MAURICE RAVEL (1875 – 1937): L’enfant et les sortilèges and Ma mère l’Oye—Hélène Hébrard (L’enfant), Delphine Galou (Maman, La libellule, La tasse chinoise), Julie Pasturaud (La bergère Louis XV, La chatte, L’écureuil, Un pâtre), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (La théière, Le petit vieillard, La rainette), Marc Barrard (L’horloge comtoise, Le chat), Nicolas Courjal (Le fauteuil, Un arbre), Ingrid Perruche (Le chauve-souris, La chouette, Une pastourelle), Annick Massis (Le feu, La princesse, Le rossignol); Chœur Britten, Jeune Chœur symphonique, Maîtrise de l’Opéra National de Lyon; Orchestre National de Lyon; Leonard Slatkin, conductor [Recorded in Auditorium Maurice Ravel, Lyon, France, in September 2011 (Ma mère l’Oye) and 22 – 26 January 2013 (L’enfant et les sortilèges); NAXOS 8.660336; 1 CD, 71:52; Available from ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

One of the most popular pastimes among opera lovers is lamenting the extinction of the nationalistic schools of singing that in near-mythic previous generations divided opera companies' rosters into adherents of the particular styles of French, German, and Italian opera. This new NAXOS recording of Maurice Ravel's exquisite masterpiece-in-miniature L'enfant et les sortilèges reveals in every second of its forty-five minutes that the death knell for the storied French school of singing was rung prematurely. Here, some of today's best French-speaking singers proclaim to the listener that, as Mark Twain might have said, the rumors of the demise of distinctive, distinguished French singing have been greatly exaggerated.

It is indicative of her esteem not only for the composer's work but also for her own that, when the Opéra de Paris proposed to the celebrated French writer Colette that she write the text for a fanciful work for the stage, she was enthusiastic about no collaborator but Ravel. Her libretto for the piece that became L'enfant et les sortilèges took shape in only eight days—an ironic rapidity considering the snail's pace at which the notoriously unhurried Ravel, distracted by his service in the Great War and his mother's death, composed the score. Colette was among the first listeners to realize that Ravel's music was worth the wait: few writers in the history of opera have witnessed their words as lovingly integrated with music as Colette's are with Ravel's music in L'enfant et les sortilèges. Effective recreation of that integration of words and music must be the core of a performance of L'enfant et les sortilèges if it is to be successful, and the performance recorded by NAXOS—a souvenir of live performances, discreet coughs suggest, though this is not specified in the liner notes—balances verbal and musical values on equal footing.

Coupled with a nuanced, surprisingly touching performance of Ravel's 1911 fully-orchestrated ballet suite Ma mère l’Oye, the Orchestre National de Lyon and the ensemble's Music Director, American conductor Leonard Slatkin, collaborate in a reading of L'enfant et les sortilèges that journeys into the dark corners of music and text without getting lost in them. Slatkin's relationship with opera has been tempestuous, particularly in the wake of his widely-publicized withdrawal from performances of Verdi's La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010, when he alleged, in response to her suggestions that he was inept and unprepared, that his Violetta was insufferably unprofessional. [The often ridiculous politicking of opera is evident in the fact that Slatkin has not returned to the MET since 2010, whereas the soprano in question has appeared numerous times in the subsequent five years, on increasingly precarious form.] Conducting Ravel's and Verdi's scores are very different tasks, and if Slatkin does not achieve the authority and authenticity in L'enfant et les sortilèges that Ernest Bour and Ernest Ansermet exhibited in their recordings of the opera he manages to come very near to their high-water mark. The acoutics on this disc are not as spacious or well-defined as those on many NAXOS recordings, but the countless witticisms of Ravel's orchestrations are never obscured. On the whole, Slatkin's approach to the score is admirable, his tempi suitable for both the music and the personnel performing it. Under his direction, the Lyon musicians play with technical and sentimental virtuosity, unafraid of conveying a degree of saccharine eye-dabbing when Maman's naughty child unexpectedly binds the foot of the squirrel he injured. This is all to the good, for the moment is, somehow, incredibly poignant. Colette and Ravel clearly thought so: Slatkin and Company ensure that the listener thinks—and feels—so, too.

The ladies and gentlemen of all ages of the Chœur Britten, Jeune Chœur symphonique, and Maîtrise de l’Opéra National de Lyon bring their music to life with involvement that makes portraying inanimate objects and woodland creatures sound like the greatest fun in the world. The elegy for the casualties of the child’s assault on the Arcadian wallpaper, ‘Adieu, Pastourelles,’ is sung with an endearing element of sincerity. The various noises of the sylvan environment into which the child is plunged are produced with obvious relish: every hoot, howl, chirp, and croak is delivered with the same conviction with which the singers uniformly enunciate text. The menace that erupts from the choristers’ utterance of ‘Ah! C’est l’enfant au couteau!’ is genuinely frightening, and the contrast with the startled disbelief of their ‘Il a pansé la plaie’ when the denizens of the forest realize that the child has bandaged the squirrel’s wounded paw could hardly be more meaningful. The grand chorus that ends the opera, ‘Il est bon, l’enfant, il est sage,’ virtually a Baroque motet in which the animals find their own voices in order to call out for the child’s mother, is sung handsomely, but here, too, it is the spirit of the singing that is most impressive.

As entrancingly as her voice flickers in the coloratura and top Cs and D of La feu's ‘Arrière! Je réchauffe les bons,’ soprano Annick Massis shines even more brightly as La princesse, her singing of ‘Ah! Oui, c’est Elle, ta Princesse enchantée’ elucidating the impetus for the child's despair when he learns that, owing to his destructive misbehavior, there is no resolution to the princess's story. Massis is at her best as Le rossignol, warbling through the avian trills and top Ds with complete confidence. Simply put, Massis is one of the world’s most talented singers, one with acclaimed performances in the most important opera houses to her credit, but she inexplicably is not as familiar to American audiences and listeners as she deserves to be. For those who do not know her work, this recording will be a wonderful introduction. With refined, engaging accounts of Une pastourelle's ‘Pâtre de ci, Pastourelle de là’ and La chauve-souris's ‘Rends-la moi,’ soprano Ingrid Perruche nearly equals Massis's performance, differentiating her characterizations without deviating from her innate artistic integrity and loveliness of tone. Nicolas Courjal, an exceptionally gifted young bass, impresses with his imaginative singing of Le fauteuil's ‘Votre serviteur humble, Bergère’ and targets the heart with the skill of an expert marksman in his sonorous but sensitive phrasing of Un arbre's anguished 'Ah! Ma blessure...Ma blessure.'

