havelock Nelson's (1917 – 1996) settings of traditional Irish songs reveal a sensitive spirit with tremendous understanding of the relationships between words and melodies. DiDonato sings his 'Lovely Jimmie' with disarming simplicity, the voice echoing the charm and typical Irish ambiguity of the text. Celius Dougherty (1902 – 1986) is a composer whose work should be far more frequently performed, and DiDonato offers an account of the 1949 song 'Love in the Dictionary' that whets the appetite for more of Dougherty's music, her unaffected demeanor and winsome sense of humor making much of the text, which is a literal recitation of a dictionary definition of the word 'love.' The same enterprising sincerity shapes her voicing of 'Lazy Afternoon' from Jerome Moross's (1913 – 1983) 1955 musical The Golden Apple. Singing mesmerizingly, DiDonato is a magnificent advocate for this material.

William Bolcom's (born 1938) Cabaret Songs should be in the repertories of every singer capably of meeting their musical demands and doing justice to their high-spirited texts. DiDonato steps vivaciously into the world of Cathy Berberian with her performance of 'Amor' from the first volume of Cabaret Songs. She infuses the song with the individuality of a personal anthem, following the paths of Bolcom's melodic lines with the unfettered joy of a singer singing for her own amusement. Mimicking Berberian's versatility, she is equally at ease in 'Food for Thought' from Heitor Villa-Lobos's (1887 – 1959) 1948 'musical adventure'Magdalena. Written for Los Angeles, Magdalena is an unjustly-neglected niche in Villa-Lobos's output, but DiDonato sings ‘Food for Thought' from the operetta's first act with a compelling combination of beguiling, forwardly-placed tone and sovereign stylishness that lends the song an air of cherished familiarity.

Richard Rodgers's (1902 – 1976) 'My Funny Valentine' from the 1937 revue Babes in Arms is a well-traveled number recorded by some of America's most recognizable voices, both as a Broadway hit and as a jazz standard. DiDonato’s performance, neither saccharine nor dry, transforms Wigmore Hall into a smoke-filled lounge where people still speak in complete sentences and gentlemen rise when ladies approach, but the sultry insinuation of her mezza voce suggests that a vein of naughtiness flows beneath the glittering façade. Irving Berlin (1888 – 1989) was a tunesmith with a gift for touching the heartstrings even when setting lyrics that failed to match the quality of his music. 'I Love a Piano' from 1915 is an instance of Berlin morphing lyrics from entertaining to enlightening. DiDonato follows his lead, singing ‘I Love a Piano’ with ease and élan that are unforgettable. Harold Arlen's (1905 – 1986) 'Over the Rainbow' from the iconic score of The Wizard of Oz is as clichéd and over-done a number as there is in the Great American Songbook. Frankly, it is a song that is accepted as a classic without most listeners ever having heard performances that justify that distinction. It is difficult to place a stamp of originality on a performance of ‘Over the Rainbow,’ but DiDonato does so in precisely the manner that she conquers every piece on this program—by simply singing the music impeccably. By solving it, she gets at the heart of the problem with the song that scuttles so many singers’ efforts: genuine Joyce DiDonato is infinitely preferable to fake Judy Garland.

Ultimately, Joyce & Tony Live at Wigmore Hall is a very disappointing disc. It is disappointing that, having been recorded during performances in Wigmore Hall, it could not have gone on far longer than its ninety-five minutes. It is disappointing that DiDonato could not include the complete first volume of Bolcom's Cabaret Songs—imagine her 'Over the Piano' and 'He Tipped the Waiter'—and the three companions to Nelson's arrangement of 'Lovely Jimmie.' Most crucially, it is disappointing that Joyce and Tony could not have planned and executed a recital better than merely spectacular. Oh, for a profusion of such disappointments!

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): Tosca—Tamara Milashkina (Floria Tosca), Vladimir Atlantov (Mario Cavaradossi), Yuri Mazurok (Barone Scarpia), Valeri Yaroslavtsev (Cesare Angelotti), Vitali Nartov (Il sagrestano), Andrei Sokolov (Spoletta), Vladimir Filippov (Sciarrone), Mikhail Shkaptsov (Un carceriere), Alexander Pavlov (Un pastore); Choir and Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre; Mark Ermler, conductor [Recorded in the Bolshoi Theatre in 1974; Melodiya MEL CD 10 02359; 2 CDS, 114:18; Available from Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Who needs another Tosca? This is perhaps an indelicate question to pose when one has in one's hand precisely that, in this case Melodiya's compact disc reissue of the 1974 Bolshoi recording of the opera with a fine cast of admired Soviet singers, but the profusion and continuous availability of excellent recorded performances of Tosca make the inquiry inevitable. From several important perspectives, this Tosca is a denizen of what Ivor Novello termed 'the Land of Might-Have-Been.' There are enough successful components to make this a Tosca that might have been one of the opera's finest recorded outings, but enjoyment of the performance is ultimately marred by distracting flaws. Nevertheless, as the cliché goes, this is a Tosca that anyone who appreciates the score would be delighted to encounter in any of the world's major opera houses today.

From a technological perspective, Melodiya's remastering does little to remedy or even disguise the deficiencies of Soviet-era recordings. Indeed, this may be the most unrelenting, loudest Tosca on compact disc: every semiquaver of Puccini's score is blasted merrily by the singers and players of the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus and Orchestra and captured in sonics characterized by rudimentary balances and a wearying preponderance of full-throttle dynamics. There are laudable lacks of peaking and distortion, however. The recording often gives the impression of hearing the score performed in concert, with the orchestra and chorus positioned to the rear of the soloists. On the whole, the Bolshoi choral and orchestral forces acquit themselves admirably, though the decidedly bizarre 'bells' that sound before the singing of the celebratory 'Te Deum' belong in Boris Godunov, not Tosca. Not surprisingly, Italian diction is inconsistent throughout the cast, but there are few moments of true failure. Even without a firm grasp of Puccini’s style, there are moments, sadly too fleeting, in which the performance catches fire. One of the recording's greatest virtues is the conducting of Mark Ermler. A stalwart of the Bolshoi, Ermler was a conductor who bothered to learn scores rather than conducting them solely based upon absorbed traditions. His pacing of Tosca often seems idiosyncratically slow, but the clarity granted to many felicities of Puccini’s orchestrations must be credited to the conductor’s tempi. Like the best conductors of opera, Ermler audibly endeavors to support the singers without shortchanging momentum, and the high quality of his many recordings of Russian repertory suggest that, had his cast been more responsive to his good intentions, he might have presided over an unconventional but wholly satisfactory Tosca.

In supporting rôles, basses Valeri Yaroslavtsev and Vitali Nartov are effective as Angelotti and the Sagrestano despite sounding as though Puccini might have been better served had they switched parts. Scarpia’s scaly agents Spoletta and Sciarrone are capably but forgettably portrayed by tenor Andrei Sokolov, no Piero De Palma, and bass Vladimir Filippov. Mikhail Shkaptsov is cavernous in the Carceriere’s few lines as only a bass trained in the Russian tradition can be, and young Alexander Pavlov, billed by Melodiya in Russian and English as an alto and in French as a boy soprano [similarly, Nartov is a baritone in Russian and English but a bass in French], sings the Pastore’s melancholic canzone at the start of Act Three charmingly.

Among the trio of principals, Polish-born baritone Yuri Mazurok gives the strongest performance. In fact, this lauded exponent of the title rôle in Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin proves to be a world-class Scarpia who actually sings his music even at full volume, something that could seldom be said of more widely-lauded Scarpias like Anselmo Colzani and Cornell MacNeil. In Scarpia's entrance in Act One, Mazurok produces a wall of sound that rivals the structural integrity of the church into which his Scarpia maleficently saunters. Joining the chorus at the climax of the ‘Te Deum,’ Mazurok hurls out notes at the top of the range with absolute security. His singing of Scarpia’s so-called ‘Credo’ in Act Two, ‘Ha più forte sapore la conquista violenta,’ sizzles with pent-up sexuality, and the slimy directness of his ‘Già, mi dicon venal’ makes the skin crawl: iron-willed would be the Tosca who did not search her surroundings for a suitably injurious weapon in response to such sentiments! Alas, Mazurok’s Scarpia cannot die as impressively as he has lived. Mazurok takes his cue from the gasping, snarling breed of Scarpias, expiring far more noisily than is necessary. Mazurok’s performance is far from the last word in Italianate stylishness, but he dominates this recording as a forceful, robustly-sung Scarpia.

Vladimir Atlantov's solid upper register and stentorian manner of singing qualified him as a sort of Russian Mario del Monaco. Like his Italian colleague, he was capable of nuanced, expressive singing, but there is nothing subtle about his Cavaradossi in this performance. When this Cavaradossi converses with the Sagrestano in Act One, it is with the imperiousness of an arrogant man about town who expects his whims to be indulged. The voice is a burly, handsome instrument, and the top B♭ in 'Recondita armonia' is a predictably clarion tone, but there is little sense of involvement in Atlantov's singing. He sings powerfully in the duet with Tosca in Act One, but his Cavaradossi sounds more likely to be engaged in barroom brawls than found painting the Maddalena in a church. His upper register provides the excitement that his singing generally lacks. The tenor's restraint when his character is under torture in Act Two is welcome, but his exasperation upon discovering Tosca's betrayal and jubilant cry of defiance are dramatically inert when voiced with the same bawling tone unleashed in all of his music, his galvanizing top A♯ notwithstanding. Atlantov sings 'E lucevan le stelle' resonantly, but here, too, his performance is defined by brute strength instead of poetic wonder. There is more tenderness in his singing in 'O dolci mani' than in the duet with Tosca in Act One: finally, there are glimpses of the artistic sensitivity that lends Cavaradossi credibility as more than merely a carnal companion for Tosca. Were Atlantov's Cavaradossi not so rousingly sung, it would perhaps be too little, too late, but his lackluster characterization is substantially redeemed by the quality of the tenor's vocalism.

The Tosca of Tamara Milashkina might easily be underrated or even ill-informedly dismissed. Like Mazurok, the soprano was a frequent visitor to Yevgeny Onegin, but her credentials in Italian opera, though extensive, are not so familiar. Vocally, Tosca's music is well within the boundaries of Milashkina's abilities, and there are aspects of the rôle—not least the three top Cs requested by Puccini—that she brings off as well as the best Toscas on disc. Idiomatic Italian vowels were not hers to command, but her enunciation is no more off-putting than those of many English- and German-speaking Toscas. Milashkina sings Tosca's duet with Cavaradossi in Act One with considerable aplomb, but there is little in her performance to indicate that she is partnering her husband in one of opera's most sensual exchanges. Rather than seeking vestiges of their own marriage in the scene, Atlantov shouts, Milashkina pouts, and the drama rattles on with almost no charisma or personality. Still, there is much to be admired in the reliability of the soprano's singing. There is animation in her traversal of Tosca's confrontation with Scarpia in the church, and she garners appreciation for her eschewal of the often-embarrassing blubbering into which many Toscas dissolve after swallowing the bait of Scarpia's suggestion that Cavaradossi and Marchesa Attavanti are lovers. In Act Two, Milashkina nails the difficult top Cs in the off-stage cantata, here sounding only slightly recessed, and the frenzied outburst after Cavaradossi realizes that she has betrayed Angelotti in order to spare her ungrateful paramour further torture. She possesses sufficient solidity of technical footing to give the top B♭ in 'Vissa d'arte, vissi d'amore' the dulcet treatment that Puccini sought, and her focused, capably-phrased account of the aria wants only a measure of tenderness. Mazurok's Scarpia is a lecher who seems too wily to die, but Milashkina's Tosca dispatches him handily enough; indeed, somewhat matter-of-factly. She goes about the mechanics of posing his body with the crucifix with the calmness of a housewife arranging her laundry. Reunited with Cavaradossi in Act Three, this Tosca seems eager to recount her slaughter of Scarpia, the final top C thrust into the listener's ear as a symbolic recreation of the knife piercing Scarpia's body. Milashkina clearly relishes the melodrama of the opera's final minutes, her breathless utterances delivered with gusto. This Tosca's demise is less impactful than it ought to be, but there is no denying the appeal of the brilliant top B♭ with which the soprano takes her leave. In a setting more congenial to dramatic endeavors, Milashkina might have been a near-ideal Tosca [in a studio recording made a decade earlier, sung in Russian and with Zurab Andzhaparidzye as her Cavaradossi, she was indeed a considerably more engaging presence], her voice more suited by nature for the rôle than that of her countrywoman Galina Vishnevskaya, a celebrated Tosca. In this performance, Milashkina rarely portrays a three-dimensional character, but her singing is often wonderful.

Puccini with a Russian accent is no one’s ideal, especially in an opera as quintessentially Italian of temperament and musical construction as Tosca, but listeners inclined to accept Yevgeny Onegin and Pikovaya dama in Italian in order to enjoy the sublime Tatyana of Rosanna Carteri and Liza of Leyla Gencer can hardly reject a persuasive Tosca sung in Russian-tinted Italian. Ultimately, this is not a consistently persuasive Tosca, but Tamara Milashkina is a Tosca who persuades that another Tosca may not be needed but is always welcome.

[1] ROMAN BERGER (born 1930): Pathetique (2006), Sonata No. 3 ‘da camera’ (1971), Allegro frenetico con reminiscenza (2006), Impromptu (2013), and Epilogue (Omaggio a L. v. B.) (2010)—The Berger Trio [Recorded at the Empire Theatre, Hlohovec, Slovakia, 29 – 30 August 2013; Naxos 8.573406; 1 CD, 78:33; Available from ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] JOHN JOUBERT (born 1927): Temps Perdu: Variations for String Orchestra, Op. 99 (1984), Sinfonietta, Op. 38 (1962), and The Instant Moment: Song-cycle for Baritone and String Orchestra to words by D.H. Lawrence, Op. 110 (1987)—Henry Herford, baritone; Christopher Hirons and Pierre Joubert, violin; Paul Arden-Taylor and Anna Evans, oboe; Keith Rubach and Christine Predota, bassoon; Stephen Roberts and James Buck, French horn; English String Orchestra; William Boughton, conductor [Recorded at Warwick Arts Center, Warwick University, England, 23 – 25 April 1987 (previously released by British Music Society); Naxos 8.571368; 1 CD, 63:09; Available from ClassicsOnline HD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

As celebration of the concept of diversity has taken root throughout the world in recent years, it has often seemed that, in tangible realms of daily life, understanding and acceptable of actual, practical difference have vanished. The tide of political correctness sometimes seems to have swept away true cooperation among peoples of varying ways of life as if the perceived progress of mankind has uprooted practicality and pragmatism among men. It is often said that Art is a reflection of life, and the prejudice that afflicts modern society is sadly omnipresent in Classical Music, which should be the 'blindest' of the Performing Arts. Were the inexcusable biases that performers face based upon race, age, weight, appearance, and countless other inconsequentialities not contemptible enough, living composers encounter dismissal of their work because precisely because they are living. Embarrassing as it is to admit, there are individuals posing as advocates for the perpetual survival of Classical Music for whom that concept solely means preservation of the works of long-dead composers. Inspiring music continues to be composed, however, and the endeavors of the Naxos label to encourage, document, and disseminate new music are among the most valuable initiatives in Classical Music. These discs devoted to music by Roman Berger and John Joubert, both expertly recorded and presented with care that proves that economy need not be synonymous with poor quality, restore to celebration of the diversity of Classical Music an appreciation of the different channels through which the tide of musical creativity has surged from the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First. Even in the context of a musical banquet like the one prepared by Naxos, the proof of recordings’ lasting value is in the proverbial pudding: Berger’s and Joubert’s music provides the flavors needed for an unforgettable feast.

Born in 1930 on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic, Roman Berger fell victim in the early years of his life and musical career to the oppression of Stalinist Soviet politics, vestiges of which continued to haunt him in the aftermath of his involvement with the Prague Spring movement of 1968. Despite the crippling difficulties to which he was subjected, Berger obtained through the force of his own determination a rewardingly cosmopolitan education that granted him access to the artistic philosophies that redefined—and continue to redefine—music in the years after World War II. Berger's music is in many ways a compelling statement of triumph over the successive regimes and small-minded ideologies by which his youthful creative impulses were stymied. As performed by The Berger Trio, the pieces on this disc are representative of a highly individual aesthetic, an artistic identity both rooted in the traditions of Western Classical Music extending back two centuries and unmistakably modern. Like Mahler's Symphonies, Berger's music is a crossroads at which the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-First Centuries intersect, assimilating without sacrificing their singular musical sensibilities.

Written in 2006 and dedicated to the composer's beloved wife Rút, Pathetique for piano and cello is at once a reflection on Berger's marriage and a tribute to one of his artistic idols, Ludwig van Beethoven. Musically, it is a work of great imagination, undoubtedly spurred by the specific emotional context that shaped the music's genesis. Cellist Ján Slávik and pianist Ladislav Fanzowitz exchange melodic phrases with the eloquence of Shakespearean actors enacting a scene from one of the Bard's best plays, creating a dialogue not only with one another but also with Berger's music that illuminates the subtleties of the composer's writing for both instruments. Emotionally, this is complicated music and thus a far more honest tribute to the composer's marriage, an institution as complex as any wrought by men, than a sappier piece might have been. In a sense, Pathetique is a marriage of past and future, and Slávik and Fanzowitz play with commitment and eloquence that honor Beethoven, Berger, and the latter's lamented wife.

The Sonata No. 3 'da camera' for piano was composed in 1971 and is played on this disc by Fanzowitz with boundless involvement and technical prowess. He devotes an understated but deeply affecting element of sadness to his interpretation of the opening Andante con tristezza movement, heightening the expressive significance of the composer's elegiac rhythmic figures by sharply contrasting the expansiveness of his playing with the precision of his execution of rhythms. This contrast also characterizes Fanzowitz's performance of the Allegro deciso movement, in which his comfort with Berger's idiom is apparent in his nimble negotiations of passages of great intricacy. Command of fingering and wrist flexibility are critical in the Veloce movement, which Fanzowitz delivers with a frenetic electricity that ignites the music with an almost erotic charge. An insinuation of sensuality also lurks beneath the imposing, slightly self-conscious façade of the final movement, marked Allegro inquieto. Here, the pianist's unbridled, rhapsodic execution is tempered by a gossamer elegance that softens the music's sharp edges. As its 'da camera' epithet suggests, the Sonata is a perceptibly personal if not a noticeably introverted work, virtually a rejuvenation of a Baroque form that intriguingly manages to simultaneously challenge concepts of conventional tonality. Fanzowitz plays the Sonata with the technique demanded by the keyboard music of Händel and the interpretive ambiguity required for playing Satie.

Slávik's impeccable bowing technique permits him to make his performance of Berger's 2006 Allegro frenetico con reminiscenza a veritable masterclass in the arts of playing the cello and insightfully interpreting modern music for the instrument. Amidst the vigorous flow of the music there is a lode of wistfulness that Slávik mines tellingly, drawing out the darker colorations in the music without overshadowing the dominant impetuosity of the piece. Berger's work explores the tonal and expressive capabilities of the cello as compellingly as Bach's familiar Suites for the instrument, and Slávik devotes his virtuosity to fully revealing the depths of Berger's ingenuity.

Composed in 2013, Impromptu for clarinet is the most recent music recorded here, and it finds Berger still very much in command of his gifts. Clarinetist Branislav Dugovič, the third member of The Berger Trio, plays the piece with expansiveness and effortless authority. Delving into the relationships among each note and those that precede and follow it, Dugovič uncovers countless instances of sly wit. Berger's carefully-crafted score maintains an air of spontaneity befitting an impromptu, and Dugovič's performance seems both meticulously prepared and wholly improvisational. Above all, the clarinetist's innate musicality is evident throughout his interpretation of the piece.

Epilogue (Omaggio a L. v. B.), dating from 2010, is essentially a sequence of boldly-conceived variations on the principal theme of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 (Opus 13). The gentlemen of The Berger Trio respond to every unexpected harmonic progression in the music with attention to the cumulative course of the piece. Like Pathetique, Epilogue carves a path from past to future that embraces traditions without capitulating to them, and the performance that the music receives from The Berger Trio elucidates both Berger’s unique style and his affectionate homage to Beethoven. Dugovič, Slávik, and Fanzowitz play with fluidity, cooperation, and tenacity that constitute an homage to Berger himself. The performances on this disc disclose to the listener that this composer’s music merits exploration by the finest artists—and, it is to be hoped, further recordings of this quality.

The excellent Naxos release devoted to music by South African-born composer John Joubert is a reissue of a 1987 recording sponsored by the British Music Society, one of many titles in the catalogues of this and similar organizations richly deserving of revitalization. A skilled practitioner in many musical forms, Joubert shares with Roman Berger an artistic worldview that encompasses vistas of compositional trends past and present. Also like Berger, Joubert remains far too little-known by his own and subsequent generations. The Instant Moment should be in the repertory of every lyric baritone with fluency in English, and the instrumental works on this disc exhibit a naturalness of orchestration and management of blending timbres from which performers and aspiring composers alike can learn much. The lesson proffered by the outstanding performances by the English String Orchestra and conductor William Boughton on this disc is that John Joubert’s music equals the best works of the Twentieth Century.

Joubert's Proust-inspired Temps Perdu: Variations for String Orchestra (Op. 99), completed in 1984, is as enjoyable and daunting a piece composed for strings since the death of Benjamin Britten. Joubert's compositional voice in entirely his own, but there are in Temps Perdu echoes of the sound worlds of Tippett, Bax, Holst, and even Purcell. Violinists Christopher Hirons and Pierre Joubert, the composer's son, play solo lines with complementary dash and delicacy that spotlight Joubert's affinity for writing exquisite melodies that emerge from the textures of the music as if by chance. Variation of the memorable Thème, phrased by the players with the sophisticated air of a Parisian salon, first yields a fantastically inventive Espièglerie, in their playing of which the musicians establish a standard of excellence that they uphold in each of the variations. The Elégie is profoundly, perfectly beautiful, and its unaffected expressivity carries over into the urbane but vigorous Valse. The fourth and final variation, Envoi, develops the theme in stunningly innovative ways, and the performance unfolds in kind, every musician’s instrument singing in a chorus that gives voice to the composer’s erudition.

Joubert's 1962 Sinfonietta (Op. 38) is a work of contrasting grace and raw energy that richly rewards the efforts of musicians who approach it studiously and with the concentration required to comprehend and properly execute the composer’s part-writing. Oboists Paul Arden-Taylor and Anna Evans, bassoonists Keith Rubach and Christine Predota, and French horn players Stephen Roberts and James Buck individually and collectively spin and intertwine their lines with the flair of master tapestry makers. The exhilaration of their playing of the opening Allegro con spirito movement is infectious, but even this cannot compare with the resounding grandeur with which the Molto moderato is performed. The closing Allegro movement blossoms with novelty that the musicians translate into sounds of surpassing beauty.

Completed in 1987, The Instant Moment (Op. 110) is a cycle of settings of evocative, imagery-rich texts by D. H. Lawrence. Under Boughton's direction, the five songs are tellingly contrasted, but a prevailing view of the larger construction of the cycle of the whole also pervades the performance. The singing of Edinburgh-born baritone Henry Herford is a tremendous asset. From his opening phrase in 'Bei Hennef,' Herford sings strongly and with audible comfort with Joubert's style. He infuses his voicing of 'You are the call and I am the answer' with a magnetically mysterious aura, and the straightforward awe of his enunciation of 'Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!' is disquieting. The haunting expressive power of Herford's singing of the second song, 'Loggerheads,' surges to the baritone's chillingly direct delivery of the final stanza, 'If despair is our option / Then let us despair. / Let us make for the weeping willow. / I don't care.' The strings' playing and Boughton's conducting aid Herford in creating a preponderantly oppressive atmosphere in 'And oh - That the man I am might cease to be - ,' the vibrant ring of the singer's voice deadened in the wonderful lines, 'I wish it would be completely dark everywhere, / inside me, and out, heavily dark utterly.' The intimate, almost claustrophobic world of 'December Night' is filled with vocal inflections that glimmer like reflections in icy windows, highlighting the core meaning of a line like 'The flickers come and go.' The final song, 'Moonrise,' is approached by both baritone and conductor as a sort of cathartic apotheosis, the sentimental dénouement of the cycle. Herford voices the words 'Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber / Of finished bridegroom' with the essence of finality, crowning his interpretation of the cycle with a muted but emotive resignation that touches the heart.

There is an old adage that extols variety as the spice of life, but it often seems that we prefer for our lives to be spiced only by those varieties with which we are comfortable. These Naxos discs stimulate the palate with piquant new flavors extracted from the music of two modern composers whose works deserve to be esteemed alongside the acknowledged masterpieces of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. The enterprising Naxos label again reminds listeners that some of the greatest pleasures to be had from music await us beyond the boundaries of our comfort zones. Today’s listeners’ pantries are far richer for these additions of the zesty spices of the music of Roman Berger and John Joubert.

[1] GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): Nessun dorma – The Puccini Album—Arias from Manon Lescaut, Le villi, Edgar, La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La fanciulla del West, La rondine, Il tabarro, Gianni Schicchi, and Turandot—Jonas Kaufmann, tenor; Kristīne Opolais, soprano; Massimo Simeoli, baritone; Antonio Pirozzi, bass; Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Sir Antonio Pappano, conductor [Recorded in Santa Cecilia Hall, Rome, Italy, 14 – 21 September 2014; Sony Classical 88875092492; 1 CD, time; Available from Amazon (USA), fnac (France), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): Rossini!– Arias from Il viaggio a Reims, Matilde di Shabran, Tancredi, Semiramide, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Il turco in Italia—Olga Peretyatko, soprano; Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna; Alberto Zedda, conductor [Recorded in Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Italy, 8 – 9, 11 – 12, and 14 – 15 November 2014; Sony Classical 88875057412; 1 CD, 70:22; Available from Amazon (USA), fnac (France), iTunes, jpc (Germany), and major music retailers]

[3] FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828): Goethe Lieder—Mauro Peter, tenor; Helmut Deutsch, piano [Recorded in SRF Radiostudio Zürich Leutschenbach, Switzerland, 25 – 27 February 2015; Sony Classical 88875083882; 1 CD, 53:20; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

If James Carville were entrusted with the management of an opera company, he might hang a sign somewhere in the theatre to remind his personnel of the principal focus of opera: the Voices, stupid. It is difficult to imagine any opera company deviating from this focus, but many institutions specializing in the performance of opera have in recent seasons offered their audiences Don Giovannis, Normas, Rigolettos, and Siegfrieds with pretty faces but the voices of Masettos, Clotildes, Marullos, and Mimes. It is not that there are no voices of quality to be heard on the world's stages today, but there is a worrying trend of valuing the package above the gift. Given the choice between an attractive visage and an unattractive one, the preference for the former is only natural, but in opera, as Shakespeare might have written, the voice is the thing. If she sounds like a menopausal shrew, of what use is a twenty-something Mimì with a Vogue-worthy face and figure? If opera is to survive, it must be sustained not by gimmicks or profusions of over-hyped waifs but by voices—properly-trained, thoughtfully-maintained, ably-projected voices. Neither a voice nor the body that houses it must be conventionally beautiful in order to​ communicate to audiences the emotions with which composers infused their scores: the beauty required to transform notes on a page into sounds that penetrate a listener's heart dwells in the imagination. There must be a voice supported by a properly-constructed technique at the service of that imagination, however, and three new discs from Sony Classical offer vastly different but equally compelling perspectives on the unique ways in which vocal music thrives in the new century. Truly significant voices have ever been rare, but these recordings dispel the oft-repeated allegation that they are now mere breaths away from extinction. Hype makes careers, but only voices of quality—voices like the three heard on these discs—distill the noises of living into the essence of song.

​Considering his recent triumph with 'Nessun dorma' in the BBC Last Night of the Proms concert and the tremendous success of his Des Grieux in Munich, soon to be reprised at The Metropolitan Opera, the burgeoning splendors of the relationship between German tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the music of Giacomo Puccini are hardly surprising. It should not be thought that the relationship is a recent development, however: Kaufmann was an admired Rodolfo in La bohème in Zürich during the early years of his international career, he recorded Pinkerton opposite Angela Gheorghiu's Cio-Cio San for EMI, and his portrayal of Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca has been lauded in both Europe and America. With The Puccini Album, Kaufmann stakes his claim to being lauded as the preeminent Puccini tenor of the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century. There is no doubting that Kaufmann possesses an exceptionally good, perhaps even great voice and is an exceptionally good, perhaps even great singer. What must be discerned is his place in a tradition of Puccini singing extending back to Enrico Caruso. Kaufmann is fortunate in the context of this disc to enjoy the support of the Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and, particularly, Sir Antonio Pappano, as intuitive an interpreter of Puccini's music as there is at work today. Under Pappano's sympathetic leadership, the Santa Cecilia forces deliver robust but graceful performances, both instruments and voices balanced with discernible comprehension of textures and dramatic situations. Even in the microcosms of individual arias, Pappano exerts a guiding influence that discloses not only in-depth knowledge of the material but also, perhaps even more importantly, true affection for Puccini's often-criticized music.

Opening with music of which he has proved himself to be a masterful interpreter, Kaufmann makes of Des Grieux's lusciously tuneful 'Donna non vidi mai' from Manon Lescaut an intensely personal statement of blossoming attraction expressed through song. The top B♭ is no longer produced with the freedom of only a few seasons in past, but the top notes throughout the selections on The Puccini Album are ringing, secure, and on pitch—sadly, an achievement of which far too few tenors more than a decade into their careers can boast. Kaufmann is joined by his Munich (and scheduled MET) partner, Latvian soprano Kristīne Opolais in the scene 'Oh, sarò la più bella!' and the thrilling 'Tu, tu, amore? Tu?' Like Kaufmann, Opolais is on good form, but she lacks the tenor's intuitive feeling for Puccinian phrasing. Still, the effect of two strong voices in music like 'Ah! Manon, mi tradisce' is undeniably exciting. Kaufmann is partnered in the dramatic 'Presto! In fila!' and 'Ah! Non n'avvicinate' by Antonio Pirozzi, who voices both the Sergente's and the Capitano's lines with a resonant bass. In the course of these selections, Kaufmann manages to create a remarkably complete portrait of the impetuous, romantic Des Grieux, singing the music as well as any tenor has done since the heady days of Richard Tucker.

Completed in 1883, the 'opera-ballo'Le villi was Puccini's first work for the stage. Though clearly an early work, many of the hallmarks of Puccini's mature style are evident, not least his penchant for creating flowing melodies that surge above propulsive but generally unobtrusive orchestrations. Roberto's recitative 'Ei giunge!' and aria 'Torna ai felici dì' do not possess the melodic distinction of much of Puccini's later music for the tenor voice, but Kaufmann's singing is memorable, the voice's dark timbre elucidating nuances of the aria's text. Also an early work, Edgar deserves to be performed far more frequently despite the deficiencies of its libretto. In truth, the score is not top-drawer Puccini, but Kaufmann's burly, impassioned performance of the title character's 'Orgia, chimera dall'occhio vitreo' makes a powerful argument on the opera's behalf.

Opolai​s is Mim​​ì to Kaufmann's Rodolfo in the duet that ends Act One of La bohème​, 'O soave fanciulla​.'​ Here, the coolness of the soprano's timbre lends the character that she portrays an aloofness that is not without charm, and though the style is still approximated the steadiness of tone counts for much. Kaufmann's voice is now an ungainly instrument for Rodolfo's music, but he sings poetically, shading his tone with the imagination of a young wordsmith in love. He preserves the lovely major-third harmony by preferring Puccini's written ending to the duet, eschewing the interpolated top C in unison with Mimì that brings many tenors to grief unnecessarily. Pirozzi is again heard with pleasure in the Sagrestano's interjections in Cavaradossi's 'Recondita armonia' from Act One of Tosca, captivatingly sung by Kaufmann. Baritone Massimo Simeoli sonorously supplies Sharpless's lines in Pinkerton's 'Addio, fiorito asil' from Act Three of Madama Butterfly. The melodic thrust of the aria perfectly suits Kaufmann, who intelligently uses the virility of his timbre to suggest greater vocal amplitude than he has at his command without forcing or shouting. Thankfully, he also leaves maudlin melodramatics to other tenors.

Kaufmann's Wiener Staatsoper performances of La fanciulla del West ​with Nina Stemme ​were justifiably acclaimed, and the excerpts from Johnson's music on The Puccini Album offer a tantalizing glimpse of his portrayal of the good-hearted bandito. The liquidity of his phrasing of 'Una parola sola!' and 'Or son sei mesi' lends the music an arresting element of vulnerability, and the contrasting energy and tenderness of his 'Risparmiate lo scherno' and 'Ch'ella mi creda libero,'​complemented​ b​y ​Simeoli's rousingly machismo Rance, credibly elucidate both Johnson's ruggedness and his sensitivity. Kaufmann sang Ruggero in La rondine to great acclaim with Pappano at Covent Garden, and he and the conductor here collaborate on a pulse-quickening account of 'Parigi! È la città dei desideri.​' The voice soars in ascending phrases as though the words were literally being hurled over the rooftops of Paris. Hearing Johnson's and Ruggero's music in succession, it is astonishing to note the differences between these creations of a composer often accused of stylistic stasis. It is also heartening to hear the music for both characters sung so ​handsomely and unaffectedly by the same singer.

Luigi's 'Hai ben ragione' from Il tabarro is an undervalued gem among Puccini's tenor arias, and the traversal that it receives from Kaufmann confirms its stature. Then, progressing to the final installment in Il trittico, he takes on Rinuccio's recitative 'Avete torto!' and familiar aria 'Firenze è come un albero fiorito' from Gianni Schicchi. It is again intriguing to hear both arias sung by the same singer, Luigi ideally requiring greater vocal heft than Rinuccio. Unexpectedly, 'Firenze è come in albero fiorito' is one of the finest selections on The Puccini Album. Kaufmann sings the aria with youthful ardor, leaving little doubt that Rinuccio's actions are motivated solely by his love for Lauretta. Aptly, the disc ends with the inevitable pair of Calàf's arias from Turandot. Opolais's reserve qualifies her as a near-ideal Liù, and her voice is at its loveliest in her few words in 'Non piangere, Liù​,​' to which Pirozzi contributes equally credibly as Timur. Kaufmann sings the aria superbly, shaping melodic units with a master craftsman's hand. His singing radiates compassion, and he depicts a Calàf hurt by the pain that his inability to requite her love causes Liù. Undoubtedly, more tenors have recorded 'Nessun dorma' who should not have done than have those for whom the aria is safe vocal territory. The aria's climactic top B is apparently irresistible even to singers who do not reliably have the note, but Kaufmann manages the range, high and low, with confidence if not true ease. The burnished, baritonal sound of the voice sustains Puccini's familiar melodic lines gloriously. Kaufmann's many admirers do him no favors by asserting that his vocalism is without flaws, but his singing on The Puccini Album is extraordinarily impressive, the work of a Puccini tenor with few peers in opera today.