As L’horloge comtoise, the grandfather clock deprived of its pendulum by the child's roughhousing, baritone Marc Barrard intones 'Ding, ding, ding, ding' with near-mechanical precision, but he gives one of the recording's most brilliantly uninhibited performances as Le chat in the riotous ‘Duo miaulé,’ an homage to Wagner's chromatically adventurous writing for Tristan and Isolde that only a pair of agitated felines could bring off. Tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is a marvel of a singer in the tradition of Michel Sénéchal whose performances radiate very French sensibilities. That he chants as much as he sings in this performance is more to do with the nature of his music, in which Ravel gives him absurd writing rocketing to E♭5 and F5 in falsetto, than with the condition of the voice, which remains in fine fettle. Fouchécourt purrs La théière's ‘How’s your mug?’ with the snobbishness of a very proper English lord before whirling uproariously through the famous Foxtrot. He is even more in his element as Le petit viellard, spouting Old Man Arithmetic's drolleries in ‘Deux robinets coulent dans un réservoir!’ as though they were choicest lines from Shakespeare. Both gentlemen are complemented by the alert, well-honed singing of mezzo-soprano Julie Pasturaud, a Bergère Louis XV whose 'Votre servante, Fauteuil’ is noticed and a Pâtre whose 'L’enfant méchant a déchiré’ has both substance and subtlety. She matches Barrard meow for sultry meow as La chatte in ‘Duo miaulé.’ As L'écureuil, the much-abused squirrel, Pasturaud excels at infusing the little creature with humanity, articulating ‘Sauve-toi, sotte! Et la cage? La cage?’ with grace that highlights her tormenter’s inherent savagery.

Heard most frequently in Baroque repertory, contralto Delphine Galou creates a Maman whose profoundly expressive ‘Bébé a été sage?’ exudes maternal affection despite the exasperation caused by a disobedient child. When this mother sings of the hurt that she suffers because of her son’s recalcitrance, her pain stokes the listener’s sympathy. Galou metamorphoses into La tasse chinoise as if by the enchantment evoked in the opera’s title. She sings the mock-Chinese jibberish in ‘Keng-ça-fou, mah-jong’ as though she were quoting Confucius. Then, she gives the despondent La libellule a soul with her aggrieved voicing of ‘Où es tu, je te cherche.’ Mezzo-soprano Hélène Hébrard depicts an Enfant who is petulant and frustratingly puerile at the start but ultimately atypically poetic. The ennui of her ‘J’ai pas envie de faire ma page!’ and ‘Ça m’est égal!’ is unmistakable, but deeper emotions intrude in ‘Oh! Ma belle tasse chinoise!’ These emotions escalate in Hébrard’s impassioned exchange with the Princesse, ‘Ah! C’est elle! C’est elle!’ She etches the essence of ‘Toi, le cœur de la rose’ into the listener’s memory, and her exclamation of ‘Oh! Ma tête!’ is wrenching. The relief that Hébrard conveys with ‘Ah! Quelle joie de te retrouver, Jardin!’ is sweetly comforting, and her final ‘Maman’ breaks both the drama’s and the opera’s spells. Hébrard credibly portrays a child without endeavoring to sound conventionally childish, but this Enfant emerges from his ensorcelled forest with remarkable maturity.

NAXOS releases often illuminate aspects of scores that other recordings leave in the shadows, and this recording of Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye and L’enfant et les sortilèges exposes these chameleonic works to the shimmering Lyonnais sun. Like ragtime and jazz, far more musicians perform the music of Maurice Ravel than actually understand it. This disc provides a rare encounter with two of Ravel’s most beautiful pieces that is guided by the efforts of musicians who both grasp the composer’s singular idiom and truly love the music. This is a L’enfant et les sortilèges to reawaken the incorrigible but good-hearted child in every listener—and the dormant love for true French opera that has longed for signs of life.

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): Madama Butterfly—Talise Trevigne (Cio-Cio San), Michael Brandenburg (Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton), Michael Sumuel (Sharpless), Lindsay Ammann (Suzuki), Ian McEuen (Goro), Wei Wu (Lo zio Bonzo), Jesse Malgieri (il Principe Yamadori), Charles Hyland (Il Commissario Imperiale), Kate Farrar (Kate Pinkerton), Jacob Kato (Lo zio Yakusidé), Tom Keefe (L’Ufficiale del Registro), Annette Stowe (La madre di Cio-Cio San), Margaret Maytan (La zia), Austenne Grey (La cugina), Ella Fox (Dolore); North Carolina Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Timothy Myers, conductor [E. Loren Meeker, Director; Mark McCullough, Lighting Designs; Alice Bristow, Costume Designs; David P. Gordon, Set Designs; Sondra Nottingham, Wig and Make-up Designs; North Carolina Opera, Memorial Auditorium, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina; Friday, 30 October 2015]