An artist of any age could be mentored and conducted in the singing of music by Gioachino Rossini by no more authoritative an individual than Alberto Zedda. Neither his innate comprehension of the composer's idiom nor his zeal for advocating Rossini's music and stylistically-appropriate performances of it has been compromised by the advancing years​, and whether in the lecture hall or on the podium he remains a seminal scholar and a persuasive interpreter of Rossini's operas. Presiding over the wholly idiomatic Orchestra and Chorus of Bologna's Teatro Comunale, he is the spine that supports Rossini!, this joyous disc featuring a sequence of glittering performances by Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko. The choristers and instrumentalists, clearly cognizant of being in the presence of a man who knows and loves the music of Rossini as intimately as the composer himself must have done, perform with the sort of dedication that elucidates the quality of the music. In Zedda's hands, every note has significance that is honored but not over-accentuated, and he nurtures the young soprano's prodigious gifts for singing Rossini arias with the glee of a doyen recognizing a kindred spirit.

Unlike many of his colleagues, Zedda does not use Rossini's trademark crescendi as a license to apply accelerandi to passages of rising tension and dramatic magnitude. Rather, the conductor meaningfully exhibits how Rossini cleverly used the device differently in comic and tragic scores. In the realm of ubiquitous Rossinian opera buffa, Peretyatko opens Rossini! with an ebullient account of Rosina's 'Una voce poco fa' from Act One of Il barbiere di Siviglia. Here and throughout the selections on this disc, Zedda's tempi sometimes initially seem ploddingly deliberate, but the seldom-appreciated felicities of Rossini's witty orchestrations that emerge and the soprano's appreciably clean negotiations of coloratura are facilitated by the conductor's approach. Still a young singer, Peretyatko does not yet possess Jonas Kaufmann's ability to fully characterize a part in the context of a singer aria, but she sings the Rossinian ladies' music with feeling and consummate style. Though composed for a contralto, Rosina has often been usurped by sopranos, in some cases—Lily Pons, Beverly Sills, and Diana Damrau, for instance—charmingly. With a smile in the voice, Peretyatko dispatches the coloratura accurately and sparklingly. Though her diction is generally fine, her textual inflections are not quite idiomatic. The voice records well, but the overtones that make the instrument effervescent in the opera house are only partially in evidence on disc. She is nonetheless a perky, pretty Rosina who is equally lovable in docility and mischief.

Fiorilla's aria 'I vostri cenci vi mando' from Il turco in Italia is also an excellent vehicle for both Peretyatko and Zedda. Throughout the performances on Rossini!, the soprano complements the conductor's stylistic mastery by ornamenting tastefully—a significant departure from the model of Sills!—and, despite the reliability of her starlit upper register, rejecting stratospheric interpolated top notes at the ends of arias. Her center of vocal gravity is slightly higher than that of many Fiorillas, among whose ranks on recordings are singers as different as Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé, Sumi Jo, and Cecilia Bartoli, but her comfort with the tessitura is apparent. Like her 'Una voce poco fa,' her account of Fiorilla's aria fizzes with both femininity and feistiness, amplified by Zedda's sympathetic accompaniment.

In its plot and the incredible demands of its casting, Il viaggio a Reims is an opera that both depicts and is a festive occasion. Rossini loaded the score of Il viaggio with fantastic music, and any opportunity to hear selections from the opera sung as well as they are sung on this disc is self-recommending. First, Peretyatko voices Corinna's aria d'improvviso'All'ombra amena' with an apt air of spontaneity, the voice and the singer's demeanor glowing more in each successive phrase. An amusing suggestion of mock opera seria exasperation enlivens her singing of Contessa di Folleville's 'Partir, o ciel!' The aria's filigree is delicately drawn by Peretyatko, but she mostly paints with primary colors, depicting an appropriately two-dimensional Contessa of limited capacity for empathy but boundless fun. The difficulties of the music hold no terrors for her, and the combination of bravura solidity and insouciant haughtiness is ideal for the character. How marvelous she would surely be as Comtesse Adèle in Le comte Ory!

Matilde di Shabran, in which opera Peretyatko triumphed opposite Juan Diego Flórez at Pesaro’s Rossini Opera Festival, is, like Il viaggio a Reims, an infrequent visitor to recording studios, so this souvenir of Peretyatko's interpretation of the title rôle is especially welcome. She shapes the recitative 'Ami alfine' with considerable eloquence that she expands further in her singing of the lovely aria 'Tacea la tromba altera.' Peretyatko's experience with performing this music on stage is unmistakable, not least in her expertly-judged phrasing. Obvious, too, is the intuition for Rossini's serious music that she has acquired via acclaimed performances of the rôle of Desdemona in Rossini's Otello. The bravura demands of Matilde's aria are met with confidence to spare, but it is the spirit of the singing that is most impressive. The sapphire hues in the voice that glimmer evocatively in comic music take on darker tints in more dire contexts, and the animated girl who earlier brought the wily Rosina and Fiorilla to life unexpectedly becomes a woman of radiant maturity.

The title character's aria 'Bel raggio lusinghier' from Semiramide is one of Rossini's most familiar numbers and, in truth, a prime instance of the composer's genius overcoming the banality of the tune. The performance of the aria on this disc benefits greatly from Peretyatko's firm technical footing, but there are a few passages in which the tone lacks focus, as though the coloratura displaces the core of her singing. Still, she sings the aria unaffectedly, and her performance, likely closer in vocal amplitude to what Rossini expected than several modern exponents of Semiramide like Dame Joan Sutherland and Cheryl Studer, is beguiling. Musically and dramatically, Amenaide's scena'Di mia vita infelice' and aria 'No, che il morir' from Tancredi​ constitute the best selection on Rossini!, and the traversal that this music receives from Peretyatko and Zedda is equal to the splendor of Rossini's creation. Here, the character's emotions rush to the surface, and the youthful soprano limns them simply but touchingly. She and Zedda approach the music without heaviness or exaggeration, meticulously maintaining the buoyancy of the melodic line. Ultimately, it is particularly fitting that the disc is entitled Rossini!, for it is the composer's music that is front and center here. An artist as committed to the study, understanding, and informed performance of Rossini's music as Alberto Zedda would have it no other way; neither would Olga Peretyatko, who pursues personal expression rather than rigid perfection and in doing so gives as enjoyable a recital of Rossini arias as has been recorded in recent years.

It is no hyperbole to suggest that the wholly organic familiarity exhibited in the music of Rossini by Alberto Zedda is paralleled in German Lieder repertory by pianist Helmut Deutsch, a collaborative artist of the first order whose playing has enriched the recitals and recordings of many of the past quarter-century's most accomplished exponents of Lieder singing. Schubert Lieder are for Deutsch their own language, and he is among the few artists who 'speak' it without distractingly idiosyncratic accents. With Deutsch as his guide, young Swiss tenor Mauro Peter is rapidly attaining fluency. He has to his credit a beautiful voice notable for the evenness of the integration of the upper and lower registers and an alluring plangency of timbre: in opera and Lieder, his tones combine the steel of Kaufmann with the sweetness of his countryman Ernst Haefliger. As an interpreter of Schubert Lieder, he is establishing himself as a steward of the tradition of Anton Dermota, Haefliger, and Peter Schreier, singers for whom music and poetry were inseparable. There is in Peter's singing on this disc a strong element of the troubadour: though there is no shortage of power when it is needed, these performances seem directed to the individual listener instead of the recital hall. Peter and Deutsch initiate a conversation with Schubert into which the listener is invited. Whether or not one knows German, this is a recital that makes its points sonorously and causes merely listening to seem like actively taking part.

The influence exerted by the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in both opera houses and recital halls cannot be overstated. The publication and widespread distribution of Die Leiden des jungen Werther and Faust in the final thirty years of the Eighteenth Century triggered a creative avalanche of a magnitude rivaled in music only by the bodies of work inspired by the Bible, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Sir Walter Scott. Of special resonance for composers was Goethe's philosophical handling of the bargain between Faust and Satan, which abounds with artistic implications. No less momentous as sources of inspiration for composers were Goethe's smaller-scaled works, in many of which the ethos of the epic texts found varied contexts. Among the composers who turned to Goethe's words for Lieder texts, no one was more successful at capturing the essence of a passage than Schubert. Frequently employing verses by his contemporaries, Schubert had an extraordinary gift for elevating texts beyond their literary merit, but he found in Goethe's lines words for the most part worthy of his genius. Both writer and composer find in Peter and Deutsch performers who convey a full appreciation of how special the Goethe settings are among Schubert's Lieder.

Opening with the exquisitely-written 'Ganymed' (D. 544), Peter sings with tonal sheen befitting a youth with whom a god became besotted. Throughout this recital, the tenor does not shrink from overt Romanticism, basking in rather than hiding from the songs' innate sensuality and even hinting at a subdued eroticism that lurks beneath the surface. His ambiguous, searching voicing of 'Erster Verlust' (D. 226) is bolstered by Deutsch's suggestive playing. The disquieting tranquility with which Peter sings 'Rastlose Liebe' (D. 138) is strangely haunting, the sound of the voice taking on a disembodied quality that floats over the piano's firm tones like mist settling menacingly on a bucolic landscape. Subtlety is also the hallmark of Peter's and Deutsch's performance of 'Meeres Stille' (D. 216). The effects that the tenor is able to achieve with his exemplary breath control disclose the marvels of Schubert's construction of melodic arcs, and his clear, vibrant diction enables the listener to appreciate the insightfulness with which the composer melded Goethe's words with his music.

The three Gesänge des Harfners (Opus 12) are here presented with the unity of a Lieder cycle in miniature, singer and pianist exploring the commonalities among the songs without extrapolating contexts that neither text nor music supports. 'Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt' (D. 478) is sung with appropriately-scaled intensity, and Peter's account of 'Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen' (D. 479) is characterized by a profoundly moving but not overwhelming melancholy. In 'An die Türen will ich schleichen' (D. 480), it is the beauty of the voice that is most impressive: when the words are caressed by such nobly-produced tone, what more is required?

'Der Musensohn' (D. 764) is among Schubert's most beautiful songs, and Peter's performance of it warrants comparison with the finest recordings. On disc, only Hermann Prey equals Peter in the practice of the now-elusive art of choosing Lieder from Schubert's extensive catalogue that are ideal for his individual voices, literal and interpretive. Among his fellow tenors, it is the golden-toned Russian Georgi Vinogradov that Peter's aristocratic but flexible singing on this disc most recalls. The drama in 'Der König in Thule' (D. 367), 'Heidenröslein' (D. 257), and 'Der Fischer' (D. 225) is brought to the foreground without being given excessive prominence. Deutsch's strongly-defined pianism drives ‘Der König in Thule,' and Peter takes the lead in ‘Heidenröslein,' the voice unfurled in a grand canopy of melody. 'Erlkönig' (D. 328) is one of the most familiar of Schubert's Goethe settings, but Peter sings it as though the newly-completed manuscript were handed to him moments before he stepped up to Sony's microphone. 'Am Flusse' (D. 766) and 'An den Mond' (D. 296) are fastidiously differentiated by tenor and pianist alike, and the element of awe that they impart in the oft-abused 'Wanderers Nachtlied' (D. 768) lends the song an immediacy that many interpreters miss.

The quartet of songs at the end of the disc draw from Peter and Deutsch interpretations of unmistakable affection. The too-little-heard 'Versunken' (D. 715), a jewel of Schubert's imagination, is very movingly done, the mood of the piece extracted from the text rather than artificially imposed by the performers. Likewise, the singular sentiments of 'Geheimes' (D. 719) are limned with the simplicity that is possible only with careful study and absorption of the music. 'An die Entfernte' (D. 765) flows in an uninterrupted torrent of expressivity that floods the work of both Peter and Deutsch, expanding but not diluting the gentlemen's consummate musicality. The sublime 'Willkommen und Abschied' (D. 767) is a fitting conclusion for a Goethe-themed disc, and Peter and Deutsch devote to their performance of it the very best of their artistries. Tenor and pianist trace the lines of the music with such cooperation that their efforts seem to be those of a single artist. Deutsch's accomplishments in Lieder repertory are too extensive to require further endorsement, but Mauro Peter here proves himself to be a Schubertian of comprehensive musical and poetic excellence. Especially in the last years of his life, the increasingly curmudgeonly Goethe was suspicious of and even openly hostile to musical settings of his texts. To what could he have objected in Schubert's Lieder had he heard Peter and Deutsch perform them?

The musical legacies of the Twenty-First Century are only just beginning to take shape, but the lessons of recent years are many and often learned only after bitterness and pride are vanquished. For those who can neither fathom nor endure a world without Classical Music, there are lessons that must be taken to heart. These three Sony Classical discs offer a blueprint for building a secure, satisfying future for an art for which many commentators have already written obituaries. It is sadly true that Tucker, Sills, and Wunderlich no longer grace the world's stages today, but there are in this new millennium artists of the caliber of Jonas Kaufmann, Olga Peretyatko, and Mauro Peter. What makes opera and Classical vocal music relevant for modern audiences? Voices such as these, stupid!

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Don Carlo [1882 – 1883 La Scala version in four acts]—Gaston Rivero (Don Carlo), Annalisa Raspagliosi (Elisabetta di Valois), Sarah Heltzel (Principessa Eboli), Michael Nansel (Rodrigo, Marchese di Posa), William Powers (Filippo II), Samuel Ramey (il Grande Inquisitore), Gregory Brumfield (Un frate), Lily Guerrero (Tebaldo), Carline Waugh (Una voce dal cielo), Riad Ymeri (Un araldo reale); Chorus and Orchestra of Wichita Grand Opera; Martin Mázik, conductor [Stanley M. Garner, Stage Director; Set designs by Margaret Ann Pent; Stefan Pavlov, Scenic Artist; Lighting designs by Dan Harmon; Costume designs by Suzanne Mess; Wichita Grand Opera, Century II Concert Hall, Wichita, Kansas, USA – Sunday, 27 September 2015]

Since the première of Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea in 1643, the world's operatic stages have often been the playgrounds of royalty. Emperors of Rome, Egyptian Pharaohs, Tudors and Hapsburgs, and crowned heads from virtually every chapter of history have been resurrected in opera, their lives scrutinized from widely varying, often anachronistic perspectives. The tempestuous milieu of Spanish politics was a fertile environment to which Giuseppe Verdi turned in several notable instances during his long career. In Ernani, the Spanish king Carlo effectively reinvents himself upon his election as Holy Roman Emperor, and strife among rival factions in Il trovatore pits Manrico against the Conte di Luna in a fight that not even death wholly settles. In Don Carlo, originally composed in fulfillment of a commission from Paris’s storied Opéra to a French libretto, adapted from a Schiller play, by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, the focus is on the collisions of destinies between Hapsburg Spain and Valois France. In the same vein as the confrontation between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I so memorably set to music by Donizetti, the illicit love between the Infante Carlos and his stepmother Elizabeth that is central to Schiller's drama has no basis in history aside from an arranged marriage between two juveniles who had, in fact, never met, but the potency of the emotional confrontations in Verdi's Don Carlo render historicity insignificant. Not even in Simon Boccanegra, Aida, and Otello did Verdi portray the devastating consequences of public duties upon private lives as powerfully as in Don Carlo. At its core, the prevailing theme of Don Carlo is gloriously simple: to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, the souls of Verdi's characters select their own societies and then find the doors of their hearts closed even to feelings that might bring them happiness and save their lives.

Like many operas, Don Carlo has been afflicted in recent years by the disease of enforced relevance, directors having deemed it necessary to editorialize in order to make the opera more 'relevant' to modern audiences. It is true that, as Peter Schaffer's Mozart suggests in Amadeus, almost anyone would rather converse with his hairdresser than with Hercules, but Verdi was very meticulous—and, thereby, wholly successful—at populating Don Carlo not with kings and princes who sometimes behave like ordinary men but with ordinary men who happen to bear titles. The difference perhaps seems merely semantic, but the distinction is important to appreciation of Verdi's score. There is no question in the course of his great monologue that Filippo is first a man and then a monarch: his personal tragedy is that he must always act as a king when he feels as a man. This dichotomy manifests itself in so many aspects of life that, whether one is a stockbroker or a store clerk, the sentiments of Don Carlo are familiar without the meddling efforts of directors and designers.