Writers are often told that the surest path to success is writing about situations and sensibilities that they know from their own experiences. In a pragmatic sense, perhaps the best advice for composers is that they will find greatest inspiration in contemplation of that which cannot be known, those realms of thought and feeling for which words alone are inadequate. There is no better argument in favor of the veracity of this counsel than the genesis of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly. When in the summer of 1900 the composer first encountered David Belasco's dramatization of John Luther Long's 1898 story 'Madame Butterfly,' itself an adaptation of Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème, on the London stage, his knowledge of English extended little beyond 'Hello.' The play's atmospheric setting and the demeanor of the long-suffering Butterfly herself engaged Puccini's emotions and creative instincts in ways that transcended language, however, and the transformation of the delicate heroine of Long's story and Belasco's play into the operatic Cio-Cio San began in earnest. Considering not only the straightforward evidence of his correspondence but also interpreting his music, it is no exaggeration to state that Puccini fell in love with the ill-fated ladies who populated his scores. Lingering criticism of Puccini's skill and originality as a composer notwithstanding, the uncanny emotional potency of his scores is derived in large part from the fact that audiences, too, fall in love with the proud Manon Lescaut, the idealistic Mimì, the despondent Suor Angelica, and the selfless Liù. Even among her sisters in the Puccini canon, Cio-Cio San is unique. Manon Lescaut dies in her beloved's arms, Mimì is sustained by the boundless love of her friends until disease will be put off no longer, Angelica expires in an ecstasy of absolution and reunion with her child, and Liù gives her life as the purest declaration of devotion. Her wings broken by the betrayal of a man for whom she rejected her own culture, Butterfly dies alone, reclaiming her identity by committing the sole act via which, in the social order into which she was born, the honor of a compromised woman might be restored. There are no sentences of exile imposed by indifferent judges, no ravages of disease, no longing for the company of a departed loved one, no secret more valuable than living: deserted by hope, happiness, and the illusions upon which they were founded, only Cio-Cio San's own hands possess the power to free her. Pinkerton's distant cries of 'Butterfly!'—perhaps the most heartrending instance in opera of too little, too late—serenade a soul already liberated from its purgatory. Psychologically, perhaps the final scene of Madama Butterfly resonates so intensely with many observers because Cio-Cio San's suicide controverts Western philosophies’ unremitting dedication to preserving life at any cost. Emotionally, though, the blade that pierces audiences’ hearts is wielded by Puccini’s music. Treating the score not as a nostalgic postcard from Nagasaki but as a blueprint for crafting upon the stage a cyclorama of humanity, North Carolina Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly sharpened that blade to an acute level of dramatic musicality.

Musically and scenically, Madama Butterfly is very difficult to get right. Though Puccini's intentions were undoubtedly wholly respectful of the ancient customs and traditions of Japan, the opera walks on the edge of the precipice overhanging uncomfortable stereotypes and misguided, ill-informed representations of a timeless culture. In reality, criticism of his sentimentalized use of Japanese folk tunes and 'The Star-Spangled Banner' ultimately possessing little validity, Puccini engaged in very little musical moralizing in Madama Butterfly. There is no doubt that his sympathy was with Cio-Cio San, but there is sufficient beauty in his music for Pinkerton to make the sailor as charming as he is caddish. Charm was an essential component of North Carolina Opera's production, which placed the drama in a Nagasaki of delightful but deceptive natural beauty. Natural imagery is of tremendous importance to the plot of Madama Butterfly, and David P. Gordon’s sets, effectively and sometimes stunningly illuminated by Mark McCullough’s lighting designs, impressively recreated Imperial Japan on the Memorial Auditorium stage. A production of Madama Butterfly need not take every word of Puccini’s and his librettists’, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, staging instructions literally, but the opera demands a greater degree of specificity of time and place than many of its companions in the standard repertory. Unfathomably, the notion of 'traditional' productions continues to be anathema to the decision-makers at many opera companies despite the manifold indications that audiences respond as readily to composers' original thoughts as to today's directors' rethinkings. E. Loren Meeker's direction of North Carolina Opera's Madama Butterfly focused attention precisely where it must be centered if the opera's drama is to realize its full potential to enthrall the senses, on the relationships among the principal characters. There are in a tale of collisions between Eastern and Western cultures so many possibilities for insensitivity, but Alice Bristow's costumes and Sondra Nottingham's wigs and make-up gave every individual upon the stage a clearly-defined rôle in a thoughtful manner that avoided sensationalized exaggeration of the societal chasm between Cio-Cio San and her relations and Pinkerton’s Americanism. Too many productions of Madama Butterfly are an act of jigai away from being The Mikado, but North Carolina Opera’s detailed, discerning production was traditional in the best sense: the audience was privy to a performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, not someone else’s.

Madama Butterfly is a musical chimera that assumes vastly different appearances according to the constituent parts of the score that conductors choose to emphasize. In this performance, North Carolina Opera’s Artistic and Music Director Timothy Myers facilitated a reading of Puccini's score in which the music's lyricism, tinges of verismo, and Twentieth-Century modishness were all given their due. Composed in 1903 and revised to the form known today after an unsuccessful première at Teatro alla Scala in 1904, Puccini’s score is both a continuation of the modes of expression that proved cogent in Manon Lescaut and La bohème and an expansion of the direction in which he traveled in Tosca. The modernity of the music is often overlooked, but Myers unveiled the almost-Stravinskian pungency of many of Madama Butterfly’s harmonies, heightening the significance of the opulently Italianate melodies. One of Voix des Arts' Best Artists of 2015, Myers is a conductor whose approach to music is dedicated in equal proportions to content and context. In exploring the latter, he reminded the casual listener that Madama Butterfly is a contemporary of Richard Strauss's Salome and Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. During his tenure in Raleigh, Myers has nurtured exponential increases in the confidence and capabilities of the North Carolina Opera Orchestra, and the musicians joined him in making of the notes on the pages before their eyes a vibrant world in sound. String playing was consistently well-balanced, especially in the gossamer writing in the love duet, and the brass and woodwind players alternated cacophony and caresses as the score required. The prevalence of poorly-executed performances should eradicate the misconception that Puccini's operas are not as demanding as the scores of many of his non-Italian contemporaries, but Myers and his orchestra gave the impression of effortlessness in their mastery of Madama Butterfly. Equally heartening has been the artistic growth of the NC Opera Chorus in recent seasons, and Chorus Master Scott MacLeod's fastidious training of the ensemble was apparent in the world-class choral singing in this performance. As Cio-Cio San's attendants and relations in Act One, the choristers sang with precision, and their traversal of the famous 'a bocca chiusa' humming chorus that bridges Acts Two and Three was bewitching, sopranos and tenors alike braving the top B♭s fearlessly. Whether singing from the stage, playing from the pit, or presiding from the podium, North Carolina Opera's personnel acquitted themselves with consummate professionalism and the passion for their collective craft that makes Raleigh one of America's foremost destinations for opera lovers.

This was an unusual Madama Butterfly in that there were no singers in supporting rôles who were not up to their tasks. Austenne Grey's Cugina, Annette Stowe's Madre, Margaret Maytan's Zia, Jacob Kato's Zio Yakusidé, and Tom Keefe's Ufficiale were all ably-sung, carefully-acted portraits. Baritone Charles Hyland conducted the wedding ceremony  handily, voicing the Commissario's 'È concesso al nominato Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton' authoritatively, and fellow baritone Jesse Malgieri created a Yamadori of vocal means equal to his wealth with a resonant voicing of 'Tra le cose più moleste è l'inutil sospirar.' Bass Wei Wu roared chillingly as Zio Bonzo, detonating 'Cio-Cio-San! Cio-Cio-San! Abbominazione!' with ferocious muscle and a voice of granitic eloquence. Special mention must be made of Ella Fox, who without singing a single note stole every heart in the theatre with her adorable portrayal of Cio-Cio San's and Pinkerton's child Dolore.

To suggest that Kate Pinkerton is a thankless rôle is an understatement. Audiences are understandably predisposed to vilifying the 'other woman,' but her music, though hardly redolent of empathetic motivations, is not devoid of kindness and sincere concern for the welfare of Pinkerton's child. Mezzo-soprano Kate Farrar was a prepossessing 'sposa americana' who sang her few lines admirably. Both her 'Glielo dirai?' and her 'E le darai consiglio d'affidarmi?' throbbed with reluctance and genuine interest in Dolore's well-being. One of the production's most touching details was the image of Kate hiding herself outside Butterfly's house, weeping for the the poor girl's sad fate and her own unwitting part in it.

It is perhaps when his music is poorly sung that audiences most appreciate what a crucial rôle Goro plays in Madama Butterfly. Inexplicably, the part often seems to be regarded as an opportunity for whining, wheezing, and indulging in embarrassing pseudo-Oriental babbling. By contrast, it is astonishing to note how significantly a good Goro can heighten the impact of a performance of the opera, and North Carolina Opera had in tenor Ian McEuen a singer who upheld the seldom-equaled standard of Piero de Palma. Having recently garnered notice in Nashville Opera's production of Turandot, McEuen came to Raleigh's Madama Butterfly with a battle-tested familiarity with Puccini's style of fast-paced, mock-Asian writing, and his portrayal of Goro was distinguished by a refusal to sacrifice musicality in pursuit of cheap humor and an attractive, well-integrated instrument that required no faking of notes at the range extremes. Propelling the start of Act One with the nervous energy of a salesman eager to please (and to have his commission), McEuen sang 'Vanno e vengono a prova, a norma che vi giova nello stesso locale' with clear, well-placed tone that fell all the more dulcetly upon the ears for being free of caricature. Goro's ramblings have considerably more words than actual content, and McEuen carried on with the glee of an orator who fancies the sound of his own voice. His statement of 'Una stella dai raggi d'oro' disclosed the presence of an imagination far more extensive than many Goros bother to suggest. Furthermore, McEuen's singing in Act Two, when in 'Il ricco Yamadori. Ella è povera in canna' Goro attempts to facilitate a match between the abandoned Cio-Cio San and the affluent Principe Yamadori, was too cordial to be solely commercial in nature. No, this Goro, lurking at the periphery and observing everything, was sensitive to his surroundings and to Butterly's silent suffering, and McEuen's resourceful, splendidly-sung performance displayed the prime quality of Puccini's writing for the character.

North Carolina Opera's Madama Butterfly had in contralto Lindsay Ammann a Suzuki not just capable of singing the rôle—a trait more precious than might be supposed—but also unusually adept at being not merely a companion but a genuine comfort and confidante for her Butterfly. She was the epitome of nervous energy in Act One, rattling through 'Sorride Vostro Onore? Il riso è frutto e fiore' with girlish elation. She voiced 'Ecco! Son giunte al sommo del pendio' beguilingly. Suzuki's prayer at the start of Act Two, 'E Izaghi ed Izanami, Sarundasico e Kami,' received from Ammann firm, focused tones, and there was compassion even in her stark 'Mai non s'è udito di straniero marito che sia tornato al nido,' reminding Cio-Cio San that foreign husbands who return to their distant wives are an unknown species. The contralto's 'Vespa! Rospo maledetto!' was Wagnerian in scope, her top Fs and G♭s flashing like lightning bolts. In Act Three, Ammann's declamation of 'Già il sole!' was a crestfallen acknowledgement that Suzuki's fears were well-founded, and she sang 'Come una mosca prigioniera l'ali batte il piccolo cuor!' heartbreakingly. Ammann projected notes in chest register of which a baritone would have been proud, and she portrayed an animated, poignantly sisterly Suzuki.

Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel was a Sharpless who was unafraid of chastising his friend Pinkerton and was visibly shaken by Butterfly's noble suffering. Dressed in a drab suit, he was the prototypical low-level American bureaucrat to the life. Entering in Act One with a brawny 'E suda e arrampica!' that coursed through the theatre excitingly, Sumuel sang excellently throughout the performance. There was true admiration in his 'Miss Butterfly...Bel nome, vista a meraviglia,' and his blandishments to the unheeding Pinkerton were all the more dire for being so handsomely sung. In his Act Two scene with Butterfly, this Sharpless was virtually crippled by the pain that his visit was inflicting on the proud woman. When quizzed by Cio-Cio San about when robins nest in America, his responses of 'Mi rincresce, ma ignoro' and 'Non ho studiato ornitologia' were infused with tenderness. Unnerved by the interruptions to his well-planned delivery of the news of Pinkerton's abandonment, Sumuel's Sharpless sang 'Ora a noi. Qui sedete, legger con me volete questa lettera?' ponderously, but his quiet pronouncement of 'Quanta pietà!' was the cry of a man who could bear no more. His 'Sovente a questa siepe veniste a riguardare lungi' was a profound moment, the significance of which many Sharplesses ignore. Sumuel was marvelous in Act Three, voicing 'Scegliemmo quest'ora mattutina per ritrovarti sola' and 'Io so che alle sue pene non ci sono conforti!' with rich tone. The kinship between Sharpless and Marcello in La bohème was especially apparent in Sumuel's deeply-felt performance. A thoughtful Marcello conveys that he loves Mimì almost as much as Rodolfo loves her, and Sumuel left no doubt that his Sharpless cared for Butterfly in a way that was far more enduring and pervasive than Pinkerton's infatuation. Sumuel made a character whose level-headedness can seem callous the emotional spine of the performance.