Under the stage direction of Stanley M. Garner, Wichita Grand Opera's production of Don Carlo provided a sumptuous, thoughtfully-conceived setting in which the drama came to life rather than seeking to provide the drama itself. Though Schiller and Verdi exercised considerable historical freedom, a production of Don Carlo that has no resemblance to the Spain of Charles V is difficult to justify. The increasingly popular conceit of suggesting, more overtly in some productions than in others, that Carlo and Rodrigo are lovers panders to Twenty-First-Century sensibilities without increasing a listener's understanding of the relationships among the characters as Verdi presented them. With luxurious costume designs by Suzanne Mess and simple but effective sets by company founder and Artistic Advisor Margaret Ann Pent, WGO's production visually and stylistically placed the action in Sixteenth-Century Spain without overwhelming the opera's strong current of lyricism with gaudy spectacle. Utilizing the 1882 – 1883 edition of the score in four acts, first performed at Teatro alla Scala in 1884, the production exercised great imagination in the context of a splendidly evocative 'traditional' setting. Ingeniously illuminated by Dan Harmon's right-place, right-time lighting designs, scenic artist Stefan Pavlov's work shone like a gallery in the Prado. Celia Chin's work with hair and wigs and Patrica Myers's makeup artistry gave every individual upon the stage a clear identity without interfering with the mechanics of singing. The grandeur of the staging of the Auto da fè contrasted tellingly with scenes of greatest intimacy, not least Filippo's monologue and his subsequent audience with the Grand Inquisitor, conducted in a chamber that seemed increasingly claustrophobic as the pair of voices thunderously filled the space. This production 'worked' so remarkably because every member of the team assembled to devise and present it drew inspiration and instruction first and foremost from Verdi's score.

With WGO's Principal Guest Conductor Martin Mázik on the podium, the musical components of this Don Carlo were built upon an impeccably sturdy foundation. Trained by chorus master Matthew Schloneger, the WGO choristers acquitted themselves impressively, meeting Verdi's demands unflinchingly and with security of intonation from which their colleagues in many larger opera companies' choruses could learn much. The gentlemen of the chorus having launched the performance with a resonant account of the monks' chorus, 'Carlo il sommo Imperatore, non è più che muta cener,' they and the ladies rose to the occasion of the Auto da fè with power and clarity, their imposing sound beautifully complemented by soprano Carline Waugh's soaring, comforting Voce dal cielo. Mázik's conducting was propulsive but considered, his pacing enabling the principals to create fully-developed characters. Considering the difficulty of Verdi's score, there were astonishingly few mistakes in the orchestra. The handful of suspect pitches in the brasses were not bothersome, especially when the most exposed passages were played so well. Mázik's conducting lent ample power to scenes requiring it but also engendered great tenderness in delicate passages. The score's crucial motifs—those representing Carlo's and Rodrigo's friendship, Elisabetta's longing for her native France, and the Grand Inquisitor's malevolence, for instance—were insightfully spotlit without being glaringly over-accentuated. Mázik's expert cueing—an endangered art among conductors of opera—enabled a laudable avoidance of mishaps in coordination between pit and stage, and his management of ensembles was virtually flawless. Like the production staff, Mázik clearly viewed his task as one of executing Verdi's directions, not reinterpreting them.

Introducing the solo voices with a stirring account of the Frate’s ‘Ei voleva regnare sul mondo,’ bass Gregory Brumfield returned in Act Four on equally granitic form as the enigmatic voice discerned by the Grand Inquisitor as that of the dead Emperor Carlo V. His estimable singing was matched by that of soprano Lily Guerrero, who impersonated Tebaldo with boundless energy and charm. She sang ‘Di mille fior si copre il suolo’ delightfully. Also impressive was young Kosovar tenor Riad Ymeri, whose declamation as the Araldo reale was appropriately assertive.

Acclaimed among a veritable bounty of triumphs as the finest interpreter of his or any generation of the title rôle in Verdi's Attila, Kansas native bass Samuel Ramey has to his credit Verdian credentials more remarkable than those of almost any other singer active in the 114 years since the composer's death. Having sung lead rôles in scores dating from all periods of Verdi's career, Ramey possesses an unique understanding, born of experience, of the ways in which Verdi's style evolved from the bel canto of Oberto and Nabucco to the dramatic grandeur of Aida and Otello and the rapier's-point comedy of Falstaff. Anyone who heard him sing the rôle in the 1998 Opéra National de Paris production or the 2005 Cleveland Orchestra concert performance of Don Carlo cannot have doubted that they were witnessing an extraordinary portrayal of the tormented Filippo II. In WGO's Don Carlo, Ramey traded Filippo's crown for the ecclesiastical robes of il Grande Inquisitore. Any questions about Verdi's stance on the Church are resolutely answered by his characterization of the Grand Inquisitor, whose dogmatic implacability is as menacing as Ramfis's warmongering and Iago's jealous villainy, and Ramey brought the ferocious old man to life with chilling intensity. Though blind, this Inquisitor peered into the darkest recesses of Filippo's psyche, sensing every twitch of uncertainty like a coiled viper. Ramey's voice is no longer the rock-solid instrument of extraordinary agility that it was when he first erupted onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera as Argante in Händel's Rinaldo in 1984, but this mattered not a jot. He uttered 'Nell’ispano suol mai l’eresia dominò' with such unanswerable authority and piercing power that the tremulousness of the sound made it all the more momentous. Ramey's intonation was faultless, and every note of his part was well within his grasp. Hearing a revered singer in the Indian summer of his career can be dreadfully disappointing, but the only disappointment produced by Ramey's performance was the brevity of his time on stage. His was the rare Inquisitore who merited the honorific Grande.

The trend in recent years, surely a circumstance of necessity, has been to cast singers who can do justice either to Principessa Eboli's canzone del velo or to the dramatic aria 'O don fatale, o don crudel.' Few performances of Don Carlo can boast of an Eboli who can manage both of her solo scenes with comparable excellence, but Wichita Grand Opera defied the trend by casting mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel as the vengeful but ultimately repentant Princess. Whether toying with Rodrigo, luring Carlo into an assignation, or confessing her treachery to Elisabetta, Heltzel's Eboli maintained a fiery presence that placed her at the center of the drama. WGO's production downplayed Eboli's rôle as the king's mistress, but Heltzel's alert acting made the character's hypocrisy unmistakable. It is strange that, after rescuing Carlo from prison in the wake of Rodrigo's death, Eboli simply disappears, not unlike Bellini's Adalgisa, presumably seeking refuge either behind cloister walls or beyond Spain's borders. Still, Heltzel depicted an Eboli who was dramatically present even when physically absent. Her account of the canzone del velo, 'Nel giardin del bello saracin ostello,' was effective if not definitive: the Moorish-influenced flourishes were trials for her, but she sang the number far more credibly than many Ebolis manage to do, ascending to the many top As with imperturbable confidence. Eboli's rendezvous with Carlo having revealed that Elisabetta is the actual object of his affection, Heltzel unleashed the potent fury of a spurned woman in the heart-stopping trio with Carlo and Rodrigo, her ‘Al mio furor sfuggite invano’ flowing over the stage like lava. The depth of emotion that Heltzel conveyed when Eboli discovered that her jealousy has exacted such a cruel toll on Elisabetta gave unusual credence to the high-strung Princess's remorse. Heltzel's singing of 'O don fatale, o don crudel,' the climactic top C♭ and B♭ produced with unperturbed élan, was justifiably acclaimed by the audience. Portraying Eboli's hauteur is not difficult, but doing so whilst singing some of the most challenging music that Verdi composed for the mezzo-soprano voice is anything but easy. Heltzel managed to both sing and act Eboli brilliantly. For that alone, WGO's Don Carlo was memorable.

In the hands of a capable singer, Rodrigo can be the dramatic and sentimental epicenter of a performance of Don Carlo. The trouble, of course, is that baritones capable of singing Rodrigo's music as it deserves to be sung are now as rare as great Normas and Isoldes. In Michael Nansel, however, Wichita Grand Opera had a Marchese di Posa whose voice and technique proved worthy of the music. From the first phrase of his entrance in Act One, Nansel sang with alternating steel and velvet, encountering few difficulties with his rôle’s perilously high tessitura. In the grand ‘friendship duet’ with Carlo, ‘Dio, che nell’alma infondere,’ Nansel’s voice rang out handsomely, and he united every ideally-projected tone with a dramatic gesture of similar accomplishment. The trills were approximated in the baritone's lovingly-phrased traversal of Rodrigo's romanza ‘Carlo ch’è sol il nostro amore vive nel duol su questo suol,' but there was nothing approximate about the intonation or security of the singer's top F♯s. In the duet with Filippo, Nansel delivered ‘O signor, di Fiandra arrivo, quel paese un dì sì bel’ with the eloquence of a great orator and the passion of a champion of liberty: more to the point, he sang his lines magnificently, revealing that Rodrigo stands out as a man of exalted character even in the presence of a king. In the Act Two trio with Eboli and Carlo, this Rodrigo was forceful without hectoring, his sudden animosity towards the threatening Eboli obviously motivated by his loyalty to Carlo. Nansel made Rodrigo's death scene in Act Three the emotional climax of the opera. The beauty of his singing of the aria ‘Per me giunto è il dì supremo’ heightened the expressivity of the music, this Rodrigo seeming genuinely proud to sacrifice himself for friend and cause. Felled by the Inquisitor's assassin, he defied the fatal bullet with a gently moving traversal of 'O Carlo, ascolta, la madre t’aspetta a San Giusto doman.’ Musically and histrionically, ‘Io morrò, ma lieto in core’ was the apotheosis of Nansel's performance, his top G♭s dispatched with the elation of a soul rising to heaven. Acting almost as well as he sang, Nansel was a Rodrigo who touched the heart and ravished the ears.

Bass-baritone William Powers portrayed a Filippo II for whom violence was a refuge from the insecurities of his reign. When wielding the iron fist of tyranny, he was wholly in command of his realm, but, when contemplating his willful son and young wife or cowering before the Grand Inquisitor, he struggled to control his own mind and actions. What was consistently under Powers's thumb, however, was Verdi's sublime music for Filippo. Bounding onto the stage with a regal authority that revealed his identity before he sang a single word, Powers intoned ‘Perchè sola è la Regina? Non una dama almeno presso di voi serbaste?’ with petulant grandeur. In both the duet with Rodrigo in Act One and Filippo's animalistic sparring with the Grand Inquisitor in Act Three, Powers moved and sang with the pent-up frustration of a monarch losing his grasp on absolute authority. It was first in his pained realization that he has perniciously wronged the innocent Elisabetta and then in his exquisite monologue in Act Three that this Filippo’s humanity pierced the armor of his public persona. Powers sang ‘Ella giammai m’amò!’ with insightfully-shaded tone that was beautiful even when the weary king was raging against the cruelties of his fate. The king who inspires fear being reduced to a man who fears for his own survival proved incredibly moving in Powers’s performance, not least because Filippo’s music was so securely, attractively, and heartrendingly sung.

The rôle of Elisabetta di Valois in Don Carlo is one of Verdi's greatest creations for the soprano voice, the high level of inspiration sustained throughout his music for the part. At first glance, it can seem that a character who must wait until Act Four for an aria of substance plays a small part in the drama, but Elisabetta's music is at the very heart of Don Carlo, just as the woman is the nucleus of the drama. Were her aria at the start of Act Four, 'Tu, che le vanità,' the only music that she sang in the course of the opera, she would be one of Verdi's most remarkable ladies, but the composer lavished on the conflicted queen music that represents the pinnacle of his lyric genius. In Wichita Grand Opera's production of Don Carlo, the rôle of Elisabetta was entrusted to the company's de facto prima donna in residence, Italian soprano Annalisa Raspagliosi. Acclaimed in Wichita in rôles as diverse as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and Puccini's Tosca, Raspagliosi is an artist of uncommon stylistic versatility and charisma, qualities admired by audiences throughout Europe but inexcusably under-appreciated in America. To an extent, Raspagliosi is representative of a bygone era of adventurous Italian sopranos who lavished idiomatic chiaroscuro on their performances and earned the devotion of followers utterly committed to 'their' diva—singers like Caterina Mancini, Marcella Pobbe, and Anita Cerquetti. Though her singing was sometimes cautious, which any soprano's should be in music as challenging as Verdi's, Raspagliosi's Elisabetta possessed qualities that brought each of these three celebrated forebears to mind. Her stage deportment was characterized by Mancini's fearlessness, and she shared with Cerquetti an innate nobility of phrasing. Perhaps most enriching, however, was her resurrection of Pobbe's sovereign beauty of tone, especially in the middle octave of the voice. The poise of her singing in Act One was disturbed by the agitation of the towering duet with Carlo, in which she voiced ‘Prence, se vuol Filippo udire la mia preghiera’ with blazing seriousness, the richness of her lower register contrasting with her piercing top B♭. The romanza ‘Non pianger, mia compagna, non pianger, no, lenisci il tuo dolor,’ Elisabetta’s heartbroken effort at comforting the Countess of Aremberg—portrayed with grace by Sierra Scott—after exile is imposed upon her by Filippo, drew from Raspagliosi a stream of shimmering tones. In Act Three, she demanded ‘Giustizia, giustizia, Sire!’ of her suspicious consort with startling impetus before perceiving the enormity of Filippo’s accusations in the subsequent quartet. Raspagliosi’s expressive singing of ‘Tu, che le vanità conoscesti del mondo’ made the aria an intimate survey of virtually every nuance of Elisabetta’s personality, accomplished with the purest outpouring of song. The effect of the soprano’s serene but tortured farewell to her beloved in the duet with Carlo was poignant, her floated top B like the sigh of an angel. Reaching her breaking point as Filippo and the Inquisitor rushed in to enact their ultimate sentence and the mysterious monk emerged from the tomb to claim Carlo, her final top B was hurled out into the concert hall like a grenade, the tone igniting the air. That Raspagliosi is not heard as widely in America as she is in Europe is another of opera’s inexplicable failings, but the quality of her Elisabetta left no doubt of the legitimacy of the affection that she receives from Wichita audiences.

Whether sung in French or Italian, Don Carlo is one of Verdi's most daunting tenor rôles. Making his American début in this production, Uruguayan tenor Gaston Rivero made a strong impression in Carlo's music. Despite an unbecoming wig, the young tenor was a dashing, unapologetically romantic figure, a Latin lover to the life. He conveyed an appealing boyishness at his first entrance in Act One [the historical Infante Carlos was only twenty-three years old at the time of his death, after all], mitigated by the stinging despair of his recitative ‘Io l’ho perduta! Oh! potenza suprema!’ Rivero summoned ample lyricism for Carlo’s andante cantabile aria ‘Io la vidi e al suo sorriso scintillar mi parve il sole,’ and, here and throughout the performance, he produced the many top B♭s of his rôle without strain. In the famous duet with Rodrigo, ‘Dio, che nell’alma infondere,’ he joined with Nansel captivatingly, but his best singing of the afternoon was in the Act One duet with Elisabetta, in which he voiced ‘Quest’aura m’è fatale, m’opprime, mi tortura, come ul pensier d’una sventura’ with near-explosive fervor. In the Act Two trio with Eboli and Rodrigo, Rivero lit a fuse of emotive fireworks with his singing of ‘Sei tu, sei tu, bell’adorata, che appari in mezzo ai fior!’ From that point until his last note in the opera, the tenor credibly portrayed a man broken by circumstance: his truest friend dead, forced to flee from the company of the woman he loves, and his own father seeking his blood, he was forced to the cusp of irrationality. Many Carlos are either off-puttingly arrogant or psychologically unhinged from the start, but Rivero created a portrait of a young man of reason and wit whose psyche is compromised by misery. Though his vocalism was unrelentingly loud and occasionally coarse, Rivero sang Carlo’s music with noteworthy swagger and red-blooded musicality, signaling the arrival on the American ‘circuit’ of an important artist.

One of the foremost powers of opera is the ability to unite an audience of aficionados, neophytes, connoisseurs, and Philistines and transport them en masse from an opulent opera house, a run-down theatre, a glistening concert hall, or a musty auditorium to any niche of the human imagination. Why it is now often argued that an old Rodolfo cannot love a fat Mimì and an ugly Violetta cannot break a weathered Alfredo's heart is a disheartening conundrum that undermines opera's enduring appeal. The sincerity with which the cast of Wichita Grand Opera's Don Carlo sang their music and portrayed their characters obscured the fact that they were, in fact, an attractive ensemble. The disfiguring ugliness of the Grand Inquisitor's warped morality masked the handsome face that communicated it, and Elisabetta's beauty radiated most beguilingly from her unsullied tones. If members of the audience had been polled during the performance, it is doubtful that they would have said that they were in Wichita. For three hours, they were in Spain, at the court of one of Sixteenth-Century Europe's most powerful monarchs. That is the most distilled essence of opera, and Wichita Grand Opera, celebrating the company’s fifteenth anniversary, put on a marvelously-sung, honestly-interpreted performance of Don Carlo that honored Verdi, the audience, and every embittered family, unfortunate lover, and true friendship touched by life's tragedies.