On the surface, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is one of the most despicable characters in opera. As portrayed by young tenor Michael Brandenburg, he was particularly loathsome because he was also so captivating. Tall, handsome, and debonair in his Navy whites, he was a Pinkerton who surely set hearts in every port of call aflutter. Brandenburg launched Act One arrestingly with his boyish singing of 'E soffitto e pareti' and 'Gran perla di sensale!' In his first aria, the Allegro sostenuto con spirito 'Dovunque al mondo lo Yankee vagabondo,' he ascended to the top A and B♭ with fantastic ease, and he phrased 'Amore o grillo, dir non saprei' with true feeling, taking the three top B♭s in stride. His 'Vieni, amor mio!' radiated romance, but his defense of Butterfly against her relations' crushing denunciation raged in his athletic singing of 'Ehi, dico: basta, basta,' the top As piercing the din of the relations' scorn, and 'Sbarazzate all'istante. In casa mia niente baccano e niente bonzeria.' Brandenburg voiced the Andante affettuoso 'Bimba, bimba, non piangere per gracchiar di ranocchi' with hypnotic tranquility that was echoed in his seductive delivery of the Andantino calmo 'Viene la sera.' His fervent delivery of 'Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malìa' in the love duet coruscated with passion, and he was the rare Pinkerton whose decision to join Cio-Cio San on the top C at the duet's close was justified by the gleaming solidity of the tone. Creeping into Act Three with shame already crippling the youthful gait with which he bestrode Act One, Brandenburg voiced Pinkerton's aria 'Addio fiorito asil di letizia e d'amor' with sincerity, the character's regret finding resonant outlets in the top A♭s and B♭. In this performance, Pinkerton's off-stage cries on top F♯s of 'Butterfly!' as Cio-Cio San silently dies were emotionally torturous. Significantly, seeing Butterfly's lifeless body still upright according to the Japanese tradition of dying honorably, it was Pinkerton who collapsed, his virility capitulating to the weight of his carelessness. Brandenburg's vocal comfort in the music was unmistakable, and it was wonderful to encounter in Raleigh what is rare even in the world's largest opera houses: a young, attractive Pinkerton who sang as strikingly as he looked.

Puccini's music for Cio-Cio San brings to mind Richard Strauss's instruction that his Salome should be sung by a teenaged soprano with an Isolde voice. After contending with one of the most demanding entrance scenes in opera, Cio-Cio San playfully declares herself to be fifteen years old, and one of the greatest challenges for a singing actress is credibly depicting the evolution of the child bride of Act One into the mature woman who embraces the fatal mandate of her centuries-old culture in the opera's final scene. Visually, soprano Talise Trevigne was the ideal Cio-Cio San. A petite, delicately-featured lady of great beauty, she did not merely wear her costumes but truly gave them life, inhabiting Butterfly's physical identity to a degree that blurred the boundary between everyday reality and the alternate reality of opera. Indeed, there are native Asian singers who are not so wholly natural as Cio-Cio San as Trevigne was, but hers was a connection with the character and her music at the molecular level rather than a studied, Stanislavskian impersonation. Making her entrance in Act One with the gracefully tuneful 'Ancora un passo, or via,' she soared to top B♭ and thrilled with the freshness of her sound. In fact, not one note of her performance was strained, strident, or wobbly. The disarming sweetness of her 'Siam giunte' was invigorating, and there was not even the slightest hint of self-consciousness in her utterance of 'Nessuno si confessa mai nato in povertà,' the evenness of the bottom octave of the voice counting for much. Her guileless articulation of 'Morto' in response to the question about her father contrasted markedly with the radiance of her account of the beautiful Andante 'Ieri sono salita tutta sola in secreto alla Missione.' Both 'Non piango più' and 'Siete alto, forte' were shaped with the restraint expected of a well-bred Japanese lady, but Cio-Cio San's new-found sensuality blossomed in Trevigne's exquisitely-phrased account of the Andante sostenuto 'Vogliatemi bene un bene piccolino,' the line rising through top B♭s to the glorious top C with which she surrendered to Pinkerton's ardor. The soprano's artless enunciation of 'Pigri ed obesi son gli dèi giapponesi' in Act Two drew laughs from the audience, but there was nothing funny about the despair of her 'Suzuki, è lungi la miseria?' This Butterfly gave great meaning to 'Perchè con tante cure la casa rifornì di serrature' and 'Io te lo dico,' her voice ringing with the conviction of her words. Trevigne made the famous 'Un bel dì, vedremo' an intimate statement of her faith and devotion no less galvanizing than Tosca's 'Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore,' rising to the top B♭s with seemingly limitless breath control. In the scene with Sharpless, her 'Io son la donna più lieta del Giappone' glowed with the joy of promises fulfilled, but the simplicity of Butterfly's happiness was upended in Trevigne's intense singing of the daunting Andante molto mosso 'Che tua madre dovrà prenderti in braccio ed alla pioggia e al vento andar per la città.' The climactic top B♭s poured from her throat like emotions that could no longer be controlled. The affection for her son that emanated from 'O mio piccolo amore, mia pena e mio conforto' was poignant, and few Cio-Cio Sans equal Trevigne's serenity in 'Scuoti quella fronda e dei suoi fior m'innonda.' She met the demands of Act Three without a trace of artifice, her voicing of 'Dormi, amor mio, dormi sul mio cor' eerily calm and comforting, not only quieting Dolore but restoring her own resolve. Her 'Tu Suzuki che sei tanto buona, non piangere!' was a clandestine final expression of love for her devoted maid and companion. Trevigne drained the color from her voice for the parlando 'Con onor muore chi non può serbar vita con onore,' but her singing of 'Tu, tu piccolo iddio! Amore, amore mio, fior di giglio e di rosa' was remarkable for the way in which the warmth of life gave way to the coldness of death. Few people in the audience are apt to have been unaware that Madama Butterfly ends with the heroine's suicide, but there were audible gasps when this performance's Cio-Cio San unaffectedly plunged her father's tantō into her neck. This was evidence of the singular force of Trevigne's portrayal of Butterfly. A beautiful sound is not all that is required to sing the rôle memorably, but the pure beauty of Trevigne's voice was unforgettable. In movement, in voice, and in expressivity, she was a Butterfly worthy of mention alongside Maria Callas, Eleanor Steber, Leontyne Price, and Renata Scotto.