ALBAN BERG (1885 – 1935): Lyrische Suite [with alternate version of Largo desolato movement with soprano]; EGON WELLESZ (1885 – 1974): Sonette der Elisabeth Barrett Browning, Opus 52; and ERIC ZEISL (1905 – 1959): ‘Komm, süßer Tod’ [arranged for soprano and string quartet by J. Peter Koene]—Renée Fleming, soprano; Emerson String Quartet [Recorded at Queens College, Flushing, New York, USA, 2 and 6 December 2014, and 11 – 12 February 2015 (Berg), and at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA, 28 – 29 August 2014 (Wellesz and Zeisl); DECCA 478 8399; 1 CD, 56:28; Available from DECCA Classics, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Like the works of Leonardo da Vinci, the plays of Molière, and the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, the music of Alban Berg is a turning point in Western culture. Born in 1885, when the Austrian Hapsburgs were enjoying their final flourishes of popularity and Vienna remained the musical capital of the Family Strauß, Berg evolved into an indelible but not inflexible exponent of the Second Viennese School whose Wozzeck and Lulu traded the tonal opulence of Wagner and Richard Strauss for convoluted, post-Freudian psychology explored in free-form, twelve-tone scores that posed new challenges to conductors, musicians, singers, and audiences. The ideals that Berg pursued in the opera house also occupied his composition of concert music, the programmatic development of thematic material playing an important rôle in his creative process at all stages of his career. His latent radicalism notwithstanding, there are positively-charged protons of traditionalism darting through the atomic structures of even Berg's most experimental works, particles that some proponents of the composer's music ignore or reject outright as incompatible with the avant-garde propensities upon which his renown is founded. It seems ridiculous for occasional nods to Bruckner and Mahler to be construed as betrayals of the coven of Schönberg and Webern, but Music was never a congenial environment for logic or compromise. The pockets of lyricism deemed antiquated by his contemporaries are what now set Berg's music apart from the cacophonous scores of more hard-boiled adherents of Schönbergian aesthetics, promoting Berg from the ranks of masters of a singular idiom to acclaim as one of the most significant individual voices in the course of Western music's progress. In short, many of his similarly-inclined comrades in musical arms produced significant, landscape-altering scores, but Berg composed works that listeners for whom music should be tunes, not treatises, actually want to hear.

To state that Berg's Lyrische Suite is among his most accessible pieces is not to suggest that the music is in any way 'easy' for performers or listeners. First published in 1927, the Suite was the offspring of Berg's brief sojourn with a prominent industrialist, Herbert Fuchs-Robettin, and his family in 1925. Though it might colloquially be said that at the age of forty he was old enough to have known better, it was the sensitive composer's lot to fall in love with the lady of the house. The extent to which the affection was requited is a matter of debate, but the manuscript score containing written explications of the personal associations of the music—naturally omitted from the published edition—remained for many years in the collection of Lady Industrialist's daughter Dorothea, herself a subject of the Suite's musical portraiture. The gentlemen of Emerson String Quartet—violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins—here play the Suite straightforwardly, mostly allowing the music to makes its own points without imposing interpretive quirks on either the score or the listener. Though the sound that they craft is not always ideally homogeneous, especially in terms of bowing and phrasing among the individual players, the Emerson players largely avoid the hyper-Romantic vibrato that mars the playing of many of today's string quartets. The restless subject of the opening Allegretto gioviale movement is delivered with strong senses of its muscular, dodecaphonic angularity and abundant high spirits. This contrasts markedly with the retiring, almost embarrassed mood of the Andante amoroso that follows, conjured with eloquence that occasionally seems too considered for the shy sentiments of the music. Intonation is suspect in a few passages of the quartet's playing of the Allegro misterioso — Trio estatico movement, but the manic energy of the Trio is splendidly evinced. It is especially evident here and in each of the movements of Lyrische Suite that reliably solid playing of the viola part is absolutely crucial to the success of a performance of this music, and Dutton is thankfully up to the task. The quartet's performance of the Adagio appassionato unfurls the unsettling sensuality of the music in long swaths of densely-constructed melody. The tempestuousness of the music would not sound out of place in Beethoven's late Quartets, but Berg's ambiguous harmonies, influenced by the chromaticism of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, quoted in the Suite, place the sound world of the movement squarely in the Twentieth Century. The ambivalence of the Presto delirando — Tenebroso is imparted by the quartet with subtlety but unmistakable meaning, the gnawing anguish of Berg's misbegotten love resounding in the unconventional part writing. The closing Largo desolato movement is effectively an elegy for reckless passion, marked by a starkness of musical language that communicates much of what must have been in the composer's heart. Emerson String Quartet's playing delves into the emotional maelstrom of the music without drowning in desolation. Berg's twelve-tone style is at once compellingly modern and bizarrely approachable, and the Emerson musicians respond with obvious concentration. Ultimately, their reading of the Suite is more prose than poetry, but the lack of treacly sentimentality is laudable.

The long-disputed version of the closing Largo desolato with voice was restored only upon the discovery of the 1925 score in Dorothea Robettin's possession. The elusive text employed by Berg proved to be Stefan George's German translation of 'De profundis clamavi' from Charles Baudelaire's seminal Les Fleurs du mal, and the composer's handling of the provocative words shows the confidence that emanates from the scores of Wozzeck and Lulu. It is not solely for reasons of propriety that Baudelaire's text was suppressed when Lyrische Suite went to press: it is impossible to ascertain whether Berg truly wanted performances of the Suite to include a vocal soloist or he wrote the Baudelaire setting merely as an intimate exercise, a sort of exorcism of a deeply personal demon. Whatever the implications and intentions of its creation, the vocal rendering of the Largo desolato is sung by world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming with remarkable breadth of feeling. George's German words miss many of the nuances of Baudelaire's text, but Fleming finds lurking beneath the surface of Berg's music layers of meaning that heighten the voluptuousness of the composer's deceptively bare word settings. Fleming rises gloriously to the piece's climax, her voice almost becoming another sound produced by the quartet's instruments in the way that voice and orchestra unite in the final pages of Strauss's Daphne.

An exact contemporary of Berg, Egon Wellesz shared his colleague's refined Viennese sensibilities. Indeed, so pervasive was the composer's devotion to the musical precepts of his native city that not even four decades of exposure to British traditions, facilitated by a tenure at Oxford, unseated Wellesz's dedication to the Austrian models upon which his artistic identity was built. Composed in 1934 for soprano and string quartet, his Sonette der Elisabeth Barrett Browning (Opus 52), settings of five of the poet's Sonnets from the Portuguese in superb German translations by Rainer Maria Rilke, are a fittingly glowing homage to the literary legacy of the nation that eventually sheltered him after the Anschluss. The influences of Bruckner and Mahler are even more apparent—and even more unapologetically so—in Wellesz's music than in Berg's, and both Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet revel in the sometimes sinewy, sometimes soft-grained, always beautiful textures of the Sonnets. The bookish reticence that simmers in 'Und es geschah mir einst, an Theokrit zu denken' (Getragen) [Barrett Browning's 'I thought once how Theocritus had sung'] inspires Fleming to a performance of understated complexity that draws strength from the quartet's undulating accompaniment. It is the beauty of the voice that lofts 'Nur drei jedoch in Gottes ganzem All vernahmen es' (Sehr breit) ['But only three in all God's universe have heard'] into the realm of brilliance, the soprano's diction exhibiting an unaffected mysticism that makes the persona she derives from Wellesz's vocal lines suddenly seem like a German-speaking Ellen Orford. The Emerson musicians provide Fleming with a gleaming canvas upon which to paint a bold vista in 'Du bist da droben im Palast begehrt' (Moderato: Gemessen) ['Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor'], and she seizes the opportunity dazzlingly, applying vocal colors with the imagination of a singing Chagall. Gladdened should be the soul of the object of Fleming's musical thoughts in 'Ich denk an dich' (Andante) ['I think of thee!'], expressed with the wide-eyed passion that radiated from her singing of Massenet's Manon. The final Sonnet, 'Mir scheint, das Angesicht der Welt verging in einem andern' (Sehr langsam, zögernd) ['My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes'], emerges as an artistic credo as well-defined as Tosca's 'Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore,' a mission statement of the muse's commitment to the divine instrument of invention. Fleming sings Rilke's words with affection that gives Barrett Browning's dulcet ardor flight. Alongside Fleming, the slight reservations about the quartet's playing of Berg's Lyrische Suite are marginalized in their well-balanced performances of Wellesz's Sonette.

Though she has excelled in the late-Romantic works of Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel, as well as scintillating music composed specially for her by Henri Dutilleux, the music of Berg and Wellesz—and Eric Zeisl, an arrangement for soprano and string quartet by J. Peter Koene of whose wondrous setting of the chorale 'Komm, süßer Todd' ends this recital with a golden shimmer—seems unlikely territory for Fleming, but this disc illustrates how ill-conceived assumptions can be. This disc in fact preserves some of the best singing of Fleming's career before studio microphones to date. With the exception of her still-astounding portrayal of the title rôle in Dvořák's Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2013 – 2014 Season, many of Fleming's operatic performances in recent years have promised greater enjoyment than they provided. Her singing of Berg, Wellesz, and Zeisl on this disc, expertly recorded and produced by DECCA, offers evidence to silence pessimists and naysayers. however. Partnering the Emerson String Quartet in searing, searching performances, she expands her artistry at a time in her career at which many singers are content to coast on safe, tired interpretations of over-familiar repertory. This disc is a return of Renée Fleming at her incomparable best.

​If history portrays him truthfully, the life of Sir Walter Raleigh was worthy of the operatic stage. A favorite at the court of Elizabeth I, he was imprisoned along with his bride for having married without obtaining Her Majesty's consent, and still-debated participation in a plot to dethrone the Queen's less-virginal successor, James I, combined with the omnipresent necessity of placating the Spanish, cost him his head. Like many of the legendary dandies of history, much of the lore of Sir Walter Raleigh is likely apocryphal, but the fact that he inspired his own mythology attests to his significance in Elizabethan society. The city that bears his name has in North Carolina Opera a musical institution that appropriately honors and perpetuates the spirits of adventure, exploration, and discovery that drove Raleigh to glory. Under the guidance of General Director Eric Mitchko and Artistic and Music Director Timothy Myers, North Carolina Opera has in recent seasons, with world-class—indeed, often better-than-world-class—performances including Dvořák's Rusalka with Joyce El-Khoury, Act Two of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde with Jay Hunter Morris and Heidi Melton, and Verdi's La traviata with Jacqueline Echols, emerged as an enterprising force in the effort to keep opera vibrant and an energizing leader among America's regional opera companies. With an ambitious trajectory featuring three of the genre's most beloved scores, North Carolina Opera's 2015 – 2016 Season is destined to brilliantly honor the colorful legacy of the state's charismatic founding father.

Opening the Season proper in October 2015 after a triumphant Gala is a production of Giacomo Puccini's adaptation of John Luther Long's tragic tale of misguided love, shallow betrayal, and devastating sacrifice, Madama Butterfly. The daunting title rôle will be sung by resplendent soprano Talise Trevigne, whose comfort in Pip's challenging tessitura and affinity for effortlessly and unerringly projecting tones at the top of the range in Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick promise haunting beauty in Cio-Cio San's entrance music and the celebrated aria 'Un bel dì, vedremo.' Her Pinkerton will be dashing tenor Michael Brandenburg, and the compassionate American consul Sharpless will be portrayed by thrilling bass-baritone Michael Sumuel. The denizens of Nagasaki will be represented by mezzo-soprano Lindsay Ammann’s Suzuki, tenor Ian McEuen’s Goro, and bass Wei Wu. Performances of this picturesque, profoundly emotive production are scheduled for 30 October and 1 November in Memorial Auditorium.

On 24 January 2016, Myers will mount the podium in Meymandi Concert Hall to lead the company's concert performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's stirring Yevgeny Onegin, which will be sung in its original Russian. Returning to Raleigh, where she enchanted the capacity audience with her exquisite performance of the title rôle in Rusalka, beautiful soprano Joyce El-Khoury will portray the deeply-conflicted Tatyana. The title rôle will be sung by baritone Joo Won Kang, whose depiction of Giorgio Germont in NC Opera’s February 2015 production of La traviata was a rare instance of legitimate Verdi baritone singing. Another NC Opera veteran, tenor Eric Barry, will deploy the same silvery tone that touched hearts as Rodolfo in January 2014’s La bohème as Tchaikovsky’s and Pushkin’s idealistic poet Lensky. A trio of wonderful mezzo-sopranos—Zanda Švēde, Thomasville native Victoria Livengood, and Robynne Redmon—bring leading lady voices to Olga, Filippveyna, and Madame Larina. This performance of Tchaikovsky’s expressive masterwork, infrequently performed by America’s regional opera companies, is certain to be one of 2016’s most fulfilling musical events in the South.

NCO's 2015 – 2016 Season ends with hilarity in the best bel canto tradition courtesy of Gioachino Rossini's evergreen Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rising star baritone Liam Bonner wields Figaro’s humor and high notes, a perfect foil for matinée-idol tenor Andrew Owens, who returns to North Carolina after igniting vocal fireworks as Don Ramiro in Greensboro Opera’s August 2015 production of La Cenerentola. Lovely mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall is Rosina, the witty ward of bass-baritone Tyler Simpson’s curmudgeonly Dottore Bartolo. A more delightfully musical Don Basilio than bass Adam Lau, who débuted with NC Opera as a boisterous Leporello in April 2015’s Don Giovanni, cannot be imagined. Productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia are anything but rare, but casts of the quality of the team assembled by North Carolina Opera are uncommon even in New York, London, Milan, and Vienna. Performances are scheduled for 1 and 3 April 2016, in Memorial Auditorium.

The survival of opera in the Twenty-First Century depends upon the efforts of companies like North Carolina Opera at expanding the audience into new communities and demographics. With performances of three of the genre’s most iconic scores featuring better-than-the-big-companies casts under the baton of one of America’s most gifted conductors, North Carolina Opera’s 2015 – 2016 Season has elements to captivate steadfast aficionados and convert first-time listeners into lifelong opera lovers.

To learn more about North Carolina Opera’s 2015 – 2016 Season, please visit the company’s website. Tickets can be purchased online or by phoning the box office at 919.792.3853.

All casting is subject to change without notice. Graphics © by North Carolina Opera; all rights reserved.

[1] WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI (1913 – 1994): Concerto for Piano and Orchestra / Koncert na fortepian i orkiestrę (1987 – 88) and Symphony No. 2 / II Symfonia (1965 – 67)—Krystian Zimerman, piano; Berliner Philharmoniker; Sir Simon Rattle, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ (Symphony) and under studio conditions (Piano Concerto) in Großer Saal, Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany, in September 2013; Deutsche Grammophon 479 4518; 1 CD, 52:22; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873 – 1943): Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 43, and Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Opus 42, and DANIIL TRIFONOV (born 1991): Rachmaniana—Daniil Trifonov, piano; Philadelphia Orchestra; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor [Recorded in Academy of Arts & Letters, New York City (Variations, Rachmaniana) and Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Verizon Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (Rhapsody) in March 2015; Deutsche Grammophon 479 4970; 1 CD, 79:36; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[3] DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975): Passacaglia (Interlude from Act II of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) and Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Opus 93—Boston Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, in April 2015; Deutsche Grammophon 479 5059; 1 CD, 64:52; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

One of the particular wonders of music is the manner in which it provides panoramic views of the full spectra of peoples' cultural and social identities. From this vantage point, oblivious to politics and rhetoric, the intersections of cultural byways can be perceived with clarity. Contemplating the relationships among the 'roots' musics of different communities, kinships not always apparent to the eyes are revealed to the ears. From Scottish and Irish origins, for instance, Celtic musical traditions expanded to Spanish Galicia and thus to Argentina; to Brittany and thus to maritime Canada, Québec, Ontario, and modern Acadian Zydeco; to Appalachia and thus to contemporary Bluegrass, Country, and Southern Gospel. Pub musicians in Dublin, balladeers in Santiago de Compostela, bandoneonistas on the avenidas of Buenos Aires, fiddlers along the boulevards of Nantes, pipers on Cape Breton, Louisiana bayou bands, and banjo pickers in the Blue Ridge may have nothing in common to the eyes, but the ears detect in their differently-accented musical languages a mutual mother tongue. In many ways, this is also true of Classical Music, which in its purest form is itself essentially a 'roots' music that draws its lifeblood from the cultures that are its parents. However disparate their individual styles, there are in the works of Bach, Brahms, Bartók, and Barber, Chopin, Chou Wen-chung, and Mieko Shiomi more similarities that unite than differences that divide them. Aesthetically, this is also true of the music of Witold Lutosławski, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Dmitri Shostakovich, three very dissimilar composers whose careers nonetheless intersect at the crossroads of Twentieth-Century events and artistic innovations. New discs from Deutsche Grammophon dedicated to music by Lutoławski, Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich elucidate the depths of these composers' cultural identities with performances that provide encouraging glimpses of the continuing legacies of their work. The trials that Lutosławski, Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich faced as men are manifested in sometimes surprising ways in their music, and the artists involved with these discs, all of which engage the listener with sonics of excellence typical of Deutsche Grammophon, intertwine their own sensibilities with those of the composers to create performances that take root with equal durability whether heard along the Volga, the Danube, the Delaware, or the Charles.