There is an aphorism about even the blind squirrel occasionally finding acorns, and, applying the same logic, every opera lover occasionally witnesses performances that redefine their understanding and responses to composers, scores, particular rôles, or the genre as a whole. North Carolina Opera’s Madama Butterfly was a production that disclosed Puccini’s genius as a musician and man of the theatre in ways that in turns gladdened and broke the heart whether one was experiencing the opera for the first or the thousandth time. In truth, though, one might see Madama Butterfly a thousand times without ever seeing another performance as satisfying as this one.

Qui sedete, legger con me volete questa lettera: Sharpless reads Pinkerton’s letter in Act Two of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly [Illustration by Leopoldo Metlicovitz, © by Casa Ricordi]

FRÉDÉRIC FRANÇOIS CHOPIN (1810 – 1849): Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 65; Étude, Op. 25, No. 7 (arranged by Auguste Franchomme); Introduction et Polonaise brillante for piano and cello, Op. 3 and SERGEY RACHMANINOV (1873 – 1943): Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 19; Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14—Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano [Recorded in Teldex Studio, Berlin, Germany, 21 – 23 November 2014; DECCA 478 8416; 1 CD, 80:54; Available from DECCA Classics, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

On the heels of a thoughtfully-planned, superbly-produced Deutsche Grammophon recording of the composer's Variations on themes by Arcangelo Corelli and Nicolò Paganini, Universal again honors the artistic legacy of Sergei Rachmaninov with a lovingly-presented DECCA recording of his Opus 19 Sonata for cello and piano and the exquisite Vocalise (Op. 34, No. 14), contrasted by a trio of works in similar veins by Frédéric Chopin. Hearing the music of both composers with this degree of proximity, it is impossible to overlook the extent to which Rachmaninov's part writing was influenced by Chopin's example, and the two geniuses shared a gift for creating melodies that, once heard, never leave the mind. Indeed, the pieces on this disc, played by American cellist Alisa Weilerstein and Tel Aviv-born pianist Inon Barnatan with a level of musical symbiosis that transcends casual partnership, are of that variety of music that lurks in the subconscious like memories waiting to be relived. The spirit of this collaboration is reflected in the music: Chopin had been dead for nearly a quarter-century when Rachmaninov was born, but the older composer's artistic soul might be said to have been resurrected in the work of the younger man. To the extent that composers' souls are enshrined in their music, the spirits of both Chopin and Rachmaninov sing in the selections on this disc, their voices enthrallingly projected by the playing of a pair of exceptionally talented musical communicators.

Completed and premièred with the composer at the piano on 2 December 1901, less than two months after the first performance of his titanic Second Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov's G-minor Sonata for cello and piano—so designated at the composer's urging because of the equality of the music for both instruments in terms of difficulty and importance—is among the composer's most introspective and quietly moving works. Weilerstein and Barnatan begin the opening Lento – Allegro moderato movement with an aura of uncertainly, the shifting harmonies executed with a light touch that conjures an atmosphere not unlike the discord of the opening bars of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. From that start, however, cellist and pianist progress to a reading of the movement's development that is strangely electric and sensitive. There is nothing quaint about Weilerstein's and Barnatan's playing, and they do not shrink from overtly Romantic expansiveness. The complex patterns shared by the instruments in the Allegro scherzando movement are phrased by the musicians with uncanny synchronicity that never inhibits individuality: naturally, a cello cannot play a passage identically to the way in which it is played on the piano, and Weilerstein and Barnatan complement one another's approaches without engaging in unimaginative mimicry. The interplay of their sharing of thematic material makes the Andante movement a legitimate conversation in music, almost a love duet, and the lyrical eloquence of their playing provides numerous moments of spine-tingling emotional impact. Rachmaninov does not seem to have been a sentimental man, but it is logical to presume that he allowed feelings to which he did not grant words to speak through his compositions. The passions of the concluding Allegro mosso movement are ambiguous, and the unexaggerated sincerity with which Weilerstein and Barnatan convert them into sound heightens the ambivalence. Rachmaninov was no less accomplished in the art of blending instrumental timbres in his chamber music than in his larger-scaled, imaginatively-orchestrated works, and the robust sounds that Weilerstein and Barnatan coax from their instruments often give the impression that far more than two players are at work. The melodic figurations, as sumptuous as they are sensual, are executed by both musicians with keen focus on the organic cadences of the music. This is also true of Weilerstein's and Barnatan's performance of the rhapsodic Vocalise (Op. 34, No. 14), a piece in which cello and piano interact playfully but with galvanizing unity of purpose. As technicians, Weilerstein and Barnatan are unfailingly nimble-fingered, but it is the keen intelligence of their playing of Rachmaninov's music that refuses to relinquish its grasp on the listener's ears and heart.

Composed in 1846 and dedicated to the widely-acclaimed cellist Auguste Franchomme, Chopin's Sonata for cello and piano in G minor (Opus 65), the last of his works to appear in print before his untimely death, is an ideal companion for the Rachmaninov Sonata. The Sonata is one of a handful of surviving works in which Chopin composed for other instruments in combination with piano, and in it his complete understanding of the tonal possibilities of the piano is proved to have extended to the cello. From the first bars of the Allegro moderato movement, there is a wistfulness, familiar from the Nocturnes, that flows through the Sonata, almost a Leitmotiv that unites the movements like a silent melody. To their credit, Weilerstein and Barnatan immerse their playing in Chopin's latent melancholy without wallowing in it. The rhythmic crispness of their playing alleviates the somberness of the music, revealing the glimpses of sunlight that peer through the clouds. In both the Scherzo and its boisterous Trio, the musicians offer playing that exemplifies technical brilliance, but the zenith of their interpretation of Chopin's Sonata is their performance of the Largo movement. Like Mozart and Beethoven, Chopin possessed an extraordinary gift for creating slow movements that remarkably unite emotions of near-operatic intensity with confessional intimacy. In the Sonata's Largo, cellist and pianist leave no expressive path unexplored but maintain absolute control on rhythm and phrasing, allowing the listener to contemplate Chopin's music on its own terms without imposing an idiosyncratic interpretation of their own devising. It is often far bolder to allow a piece to speak its own language than to attempt to translate it, and Weilerstein and Barnatan further disclose the depths of their artistries by sagaciously respecting Chopin's music. The sense of joy in making music that beams from Weilerstein's and Barnatan's playing of the Sonata's Finale is gladdening, and the precision of their performance is enhanced by the insightfulness of their phrasing. Every smile, sigh, and furtive sorrow that inspired Chopin resounds in this reading of his beautifully-crafted Sonata.

Arranged by the dedicatee of the Sonata, Auguste Franchomme, the Étude in C sharp minor (Op. 25, No. 7) is, as played by Weilerstein and Barnatan, a piece that combines virtuosity with vulnerability. Franchomme’s mastery of the cello enabled him to retain the Étude’s unique structure, and his friendship with Chopin surely contributed to the faithfulness of his preservation of its ethos. Weilerstein gives a stirring account of Franchomme’s cello part, and Barnatan matches her every feat of prowess with his own unassailable finesse. The Introduction et Polonaise brillante for piano and cello in C major (Opus 3)​ is among Chopin’s many miniature masterpieces, fully meriting its ‘brillante’ designation. Weilerstein’s and Barnatan’s performance likewise merits the distinction, their shared affection for the music cascading through their playing of the Introduction et Polonaise brillante—as it does through their playing of every piece in this recital.

Listening to this disc again and again, it seems utterly ridiculous that some of Classical Music's most influential advocates perpetuate the falsehood that there are no musicians at work today who are capable of consistently rivaling the performances and interpretations of artists of the past. Boasting of performances by distinguished pairings such as Edmund Kurtz and William Kapell, Zara Nelsova and Artur Balsam, and Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and Lev Oborin, the discography of Rachmaninov’s Sonata for cello and piano, though still an underappreciated work, contains many fine traversals, and the Chopin Sonata has been even more fortunate on records. Still, neither piece has been more blessed in the recording studio than when Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan met before the microphones in Berlin. Yet again in the long history of recorded sound a DECCA release restores confidence in the integrity of contemporary artists. More fundamentally, this is a ravishing recording of fantastic music.

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Das Rheingold—Matthias Goerne (Wotan), Michelle DeYoung (Fricka), Deborah Humble (Erda), Kim Begley (Loge), Peter Sidhom (Alberich), Anna Samuil (Freia), Kwangchul Youn (Fasolt), Stephen Milling (Fafner), David Cangelosi (Mime), Charles Reid (Froh), Oleksandr Pushniak (Donner), Eri Nakamura (Woglinde), Aurhelia Varak (Wellgunde), Hermine Haselböck (Floßhilde); Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra; Jaap van Zweden, conductor [Recorded during concert performances in Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, 22 and 24 January 2015; NAXOS 8.660374-75; 2 CDs, 153:35 (also available in Blu-ray Audio format); Available from ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

NAXOS’s new recording of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold is a celebration of new beginnings. In addition to preserving the rôle débuts of two of today's most lauded singers, this recording launches a complete Der Ring des Nibelungen that will be the first such effort by an orchestra in Hong Kong and all of mainland China, as well as its conductor’s inaugural Ring. Were those its only virtues, it would be a worthwhile addition to the Rheingold discography, but the strengths of this Rheingold extend far beyond these impressive firsts. Recorded in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s state-of-the-art Concert Hall during two widely-lauded concert performances in January 2015, the recording is a technological triumph overseen by producer and engineer Phil Rowlands, whose expertise has produced a recording that satisfies both as a faithful reading of Wagner’s sonically thrilling score and as a memento of the frisson of this important occasion. Neither performances nor recordings of Das Rheingold are rare, but performances and recordings of the quality of this one, distinguished by the participation of a splendidly-selected cast, are no more common than giants and Rhinemaidens. One of the most prevalent themes in Classical Music during the past decade has been the primacy of NAXOS releases among the finest new recordings, and this Rheingold is an exceptionally musical variation on that theme.

Founded in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century as an amateur ensemble, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra assumed the form in which it is heard in this Rheingold as recently as 1974. Under the direction of esteemed Asian and Western-born Music Directors including Ling Tung, Kenneth Schermerhorn [familiar to NAXOS aficionados as the much-lamented Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Nashville Symphony], David Atherton, Samuel Wong, and Edo de Waart, the HKPhil has grown into one of the world’s finest orchestras and a beacon for native and international talent. The orchestra’s current Music Director, Dutch violinist [the breadth of his talent is intimated by his having become the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s youngest concertmaster at nineteen], conductor, and composer Jaap van Zweden, established his credentials as a Wagnerian on disc with a compelling performance of Parsifal with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest on the Challenge Classics label, also recorded in concert. The insightful management of orchestral textures and psychological depth that characterized Zweden’s conducting of Parsifal also course through this recording of Das Rheingold. The HKPhil musicians respond to his leadership with feats of virtuosity that rival the best playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Whether by virtue of near-perfect playing or judicious editing of material from the pair of performances, the orchestra’s contributions to this performance would be welcomed with fervent ‘Bravi’ at Bayreuth. The opera's Vorspiel here develops, as it should, from a silent abyss—hardly an easy accomplishment in the context of a live recording!—into the primordial clamor of disrupted nature, lusty giants, and obstreperous deities, and there is no mistaking in this performance the fact that the seeds of the scene-change music in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten and the Interludes in Britten's Peter Grimes were sown by Wagner in the Einleitung before Scene Two and the Verwandlungsmusik before Scene Three of Das Rheingold. Zweden's tempi are occasionally idiosyncratic, the pacing sometimes seeming slightly deliberate, but momentum is maintained impressively, creating a pervasive sense of dramatic tension despite the inherent stasis of the concert format. Zweden is attentive to Wagner's differentiations of the sonic landscapes of the Rhinemaidens, the giants, and the gods, limning the musical boundaries of each realm with taut rhythms for the mortals and expansive phrasing for the denizens of the newly-built Walhalla. The machinery of the Nibelung dwarves’ sweatshop, famously represented in Wagner’s score by eighteen tuned anvils, here sounds more like the clinking of cutlery in a well-appointed kitchen, but the orchestra’s playing, bolstered by marvelous performances by brasses and woodwinds, is consistently on an aptly Wagnerian scale, and Zweden paces a performance of grandeur and gravity.