Born in Warsaw in 1913, Witold Lutosławski came to composition as a student of mathematics, and, like Johann Sebastian Bach two centuries earlier, he often crafted scores in which mathematical formulae are, whether by conscious design or by intuitive inclination, the cornerstones of the music. Written for and premièred by him at the 1988 Salzburger Festspiele, pianist Krystian Zimerman here returns to Lutosławski's Piano Concerto with the backing of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, who has shown himself in performances of scores like Karol Szymanowski's opera Król Roger to possess an affinity for interpreting the music of Polish composers. The first-rate playing by the Berliner Philharmoniker, producing a leaner, more pointed sound under the British conductor's lead than during the tenure of Herbert von Karajan, comes as no surprise, but this is among Rattle's finest efforts on disc. Rattle's work before microphones has not been consistently distinguished, but his conducting of both the Piano Concerto and Lutosławski's Second Symphony, the latter recorded during live performances, is unerringly planned and executed. Rhythmic solidity, sometimes lacking in Rattle's conducting, is here omnipresent, and the conductor's firm grasp on the way in which Lutosławski's piquant harmonies propel both individual movements and works as a whole is commendable. Zimerman's approach to the Concerto has grown both darker and more gossamer in the twenty-seven years since he premièred and first recorded it. The dramatic sweep that permeates Zimerman's playing of the rhapsodic opening movement highlights Lutosławski's virtuosic writing, but the pianist now finds many moments of delicacy amidst the din. Pianist, conductor, and orchestra heighten the contrasts that shape the Presto – Poco meno mosso – Lento movement, not by over-accentuating the changes of tempo but by giving each of the evolving tempi its due, seeking within the music the logic of the progression. Zimerman makes the Largo an intimate monologue, its meandering thoughts united by the pianist's conscientious attention to the easily-overlooked flow of thematic material. Zimerman and Rattle collaborate in a performance of the Concerto's concluding Presto that crackles with energy and inspiration. Zimerman's response to a score of which he was the first interpreter has intensified without losing any of its crucial novelty, and he and his colleagues on this recording offer an account of the Concerto that both sounds utterly 'new' and verifies the score's eminent place in the piano's concert literature.

Rattle's and the Berliner Philharmoniker's performance of Lutosławski's Second Symphony is a model of a live recording. As sure as is Rattle's grip on the Piano Concerto, his pacing of the Symphony finds him on even more confident footing, virtually every detail of Lutosławski's music receiving from his stable but stirring advocacy attention and comprehension. In the first movement, Hésitant, the uncertainty that undulates beneath the treatment of subjects and countersubjects courses through every section of the orchestra, the conductor maintaining the pounding pulse of the piece without ignoring the quirky, quixotic twists in the unconventional exposition. The playing of the second movement, Direct, is no less definitive. Rattle achieves a mesmerizing equilibrium between electricity and emotionalism, and the Philharmoniker players follow his beat with implicit trust of both the music and their conductor's understanding of it. The Second Symphony is a challenging work that does not unveil its beauties to those who approach it nonchalantly, whether conductors, musicians, or listeners. In this performance, Rattle channels his still-volatile energy into a profound realization of the rhythmic and harmonic details of Lutosławski’s score. In the contexts of both the Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony, this disc is one of the finest recorded achievements of Rattle’s tenure at the helm of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

The Variations on a Theme by Paganini (Opus 43) constitute one of Sergei Rachmaninov's most enduringly popular scores and an instance in which familiarity is a result of near-universal recognition of quality. Premièred in 1934 with the composer at the piano, the work is a series of twenty-four widely-varying manipulations of the principal subject of Nicolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 in A minor, regarded as one of the most technically demanding pieces in the solo violin repertoire. Rachmaninov was far from the only composer to discern the suitability of the Caprice's familiar theme for fanciful variation: composers ranging from Liszt and Brahms in the Nineteenth Century to Szymanowski and Lutosławski in the Twentieth employed Paganini's theme as a springboard for their individual creativity. None of them was more successful than Rachmaninov at identifying and then thoughtfully transforming the essence of Paganini's spritely melodic figurations into new guises, however, and few pianists have played Rachmaninov's Variations as affectionately as Daniil Trifonov. The young pianist, still only in his mid-twenties, has the great benefit in this recording of working with today's incarnation of the ensemble with which Rachmaninov introduced the Variations, The Philadelphia Orchestra. Even more integral to the tremendous success of this performance is the presence of Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium. His work in the world's opera houses has confirmed the jet-setting Québécois maestro to possess an exceptional natural aptitude for managing ensembles, and his conducting of the music of the still too-little-appreciated Florent Schmitt places him among the foremost exponents of Twentieth-Century repertory. In the context of this recording of Rachmaninov's Variations, he is an ideal partner for Trifonov, sharing the pianist's indisputable experience and youthful exuberance. Photographs and first-hand accounts portray Rachmaninov as a rather dour, Kafka-esque figure, but his music and especially his own performances of it—he recorded the Paganini Variations in RCA's Camden, New Jersey, studio not long after the work's first performance, but even more revealing are the piano rolls that he made in New York, characterfully playing his music for solo piano—disclose a keen wit. The same might be said of Trifonov's playing and Nézet-Séguin's conducting. The preparation, study, and concentration give way in performance to an appealing playfulness, seconded by the elastic playing of the Philadelphia musicians. Trifonov and Nézet-Séguin delve into the nuances of Rachmaninov’s variations with compelling intensity that never robs the performance of its inherent spontaneity. This combination of focus and fancy also characterizes Trifonov’s playing of the Opus 42 Variations on a Theme of Corelli. Here, too, the pianist employs subtlety and sweeping phrasing in equal measures, elucidating each variation’s individual shape and its logical position within the broader architecture of the Variations. It is not surprising that Trifonov plays his own homage to the composer whose music is of such significance to his career and artistic development, Rachmaniana, with fluidity and the unfettered imagination of absolute mastery, but the controlled expressivity of his performance of the piece recalls Rachmaninov's own precious piano rolls. As a composer, Trifonov pays tribute to Rachmaninov's style without engaging in piecemeal regurgitation of his idol's music, and as a pianist he honors himself and Rachmaninov by playing all of the music on this disc powerfully and poignantly. Trifonov, Nézet-Séguin, and Rachmaninov prove to be a serendipitous confederation. Perhaps, spurred by the extraordinary artistic success of this disc, Deutsche Grammophon will reunite them for recordings of the four Piano Concerti.

The cycle of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphonies by The Boston Symphony and Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons is among the lamentably few recent surveys of a composer's complete output in a specific genre that legitimately deserve to be recorded. Many are the ensembles that now play Shostakovich's symphonies, but few are those that play them with any degree of interpretive authority. Furthermore, there are few actions in Classical Music more dangerous on a plethora of musical and aesthetic levels than the anachronistic pursuit of programmatic contexts for individual scores, but the work of few artists has been more affected by an unique set of circumstances than was Shostakovich's music by the political climate in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In the years between the start of World War II and the composer's death in 1975, Shostakovich endured virtually every conceivable manifestation of official Soviet espousal, rejection, and subsequent rehabilitation, his compositional output frequently caught in the crossfire of socio-political guerrilla warfare within the Communist Party. That Shostakovich's works in general are in many ways responses to this extra-musical meddling is inevitable, but full comprehension of the sentimental breadth of the music is jeopardized when focus is too narrowly applied solely to contemplation of its Soviet associations. The abiding marketing concept of Deutsche Grammophon's 'Under Stalin's Shadow' recording initiative notwithstanding, the central emphasis of the performance preserved on this disc is unmistakably on faithfully executing the demands of the score rather than miring the music in an explication of the societal circumstances of its genesis. Opening with the Passacaglia that serves as an evocative interlude in Act Two of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Nelsons and the BSO players exhibit an unshakable concentration on uncovering the dramatic gestures within the music rather than regarding the music merely as accompaniment to social commentary. The impact of the boldness of Shostakovich's orchestrations is splendidly enhanced by the BSO's playing, the brass section in particular making a far finer impression than in the era of Erich Leinsdorf's directorship of the Symphony. The sprawling Moderato movement of the Tenth Symphony revels in the relative freedom that Shostakovich surely felt for the first time in his creative life in the wake of Stalin's death, and Nelsons's handle on the music never loosens in the twenty-six minutes of the movement's course. The string playing is superb throughout the performance, the musicians' intonation unfailingly secure, and the balances among both individual instruments and sections of the orchestra are continually marvelous. Nelsons draws sharp contrasts between the monumental first movement and the subsequent, smaller-scaled Allegro and Allegretto movements. In the second and third movements, the conductor's innate comprehension of Shostakovich's singular thematic development is of vital importance, and his rapport with the BSO musicians engenders profound but unexaggerated expressivity in passages in which less-prepared orchestras and less-insightful conductors are restricted to getting the notes and rhythms right. The pinnacle of this performance of the Tenth Symphony is the soulfully ambivalent reading of the final Andante – Allegro movement. It is perhaps hyperbole to suggest that this music was the forum in which Shostakovich excised some of the demons of Stalin and decades of Communist oppression, but the element of emancipation that resounds through the score—and, perhaps more significantly in this context, in this performance—is unmistakable. The Shostakovich discography contains admirable performances of the Tenth Symphony, but this recording is special. In it, the illumination provided by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons seems to fully free Shostakovich's musical spirit from Stalin's shadow. Like the Lutosławski and Rachmaninov recordings, it is a disc that, in a sort of musical Socratic method, answers questions by asking new ones. Above all, it is a celebration of the unassailable resilience of music.

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Rigoletto—Robert Overman (Rigoletto), Amy Maples (Gilda), René Barbera (il Duca di Mantova), Brian Banion (Sparafucile), Kristin Schwecke (Maddalena, la contessa di Ceprano), Jaclyn Surso (Giovanna), Donald Hartmann (il conte di Monterone), Cody Monta’ (Marullo), Simon Petersson (Matteo Borsa), Joshua Conyers (il conte di Ceprano), Patrick Scully (Un usciere di corte), Lindsay Mecher (Un paggio della Duchessa); Piedmont Opera Chorus; Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra; James Allbritten, conductor [Steven LaCosse, Stage Director; Elizabeth Fowle, Choreographer; David P. Gordon, Scenic Designer; Norman Coates, Lighting Designer; Martha Ruskai, Wig and Make-up Designer; Piedmont Opera, The Stevens Center of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Friday, 23 October 2015]

130 years after his death, Victor Hugo is still widely—and rightly—regarded as one of France's most important writers. Acclaimed for his poetry, plays, and the genre-defining novels Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables, and, perhaps his finest but certainly not most familiar work, Les Travailleurs de la mer, Hugo was accustomed to political and cultural adversity but not to seeing his work eclipsed. Set in a fanciful incarnation of the court of François I, where one of the king's mistresses, Françoise de Foix, was intriguing enough to inspire an opera by Donizetti, Hugo's Le roi s'amuse created a sensation when it premièred on 22 November 1832—a sensation significant enough to ensure that the regime of Louis Philippe I, ostensibly responding to perceived insults to His Majesty, banned the play before its second performance. Le roi s'amuse would ultimately wait fifty years to take the stage for the second time. By that time, it could have been debated whether the impetus for the revival was wholly an homage to the esteemed Hugo or at least partially curiosity about the long-unseen play that inspired one of the most successful operas of the mid-Nineteenth Century, Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. Verdi's opera had its own troubles with the Austrian censors in Venice in advance of its first performance: Francesco Maria Piave's libretto, as faithful an adaptation of its source as has even been prepared for the operatic stage, was deemed as offensive to the the crowned heads in Vienna as Hugo's play was to those in Paris. Though his 1844 Ernani was lauded as an uncommonly adroit setting of the writer's work, it was Rigoletto that solidified Verdi's reputation as the ideal composer to unite Hugo's words with music. Not even the cloud of bureaucratic disapprobation that relocated the drama from France to Mantua could tarnish the brilliant sheen of the première of Rigoletto at Venice's Teatro La Fenice on 11 March 1851, however. So certain was Verdi that he had written a hit tune that would be immediately commandeered by gondoliers and street musicians that he sequestered Raffaele Mirate, the rôle's creator, for rehearsals of the Duca's Act Three canzone 'La donna è mobile.' He was correct, of course, but, in truth, Rigoletto was revealed to be a work of incredible beauty and power from the score's first page to its last. Anyone who has bothered to read it would be unlikely to dispute that Hugo's Le roi s'amuse is a well-written work worthy of its creator, but Verdi's transformation of Hugo's Triboulet and Blanche into Rigoletto and Gilda is the foundation of one of opera's most enduring masterworks. In recent years, it has often seemed that an astonishing number of productions of Rigoletto have sought to convince audiences that their affection for the opera is predicated upon misjudgments of the score's merit. History recounts that Hugo envied the skill with which Verdi delineated each character’s voice and perspective in Rigoletto's iconic quartet, 'Bella figlia dell'amore,' but it is unlikely that a man as dedicated as Hugo to preserving artists’ individuality and creative freedom at all costs could have witnessed the contrasting popularity of Verdi’s opera and neglect of his own play without disappointment. Winston-Salem-based Piedmont Opera offered a Rigoletto on the stage of the Stevens Center that could not have failed to delight both Verdi and Hugo. For all its complications, Rigoletto is essentially a simple tale of distorted love. By focusing not on reimagining Rigoletto from some arbitrary, ‘modern’ point of view but on recreating the opera as it emerged from Verdi’s imagination, Piedmont Opera’s production allowed the audience to appreciate in Rigoletto the Shakespearean majesty that Verdi recognized in Hugo’s Triboulet.

Bella figlia dell’amore: Soprano Kristin Schwecke as Maddalena in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

Hugo’s countryman Molière wrote that ‘of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.’ Opera is indeed a commodity that is extraordinarily expensive to produce, promote, and enjoy, but Piedmont Opera’s Rigoletto confirmed anew that the extensive budgets of large opera companies do not necessarily facilitate productions richer than those created by America’s regional companies. Directed by Steven LaCosse and choreographed by Elizabeth Fowle, the production provided enough detail to conjure a specific atmosphere without cluttering the opera's physical or ephemeral spaces with distractions. The purest requirement of blocking is placing characters where they are meant to be, when they are meant to be there, and Piedmont Opera's production was particularly commendable for drawing inspiration foremost from Verdi’s score. Only the vicious beating of Giovanna during the courtiers’ abduction of Gilda seemed a misguided and unnecessary extrapolation. David P. Gordon's sets gave the Duca di Mantova's testosterone-infused court suitably decadent surroundings, framing the action effectively but unobtrusively and picturesquely bringing the sights of Mantua to the Stevens Center stage. The costumes by Malabar Limited successfully employed bright primary colors for the Duca and his attendants, earthy tones for Rigoletto and Sparafucile, and virginal blue and white and, in Act Three, opulent emerald for Gilda to draw visual parallels with the characters' functions in the drama. These elements of the staging, as well as Martha Ruskai’s wigs and make-up, seemed extensions of the polished work in the pit by Allbritten and the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra. The conductor presided over a taut, unsentimental reading of Verdi’s score, executed with laudably few mistakes by the Symphony’s instrumentalists. Allbritten supported the singers with obvious understanding both of the mechanics of singing and of the singular demands of singing Rigoletto. The choristers matched the achievements of their colleagues in the pit with lusty, dexterous singing. Wholly convincing as the hard-partying companions of the Duca, the choristers gave a superb performance of one of the score’s finest inspirations, the storm scene in Act Three. With Allbritten building an unshakable foundation, the orchestra and chorus providing a frame of reliable accomplishment, and the production team decorating that frame enchantingly, Piedmont Opera’s Rigoletto unmistakably conveyed what so many larger companies’ productions conspicuously lack: the spirit of Verdi.

Bella salvatrice: Soprano Amy Maples as Gilda in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

In filling the ranks of supporting characters, Piedmont Opera's production tapped North Carolina's bounteous lodes of native and adopted vocal talent. Fellows of the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts made especially strong showings, led by soprano Kristin Schwecke, who sparred seductively with the Duca as the Contessa di Ceprano in Act One and returned in Act Three as a beguiling Maddalena. Schwecke delivered ‘Somiglia un Apollo, quel giovane, io l’amo, ei m’ama…riposi…nè più l’uccidiamo,’ Maddalena’s plea for Sparafucile to spare the Duca’s life, with alluring tone, lacking only complete solidity at the bottom of the line. The Duca's courtiers were in this production a raucous lot who nonetheless preserved a measure of the decorum befitting a duke's court. The Duca is a libertine, to be sure, but a married one, and there is nothing in the score to suggest that his Duchessa would suffer her household to be run both inwardly and outwardly like a bawdy establishment. Baritone Cody Monta’ sang Marullo with unstinting force complemented by the vivacity of tenor Simon Petersson’s depiction of Borsa. Recently acclaimed for his portrayal of the title rôle in Opera Wilmington's production of Rigoletto, baritone Joshua Conyers was in Winston-Salem a Conte di Ceprano who could not be ignored. His garnet-hued voice hurled out every note that Verdi allocated to him with tonal focus and dramatic purpose: the Duca who would dare to toy with this Count's Countess is an unscrupulous fool without the good sense to fear for his own safety. Soprano Jaclyn Surso was a model of good-natured perturbation as Giovanna, Gilda’s duenna, and Lindsay Mecher deployed her attractive mezzo-soprano impressively as the Duchessa’s page. Following his colleagues’ examples, bass Patrick Scully made the most of the usher’s brief contribution.

Equally at home in Rossinian comedy and Verdian tragedy, bass-baritone Donald Hartmann was a Conte di Monterone who made the embittered old man's curse far more than an opportunity for vaguely-pitched shouting. His singing of ‘La voce mia qual tuono vi scuoterà dovunque’ boiled with righteous indignation and an unquenchable longing for revenge for his daughter’s disgrace. Hartmann rose to the top F in Monterone’s curse with galvanizing force. In Act Two, his flinty voicing of ‘Poiché fosti invano da me maledetto, né un fulmine o un ferro colpisce il tuo pette’ was the catalyst that sent the drama hurtling over the precipice to its tragic conclusion. Hartmann was a phenomenal antidote to the seemingly endless parade of tired, wobbly Monterones.

Assassino sonoro: Bass-baritone Brian Banion as Sparafucile in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

Brian Banion's ironclad bass-baritone voice found a near-ideal outlet in Verdi's music for the assassin-for-hire Sparafucile, via which the singer disclosed a facet of his artistry unlike those that have coruscated in his performances of less-deadly parts. In the wonderful duet with Rigoletto in Act One, Banion portrayed an eerily menacing figure who sang of taking lives as though he were describing sunrises over Arcadian landscapes. His low F when repeating Sparafucile’s name was chilling—and, unlike similar efforts by many singers, audible. In Act Three, Banion’s nonchalance when preparing to murder the Duca was starkly imposing but not without a suggestion of dark comedy. Like Hartmann’s Monterone, his Sparafucile was a source of vocal fortitude all the more welcome for being atypically dependable.

Duca seducente: Tenor René Barbera as il Duca di Mantova in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

Having thrilled local audiences with his vibrant bel canto singing as Tonio in Greensboro Opera's January 2015 production of Donizetti's La fille du régiment [reviewed here], tenor René Barbera, an alumnus of the UNC School of the Arts, returned to the Triad to portray the womanizing Duca di Mantova in Piedmont Opera's Rigoletto. The same people who assume that Calàf does nothing of interest in Turandot until he sings 'Nessun dorma' in Act Three perhaps also think that the Duca is dormant until being roused to sing 'La donna è mobile' in Rigoletto's Act Three. In the first few minutes of the opera, Verdi encapsulated the Duca's predictably philandering character in an irresistibly tuneful ballata, ‘Questa o quella per me pari sono.’ Leaving no doubt about the nature of the Duca's designs on the Contessa di Ceprano, Barbera sang the number insouciantly, phrasing the ebullient melody with playful sensuality. In the Duca’s duet with Gilda, Barbera’s voice radiated the golden smile of a young man in love. His ‘Uscire!…adesso!…Ora che accendene un fuoco istesso!’ was charming, and the tenor’s timbre gleamed in his voicing of the cantabile ‘È il sol dell’anima, la vita è amore, sua voce è il palpito del nostro core.’ Taking leave of his beloved, this Duca could barely contain his boyish ardor in his rapturous ‘Addio! speranza ed anima sol tu sarai per me,’ Barbera joining his Gilda on a glorious unison top D♭. Opening Act Two with a fervent account of the recitative ‘Ella mi fu rapita,’ he catapulted the scene to a sublime performance of the Duca’s aria ‘Parmi veder le lagrime scorrenti da quel ciglio,’ Verdi’s finest music for the character. Barbera managed to elicit appreciation of the Duca’s noble qualities without ignoring the vein of depravity that precipitates the opera’s tragedy. Thankfully, Piedmont Opera’s production allowed Barbera to sing a verse of the Duca’s cabaletta, ‘Possente amor mi chiama,’ and it was among the evening’s musical pinnacles. In this performance, the over-familiar Act Three canzone ‘La donna è mobile’ sounded winningly spontaneous, and Barbera launched the traditional interpolated top B into the house exhilaratingly. His ‘Un dì, se ben rammentomi, o bella, t’incontrai’ wooed Maddalena with zeal that persisted into the quartet. He traced the supple bel canto lines of ‘Bella figlia dell’amore, schiavo son dei vezzi tuoi’ with elegance and agility, rising effortlessly to the top Bs on which so many tenors flounder. The same tone resonantly crowned the reprise of ‘La donna è mobile’—in Verdi’s score this time round—that awakened Rigoletto to the sickening reality that it is not the Duca’s body that Sparafucile has delivered to him. Barbera is the rare singer who uses projection as ably as volume to fill a space with sound. He sang the Duca’s music without forcing his lyric instrument, but his Duca was a formidable presence whose personality leapt over the footlights.

Speranza ed anima sol tu sarai per me: Soprano Amy Maples as Gilda (left) and tenor René Barbera as il Duca di Mantova (right) in Piedmont Opera's production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Christina Holcomb Photography, LLC; used with permission]

​An astonishing array of voices have successfully sung Gilda in the years since Rigoletto's première, ranging from high coloraturas in the tradition of Dame Nellie Melba, Amelita Galli-Curci, and Lily Pons to more substantial voices like those of Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland. The voice of Teresa Brambilla, the soprano who created Gilda for Verdi at La Fenice in 1851, was perhaps of dimensions that placed it somewhere near the center of the spectrum between those extremes. Intriguingly, one of Brambilla's most admired portrayals prior to the first performance of Rigoletto was her Agnese in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, a seconda donna rôle composed to complement Giuditta Pasta's singing of the title rôle and, like her cousin Adalgisa in Norma, now traditionally assigned to a mezzo-soprano. Perhaps there was greater validity in Arturo Toscanini's preference for a dramatic voice in Gilda's music—he famously engaged Zinka Milanov to sing the part in a 1944 Madison Square Garden concert performance of Act Three of Rigoletto—than many commentators have been willing to acknowledge. Many of the high notes associated with Gilda in listeners' minds are interpolations, after all, and in moments of direst histrionic duress she has propulsive orchestrations with which to contend. Still, the trills, flexibility, and limpidity of tone demanded by the music necessitate the casting of singers with exemplary technical prowess. Piedmont Opera's production benefited tremendously from the participation of Tennessee-born soprano Amy Maples, a youthfully comely Gilda who met every technical challenge unflinchingly, mostly offered sufficient power when required, and from her first appearance commanded observers' sympathy with acting that made even stock gestures actions of emotional meaning. Bounding onto the stage at the beginning of Gilda's duet with Rigoletto in Act One, Maples met her stage father with a ‘Mio padre!’ that was breathless with excitement but perfectly-placed vocally. The anticipation that shone in her starlit articulation of ‘Voi sospirate! che v’ange tanto?’ established an atmosphere of concentrated emotion in which she unfurled a velvety ribbon of tone in ‘Lassù in cielo presso Dio veglia un angiul protettor.’ Few Rigolettos and Gildas make the connection between father and daughter, who is the sole tangible reminder of her mother, more heartbreakingly tender than it was in this performance. Trading the protective but oppressive arms of her father for those of her suitor, Maples's Gilda seemed a different person in the duet with the Duca, at once a naïve girl and a woman of blossoming sexuality. She wedded her luscious tones with Barbera's in their exuberant ‘Addio! speranza ed anima sol tu sarai per me,' the rocketing top D♭ an organic expression of the love swelling her heart. After a recitative in which she strayed from a few of Verdi’s indicated pitches, Maples’s performance of Gilda's E-major aria ‘Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar’ was an intimate reverie that she distinguished with sparkling trills and crystalline top Bs. Having produced a beautiful top D♯ in the aria's cadenza, she preferred Verdi's written ending to a gaudy top E, her expertly-sustained trill proving more memorable than any interpolated high note might have been. Of a completely different ethos was the ‘Mio padre!’ with which the abused Gilda greeted Rigoletto in Act Two. The arching, achingly lovely melodic lines of ‘Tutte le feste al tempio mentre pregava Iddio’ inspired Maples to vocalism of impeccable poise and time-stopping expressivity, the sheer beauty of her singing enhancing her demonstration of the pain of lost innocence. The top E♭ with which she brought down the curtain on Act Two was the exclamation of a gentle soul who hoped that her heartfelt singing of ‘O mio padre, qual gioia feroce balenarvi negli occhi vegg’io!’ might succeed in soothing her father’s lethal ire. In Act Three, the despair of the quartet, capped with a dulcet top D♭, gave way to unchangeable determination in her declaration of ‘Che! piange tal donna! né a lui darò aita!’ in the trio with Maddalena and Sparafucile. Only here did she struggle to be heard above Verdi’s orchestrations. The pathos of the final duet, in which Maples phrased ‘Ah, ch’io taccia! a me, a lui perdonate’​ with unerring assurance, was gripping. The deaths of operatic characters are often fodder for derision, but Maples’s Gilda expired without melodramatics. In that, she died as she lived, eloquently and candidly.

Padre e figlia: Baritone Robert Overman as Rigoletto (left) and soprano Amy Maples as Gilda (right) in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

Rigoletto is a fundamental point in the astounding progression of Verdi's music for the baritone voice that extended from Nabucco and Macbeth to Jago and Falstaff. The ambivalence of individuals' struggles with dueling public personas and private anguishes that captivated Verdi throughout his career is at the core of his characterization of Rigoletto, and it was the central pedestal upon which baritone Robert Overman balanced his performance of the rôle. It was apparent at his first entrance that Overman's Rigoletto was a quick-tempered opportunist with an insult on the tip of his tongue for every person he encountered. His taunting of Monterone culminated in a piercing cry of 'Quel vecchio maledivami,' the sting of the old man's curse having penetrated his verbal armor.  Overman intertwined his voice with Banion's mesmerizingly in the duet with Sparafucile, Rigoletto's distaste for his new acquaintance's vocation turning to shock as, in the course of the first of his monologues, ‘Pari siamo! io la lingua, egli ha il pugnale,’ he reflected on the similarities between the character assassination of his own trade and Sparafucile's literal murders. Overman's whole demeanor changed with the first 'Figlia!' in the duet with Gilda. Rigoletto the doting father received from the baritone an impersonation of rapt concentration and dedication: that Gilda was this Rigoletto's sole reason for fleeting happiness was touchingly apparent. In the duet's expansive andante, Overman phrased ‘Deh, non parlare al misero del suo perduto bene’ with fluidity that heightened the emotional devastation of the text. Instructing Giovanna to guard Gilda closely, his stern singing of ‘Ah, veglia, o donna, questo fiore che a te puro confidai’ was underpinned by a disquieting presentiment of looming tragedy. Realizing at last that his comrades at the Duca's court had abducted Gilda, Overman's cries of ‘Ah! ah! ah! la maledizione!’ ended Act One explosively. Generally secure and impactful, Overman's tone was occasionally pushed at the top of the range, but the results that the effort achieved were pulse-quickening. He delivered the potent Act Two oration ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, per qual prezzo vendeste il mio bene?’ with startling gravity and animalistic drive that were tempered arrestingly by the heartbreak of his wounded, wistful voicing of 'Miei signori, perdono, pietate!’ The last vestige of this Rigoletto's pride was annihilated by his reunion with his now-dishonored daughter, his own shame resounding in Overman's voice as he declaimed 'Ah! Solo per me l’infamia a te chiedeva, o Dio.’ Even as he comforted Gilda with a gorgeously unhurried ‘Piangi, fanciulla, piangi,’ the lust for vengeance blunted the edges of this Rigoletto's paternal compassion. Overman launched ‘Sì, vendetta, tremenda vendetta di quest’anima è solo desio’ as though firing notes and words from a mortar, his rejections of Gilda's entreaties for mercy evoking the inexorable resolution of the opera. His top A♭ rang with the brilliance of a Robert Merrill or Cornell MacNeil. At the start of Act Three, Overman's singing was infused with the frustration of a parent whose child will not listen to reason, and he shaped Rigoletto's lines in the quartet with a sense of burgeoning panic. The near-sadistic glee with which he enunciated ‘Ora mi guarda, o mondo! Quest’è un buffone, ed un potente è questo!’ after collecting from Sparafucile what he assumed to be the corpse of the murdered Duca shimmered with irony. Discovering that the figure in the bloody sack is not the Duca but Rigoletto's own daughter, Overman lent his utterance of ‘Mia figlia!…Dio! mia figlia!’ an unforgettable poignancy. The rawness of his pleading ‘No, lasciarmi non dêi, non morir’ was juxtaposed with the brawny loveliness of the tones with which he sang the line. Then, Gilda dead in his arms, he detonated a volcanic 'Ah, la maledizione!’ that thundered through the auditorium. Too often, a Rigoletto's success is measured solely by the parameters of his singing of the two monumental arias or his mastery of the injurious tessitura. Singing the arias well and scaling the heights of the range that they require are surely estimable feats, but there is more to Rigoletto than a pair of viscerally invigorating scenes and stimulating top notes. Overman’s performance revealed that his physical deformity is perhaps the least of Rigoletto’s challenges. The greatest tragedy of this Rigoletto was that, though he was cognizant of his own shortcomings, he was clearly powerless to change himself or his environment: barbed words were the sole defense left to this broken soul. Overman’s dramatic sincerity and musicality should be models to many a Rigoletto, but the foremost joy of his performance was that it was a portrait of a man, not an archetype.

Pari siamo: Baritone Robert Overman in the title rôle in Piedmont Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, October 2015 [Photo © by Traci Arney Photography; used with permission]

This is a world in which the scorn of some supposedly enlightened personages compels listeners who love Rigoletto to feel that they must apologize for what is perceived as a shamefully unsophisticated affection. In truth, there have been many productions of the opera in recent years that warranted apologies to singers, audiences, and, above all, Verdi and Hugo. Opera is a wondrous study in implausibilities, and Rigoletto is not and was surely never meant to be a history of people that audiences are expected to recognize or accept as familiars. When performed with respect for the depths of feeling that Verdi instilled in its characters, however, Rigoletto is a work of real insight and sagacity. Its realism is not that of trips to the supermarket and unread emails: it is the universal condition of loving and hoping to be loved. Piedmont Opera's Rigoletto achieved the relevance for which so many productions strive by granting love for the music primacy from the smallest nail in the sets to the grandest bellow from the timpani. It is no coincidence that it was Victor Hugo who wrote that ‘the greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.’ Nearly as great was the happiness born of experiencing Rigoletto so lovingly performed.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1827): Fidelio, Opus 72—Maria Katzarava (Leonore), Andrew Richards (Florestan), Raquel Suarez Groen (Marzelline), Brian Arreola (Jaquino), Kyle Pfortmiller (Don Pizarro), Andrew Funk (Rocco), Dan Boye (Don Fernando), (Erster Gefangener), (Zweiter Gefangener); Opera Carolina Chorus; Charlotte Symphony Orchestra; James Meena, conductor [Tom Diamond, Director; Michael Baumgarten, Director of Production & Lighting Designer; Dejan Miladinović, Set Designer; Martha Ruskai, Wig & Make-up Designer; A T Jones and Sons, Inc., Costume Designer; Opera Carolina, Belk Theater, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Charlotte, North Carolina; Sunday, 25 October 2015]

​If, as Charles Dickens suggested with his affection for David Copperfield, those artistic progeny that cost their creators the greatest effort are the most beloved of their creations, Fidelio surely occupied a prominent place in Ludwig van Beeth​oven's heart. Premièred in its first, three-act form in Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1805, Fidelio underwent extensive revisions that ultimately spanned nearly a decade of the composer's career. Reduced via Georg Friedrich Treitschke's amendments to Joseph Sonnleithner's libretto, already modified in 1805 – 1806 by Stephan von Breuning, to the two-act form in which the score is most familiar today, the opera was reintroduced to the Viennese public in 1814. Even in its earlier, more florid guise, which now hovers on the periphery of the repertory as Leonore, Fidelio was immediately recognized not only as a work of genius—what else might have been expected from the mind of Beethoven?—but also as a seminal work in the artistic representation of conjugal love. That it utterly eclipsed similar works like Ferdinando Paer's 1804 dramma semiserio Leonora and Johann Simon Mayr's 1805 farsa sentimentale L'amore coniugale ossia Il custode di buon cuore, both of which were, like Fidelio, adaptations of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly's French libretto for Pierre Gaveaux's 1798 opera Léonore ou L'amour conjugal, is indicative both of the profundity of Beethoven's setting and the extraordinary quality of the music. The effectiveness of the unmarried Beethoven's depiction of the sanctity of marriage is evidenced by the fact that it was once customary for newly-engaged German-speaking couples to attend performances of Fidelio as a primer in the art of becoming devoted, well-integrated spouses. In the same manner as Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin, it is ironic that a man with as anguished an association with the institution of matrimony as was Beethoven's lot should have produced an archetypal representation of spousal commitment, but perhaps there is in Fidelio an essence of what Emily Dickinson meant when she wrote that 'Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed.' It was not by luck of the draw that it was Fidelio that was chosen to re-inaugurate the Wiener Staatsoper in 1955, when that fabled house, the stage and auditorium of which were destroyed in World War II, symbolically and literally returned to its rejuvenated home. Fidelio is something special, a phoenix in its own right that has endured the flames of changing fashions. Transporting the opera's drama from Beethoven's Spain to Berlin on the eve of the destruction of the Wall that seemed to figuratively divide humanity as a whole, Opera Carolina's thoughtful, often riveting production of Fidelio took risks that recalled another of Emily Dickinson's iconic conceits: ''Tis not that Dying hurts us so — / 'Tis living — hurts us more.'

When taken at face value, the de facto mission statement cited on Opera Carolina's website for this production is a worrying manifestation of the currently-fashionable predilection for prioritizing efforts at making opera superficially accessible for modern audiences above honoring composers' wishes. 'The fact that Fidelio is the great Beethoven's only opera is unique enough,' the statement begins. 'How do you make it even more fresh and meaningful?'​ How can an opera that deals with a wife who disguises herself as a man in order to gain access to and subsequently liberate her husband from unjust political imprisonment be made more relevant to a society besmirched by wars among power-hungry factions, refugee crises, unfettered corruption, and basest inhumanity? In Opera Carolina's production, insightfully directed by Tom Diamond and expertly lit by Michael Baumgarten, who also created the evocative projections, the endeavor to increase Fidelio's ability to engage the audience prompted relocating the action from Beethoven's and his librettists' Eighteenth-Century Spain to Berlin in the days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Opera Carolina's 2014 production of Verdi's Nabucco went wrong temporarily when anachronistically referencing the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust in the context of an otherwise traditionally Biblical setting, but this Fidelio shouldered the burden of its new identity without transferring any of the weight of reinterpretation onto the audience's backs. Via the aptly drab costumes by A T Jones and Sons, Inc., Martha Ruskai's wig and make-up designs, and the stark backdrops of Dejan Miladinović's sets, Beethoven's characters convincingly became citizens of 1989 Berlin. The magnanimous Don Fernando, Fidelio's deus ex machina, was Walter Momper, the first mayor of newly-reunified Berlin. The malevolent Stasi official Walter Ulbricht stood in for Beethoven's Don Pizarro, and his political nemesis Florestan was represented in the Twentieth Century by advocate for democracy Kurt Wismach. Young Jaquino was metamorphosed into Chris Gueffroy, one of the last people killed whilst attempting to scale the Berlin Wall. The production was tasteful and moving, but the source of the emotional power was always Beethoven's music. Recorded contributions by Presidents Kennedy ('Ich bin ein Berliner') and Reagan ('Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall') prefaced the opera's first and final scenes, respectively, and perhaps the most successful departure from tradition was staging Leonore's physical transformation into Fidelio during the Ouvertüre. Transplanting the action into 1989 Berlin gave the opera an atmosphere remembered by most of the audience, but changing characters' names went slightly too far. In practical terms, how many people are more familiar with the names Wismach, Ulbricht, and Momper than with Florestan, Pizarro, and Fernando? If a Twentieth-Century setting was deemed necessary, why not relocate the opera to Franco's Spain and thereby retain the characters' names and fidelity to the text that Beethoven set? Concerns about textual changes notwithstanding, the production proved that Beethoven's score, one of the true masterworks of Western civilization, is eternally 'fresh and meaningful.' In this regard, the production was an unmitigated triumph. [For this review, Beethoven’s original character names and the text as it appears in the score are used.]

O welch ein Augenblick: the Company of Opera Carolina’s production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio, October 2015 [Photo by Jon Silla, © by Opera Carolina; used with permission]

With Opera Carolina's General Director and Principal Conductor James Meena on the podium, the task of upholding musical values in this production of Fidelio was entrusted to one of America's ablest conductors of opera, one whose versatility reflects encyclopedic knowledge of repertory and trial-by-fire experience extending back to his formative engagements in Toledo and Pittsburgh. This broad experience is of particular importance when conducting Fidelio, a score in which musical traditions intersect. The music for Marzelline and Jaquino inhabits the world of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte, whereas the writing for Rocco and Don Pizarro combines elements of the Baroque, Classicism, and Romanticism. Leonore is both a heroine in the tradition of Händel's Rodelinda and Deidamia and a prototype for the leading ladies of Weber and Wagner, and Florestan, introduced in Act Two by music that could have been composed by Wagner, Mahler, or Richard Strauss, is an intriguing hybrid, equal parts bel canto and Heldentenor. The act finales are, like Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, sui generis. A conductor who lacks exposure to all of the disparate ingredients that Beethoven combined in the score is at risk of being out to sea in the tempestuous waters of Fidelio, but in this performance Meena masterfully tamed the savage challenges of the music. Spurred by Meena's leadership the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra musicians provided a spirited performance of the opera's familiar Ouvertüre, the writing for horns and woodwinds inspiring the musicians to feats of commendable virtuosity. The Marsch that introduces Don Pizarro in Act One was also vigorously played. The crucial but often-blundered horn parts in Leonore's 'Abscheulicher!' scene were fantastically done except for an all-too-audible mistake in the second statement of the fanfare that introduces 'Ich folg' dem innern Triebe,' and the plangent oboe phrases in Florestan's scene at the start of Act Two were beautifully played. Meena proved refreshingly adept at conveying the grandeur of Beethoven's music without miring the score in pseudo-Wagnerian pomposity. In both his attentive support of the singers and his management of the orchestra, he facilitated appreciation of the fact that Beethoven, though unquestionably a visionary, was also a contemporary of Cherubini, Mayr, and Spontini.

The Opera Carolina Chorus sang splendidly, giving strong but heartfelt performances of some of the most difficult choral writing in opera. The charge was often made during the composer's lifetime that Beethoven never truly learned how to write effective, singable music for the human voice, but the choristers' singing in this performance verified that, when adequately rehearsed and sung with gusto, Beethoven's choruses in Fidelio are unforgettably satisfying. The haunting chorus that launches the Act One finale, 'O welche Lust,' was stirringly sung, and the prisoners' poignant 'Leb wohl, du warmes Sonnenlicht, schnell schwindest du uns wieder' touched the heart. In the Act Two finale, the choristers' exclamations of 'Heil! Heil! Heil sei dem Tag, Heil sei der Stunde' seemed to resound with the collective voice of humanity. The jubilant 'Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, stimm in unsern Jubel ein,' a rather banal tune like the principal themes of the finales of the Choral Fantasy and the Ninth Symphony, was performed with unfettered joy befitting a paean to newly-won liberty. It is unfortunate and unfair that the tenor and bass who emerged from the chorus to sing the First and Second Prisoners' solo lines were not identified and granted the notice that their singing deserved. Both the tenor's 'Wir wollen mit Vertrauen auf Gottes Hülfe' and the bass's 'Specht leise, haltet euch zurück, wir sind belauscht mit Ohr und Blick' were confidently, appealingly done.

Under the guise of Walter Momper, bass-baritone Dan Boye was a Don Fernando of firm-toned magnanimity. He delivered 'Des besten Königs Wink und Wille führt mich zu euch' with the ceremonial pontification of a career politician, but his words rang with sincerity and emotion. Directing 'Du schlossest auf des Edlen Grab, jetzt, jetzt nimm ihm seine Ketten ab; doch halt' to Rocco, his voice seemed to grow in authority as the on-stage populace reacted to his words. Then, addressing Leonore, he sang 'euch, edle Frau, allein, euch ziemt es, ganz ihn zu befrein' with true feeling, restoring to Leonore and Florestan the happiness for which they have suffered so direly.

Sein Weib: Soprano Maria Katzarava as Leonore in Opera Carolina’s production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio, October 2015 [Photo by Jon Silla, © by Opera Carolina; used with permission]

Thankfully, Opera Carolina's production spared Jaquino the fate of the historical Chris Gueffroy, who was fatally shot in 1989 as he attempted to flee East Berlin at the age of only twenty. Looking dashing in his Stasi uniform and sounding even better, Opera Carolina stalwart tenor Brian Arreola was a silver-throated bundle of nerves. In the Act One duet with Marzelline, Arreola voiced 'Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein' handsomely, and he conveyed Jaquino's increasing exasperation with body language rather than stridency in the voice. In the exquisite quartet, one of the finest ensembles in opera, he sang 'Mir sträubt sich schon das Haar' with sincerity and star-in-the-making tone. Here and in the finales of both acts he was always audible. He excelled at spoken and sung German, and he again displayed what an asset he is to Opera Carolina's roster.

Soprano Raquel Suarez Groen lent Marzelline measures of humor and humanity that made her part in the opera more vital that many singers have made it. Beginning with the charming duet with Jaquino that opens Act One, she took advantage of every opportunity for detailed characterization that Beethoven gave to her. She sang 'Es wird ja nichts Wichtiges sein' delightfully, the repeated top Gs and coloratura cresting on top A employed to impart Marzelline’s growing frustration with Jaquino’s refusal to accept that she is in love with Fidelio. Suarez Groen sang Marzelline’s Mozartean aria 'O wär' ich schon mit dir vereint, und dürfte Mann dich nennen!' deftly, and, unlike many Marzellines, she ensured that her presence was noticed in the quartet by phrasing 'Mir ist so wunderbar, es engt das Herz mir ein' imaginatively and dexterously negotiating the coloratura. Joining Leonore and Rocco in their fantastic trio, she declaimed 'Dein gutes Herz wird manchen Schmerz in diesen Grüften leiden' beautifully and ascended to the top C with spot-on intonation. Suarez Groen’s reaction to learning Fidelio’s true identity in the opera’s finale provided a precious moment of levity. The soprano’s lovely tones occasionally could not be heard when she descended into the lower octave of her range, but she sang sweetly and illuminated the stage with her radiant smile.

The unshakable cornerstone of Opera Carolina's Fidelio was bass Andrew Funk, whose paternal, dignified incarnation of Rocco was worthy of comparison with legendary performances of the rôle by singers such as Alexander Kipnis, Ludwig Weber, Gottlob Frick, Franz Crass, and Kurt Moll. From his first note, there was no doubting that Funk is a true bass, and his vocalism went from strength to strength as the performance progressed. In the Act One quartet with Leonore, Marzelline, and Jaquino, Funk sang 'Sie liebt ihn, es ist klar, ja, Mädchen, er wird dein' cheerfully, and his performance of the aria 'Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben, kann man nicht ganz glücklich sein,' often a low point in performances of Fidelio, was musically and dramatically invigorating, not least in the allegro section that begins with 'Doch wenn's in den Taschen fein klingelt und rollt.' The cleverness with which Funk as Rocco the eager father sought to bring Marzelline and Fidelio together in their trio was endearing, and he voiced 'Gut, Söhnchen, gut, hab immer Mut' winsomely. Funk wholly avoided the bumbling silliness that many Roccos inflict upon audiences in the duet with Pizarro, uttering 'So sagt doch nur in Eile, womit ich dienen kann' with surety of pitch and purpose. Persuaded by Fidelio to permit the prisoners a turn in the yard in the Act One finale, Funk's Rocco was the personification of noble-hearted decency. In the series of ensembles in Act Two, the bass continually deepened the humanity of his characterization. In the duet with Leonore, his reluctance to obey Pizarro's orders developed into genuine kindness towards Florestan, his hesitant, almost embarrassed singing of 'Nur hurtig fort, nur frisch gegraben' ardently expressing his moral reservations. The solemnity of his shaping of 'Ich labt ihn gern, den armen Mann' in the subsequent trio was telling, and his bewilderment in the quartet as Rocco discovered that his intended son-in-law was actually Florestan's wife in disguise was unexpectedly touching. Too many singers portray Rocco as befuddled rather than benevolent, but Funk made him an intelligent, caring, laudably serious man. Not one note of Rocco's music was outside of Funk's comfort zone, and not one word of the part was spoken or sung haphazardly.

It may seem ridiculous to suggest that the most enjoyable aspect of baritone Kyle Pfortmiller’s portrayal of Don Pizarro was not how he sang the rôle but that he sang it. Singing the music is apparently far less attractive to many Pizarros than shouting it, but Pfortmiller was the exception to this rule, and the performance was all the better for it. In his entrance in Act One, he swept across the stage like a wintry wind, and he sang the aria 'Ha! Ha! Ha! welch ein Augenblick!' with considerably greater depth than the standard cardboard villainy, encountering no difficulties with the profusion of top Ds and E♭s. In the subsequent duet with Rocco, Pfortmiller left no doubt of Pizarro’s murderous intentions in his cold-blooded articulation of 'Jetzt, Alter, Alter, jetzt hat es Eile!’ In the Act Two quartet, he roared 'Er sterbe! Doch er soll erst wissen, wer ihm sein stolzes Herz zerfleischt' frighteningly without abandoning Beethoven’s pitches or his own consummate musicality. The pleasure of hearing Pizarro’s music truly sung, not snarled, cannot be overstated, and the performance was greatly enhanced by having as fine a voice as Pfortmiller’s in the part.

Considering his importance to the plot of Fidelio, Florestan, who does not appear in Act One, has surprisingly little to sing. When he opens Act Two with his recitative 'Gott! welch Dunkel hier!' and adagio cantabile aria 'In des Lebens Frühlingstagen ist das Glück von mir geflohn,' however, his significance both to Fidelio and to the tradition of German music for the tenor voice is immediately established. In Opera Carolina’s performance, it was also immediately apparent that tenor Andrew Richards was a Florestan for whom the rôle’s punishing tessitura was challenging but not damning. After a tiny crack on a descending phrase in the recitative, he coped manfully with the frequent top As and B♭s in the aria and drew the audience into his vision of his ‘Engel, Leonoren.’ Richards’s voice rang out beautifully on 'Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten' in the trio with Leonore and Rocco, and the fortitude that his Florestan displayed despite his weakness in the face of Pizarro’s treachery was rousingly manifested in the quartet, his voicing of 'Ein Mörder, ein Mörder steht vor mir' possessing singularity of purpose that compensated for his physical frailty. In the frenzied duet with Leonore, 'O namenlose Freude,’ a duet that clearly exerted a potent influence on Wagner when he was composing the cataclysmic love duet for Tristan and Isolde, Richards traded gleaming top Gs and As with his Leonore, and his lines in the opera’s finale were imposing expressions of profound joy and relief. Richards’s singing was not without effort, but the effort was repaid by an uncommonly effective, affecting portrait of Florestan.

Die Macht der Hoffnung: Tenor Andrew Richards as Florestan (left) and soprano Maria Katzarava as Leonore (right) in Opera Carolina’s production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio [Photo by Jon Silla, © by Opera Carolina; used with permission]

​There were suggestions of the young Éva Marton in the Leonore of Mexican soprano Maria Katzarava. The 1984 Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinée broadcast performance of Fidelio in which the Hungarian soprano was partnered by Jon Vickers, whose singing as Florestan Richards’s performance fleetingly resembled, is as fine a performance as Marton ever sang of any rôle, and Katzarava very nearly surpassed the unexpected brilliance of her predecessor. In a sense, Katzarava's excellence was also surprising. She made a petite prison guard, but big, bold tone poured out of her like a geyser forcing its way through a small crevice in the earth. In the Act One quartet, the soprano exclaimed 'Wie groß ist die Gefahr! wie schwach der Hoffnung Schein!' with fervor, and her statement of 'Ich habe Mut, mit kaltem Blut, mit kaltem Blut will ich hinab mich wagen' in the trio was heartening. There were a few suspect pitches along the way, and notes below the stave were slightly compromised by Katzarava's otherwise admirable avoidance of chest register, but the voice was both attractive and impactful from E4 to B5, where most of Leonore's music is centered. She dove into the famous recitative 'Abscheulicher! wo eilst du hin? was hast du vor?' with controlled zeal, and she molded the adagio section of the aria, 'Komm, Hoffnung, laß den letzten Stern,' with bel canto delicacy that made the rise to top B an organic climax. Bolstered by the horns, she mastered 'Ich folg' dem innern Triebe,' little troubled by the two-octave compass extending from low B♯ to top B. The top A♭s and B♭s in the Act One finale held no terrors for her, and her voice was discernible in even the largest ensembles without being over-prominent, which is to say that she consistently achieved balances between power and poise that suited the music. In Leonore's duet with Rocco in Act Two, Katzarava emoted 'Ihr sollt ja nicht zu klagen haben, ihn sollt gewiß zufrieden sein' with passion, fearlessly executing the difficult triplets, and her glowing reading of 'Wie heftig pochet dieses Herz es wogt, es wogt in Freud und scharfem Schmerz' in the trio was bewitching. Compelled in the quartet to take action in order to save her husband's life, this Leonore's 'Zurück! Durchbohren, durchbohren mußt du erst diese Brust' pierced the torso of the drama as sharply as the dagger with which Pizarro meant to murder Florestan. The top B♭ that crowned her statement of 'Töt erst sein Weib!' was like dynamite: in a moment, the perilous threats to life and happiness were blown apart. The still-cautious euphoria of Leonore's and Florestan's reunion exploded in 'O namenlose Freude,' the soprano's climactic top Bs filling the auditorium with the sound of victory. Katzarava's voice soared in the opera's finale, the concentration of her singing of 'O Gott! o Gott! welch ein Augenblick!' meaningfully elucidating Leonore's response to a course of events she was hardly able to believe. The rise to top B♭, on which she was joined by Marzelline, was a musical catharsis, a sort of vocal representation of warming sunlight at last penetrating dense clouds. A marvel of Katzarava's performance was that she was able to summon such impressive vocal amplitude without heaviness: she maintained flexibility even when singing with the weight of a Reiza or Senta. The company of wholly successful Leonores has ever been small, but Katzarava distinguished Opera Carolina’s Fidelio by adding her name to that roll of distinction.

To those who love opera, the world's opera houses are the temples in which the rites of this incredible genre are practiced. Great composers are the prophets, and great singers are the priests who proselytize in efforts to recruit new audiences without shunning existing audiences, especially those individuals with deep pockets. On the rare occasions when whichever cosmic conditions affect the performance of opera are in proper alignment, opera can be a near-religious experience, and few scores in the international repertory are vessels more suited to celebration of the sacrament of opera than Beethoven’s Fidelio. It is a difficult score, and in too many performances its merits, the qualities that set it apart, must be taken on faith. Staged with tenderness, conducted with perceptiveness, and performed with honesty and beauty, Opera Carolina’s Fidelio was to those who love this opera an inspiring answer to prayers.