Substantially completed by the autumn of 1854 but not performed until 1869, Das Rheingold both brought the precepts outlined in Wagner’s 1851 tome ‘Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde’ to fruition and broadened the scope of the Ring as a whole, which Wagner had originally conceived as a trilogy rather than the tetralogy that it became with Das Rheingold. For modern audiences, Rheingold introduces the characters and themes that shape the dramas of the three subsequent works, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. First heard are the sometimes playful, sometimes portentously prophetic Rhinemaidens, the guardians of the gold fashioned into the ring that brings gods’ and men’s destinies into conflict. With soprano Eri Nakamura as Woglinde and mezzo-sopranos Aurhelia Varak and Hermine Haselböck as Wellgunde and Floßhilde, the performance begins with the tuneful frolicking of an appealing trio of Rhinemaidens. The ladies' euphonious singing of 'Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle' sparkles like sunlight on the water's surface, and each voice is both individually and collectively ideal for the music. The good-natured teasing of Alberich has in this performance an obvious core of vulnerability, but there is nothing insecure in the ladies’ singing. Their voicing of 'Lugt, Schwestern! Die Weckerin lacht in den Grund' crackles with girlish verve, and the avidity with which they sing 'Nur wer der Minne Macht entsagt' is telling. Nakamura’s, Varak’s, and Haselböck’s vibrant exclamation of 'Haltet den Räuber!' evinces panic without being undermined by vocal flaws. In the final scene, the trio’s shimmering 'Rheingold! Rheingold! Reines Gold!' ends the performance with a surge of truly golden sound, the demands of the tessitura met with unassailable conviction by all three ladies.

The giants Fasolt and Fafner are sung with sonorous malevolence and subtle hints of humor by basses Kwangchul Youn and Stephen Milling. Youn brings to Fasolt’s 'Sanft schloß Schlaf dein Aug'!' a voice that sounds as though it was mined of the earth’s sturdiest ore, and the power with which he projects 'Was sagst du? Ha! Sinn'st du Verrath?' is gladdening. In Scene Four, Youn sings ‘Halt, du Gieriger! Gönne mir auch was!' with steely authority that is the hallmark of his performance as a whole. As Fafner, Milling is a blood-curdling thug from the start, already very nearly a dragon! The reptilian smugness of his delivery of 'Du da folge uns!' is matched by the explosive intimidation of his 'Hör' Wotan, der Harrenden Wort!' In Scene Four, Milling hurls out 'Gepflanzt sind die Pfähle nach Pfandes Maß' and 'Nun blinzle nach Freia's Blick!' with abandon. Fasolt and Fafner do not require vocal beauty, but hearing their music sung so capably, without allowances having to be made for lapses in stability and intonation, heightens appreciation of the care with which Wagner gave life even to these hateful characters.

Alberich is portrayed with snarling menace by baritone Peter Sidhom, who, despite being unafraid of distorting the voice in service to his depiction of the character’s agenda, ultimately sings the part with greater fidelity to Wagner’s score than many recorded Alberichs. In the opera’s first scene, he dispatches 'Hehe! ihr Nicker' with the forcefulness of a gunshot, and Sidhom’s increasingly agitated, unsettling articulations of 'Garstig, glatter glitschriger Glimmer!' and 'Der Welt Erbe gewann'ich zu eigen durch dich?' are electrifying. Here and especially in Scene Three, the part’s highest notes trouble Sidhom, who must sometimes resort to shouting, but his portrait of the embittered Nibelung is laudably consistent. The baritone’s account of 'Hehe! Hehe! Hieher! Hieher! Tückischer Zwerg!' is invigorating, and in both 'Schau, du Schelm!' and 'Die in linder Lüfte Weh'n da oben ihr lebt' Alberich’s nefarious intentions scintillate in Sidhom’s singing. The opera’s final scene prompts Sidhom to give broad expression to Alberich’s frustration. His 'Wohlan, die Niblungen rief ich mir nah' and 'Gezahlt hab' ich nun laß' mich ziehn!' exude hatred and a burgeoning quest for vengeance. Sidhom is an Alberich who epitomizes villainy without caricature, and his considered, confident singing inspires sympathy for the character’s suffering.

Tenor David Cangelosi is, as he has been in a number of Ring productions, a wily, wheedling Mime who sings the rôle more comfortably than many Mimes heard in recent years. Throughout the performance, Cangelosi’s Mime is like a live wire, showering every scene in which he appears with dramatic sparks. The tenor’s tones are not always conventionally attractive or ideally-placed, but the Mime that he portrays is an appropriately unpleasant figure who is tolerated by the other characters only with considerable restraint. Cangelosi sings 'Nehmt euch in acht! Alberich naht!' obsequiously but with ringing tone, and his use of text throughout the performance is masterly. Cangelosi manages to make Mime interesting rather than merely repulsive, and his vocalism is gratifyingly fluent.

Though the voice has tremendous presence, baritone Oleksandr Pushniak is unfortunately only a partially successful Donner, his stentorian singing of 'Heda! Heda! Hedo!' and 'Bruder, hieher! Weise der Brücke den Weg!' when summoning the thunderstorm in Scene Four impaired by unsteadiness. Vocal instability is perhaps a family trait, as tenor Charles Reid's alert, verbally sharp-witted Froh is also weakened by tremulousness, especially above the stave. Both gentlemen create sharply-defined characters whose parts in the drama they uninhibitedly fulfill, but their intelligent, accurately-tuned performances are too often compromised by vocal unevenness in moments of significance.

As Freia, the object of the giants' disgusting desire, soprano Anna Samuil’s effervescent singing leaves no doubt of why she is such an irresistible prize for Fasolt and Fafner. The golden apples that preserve the gods’ youth seem to glisten in Samuil’s singing, but the terror that emanates from her pleas to be rescued from the giants’ unmistakable designs is bracing. Unlike many Freias, Samuil scales the upper reaches of her music without shrillness. Her singing of ‘Schwester! Brüder! Rettet!' pierces the musical tapestry of the performance like a dagger. Offering tones of meteoric allure, Samuil’s Freia is a woman any self-respecting brothers would move heaven and earth to save from the clutches of libidinous oafs.

It no longer seems possible that this abused, broken planet could sing with a voice as strong and beautiful as that of Australian mezzo-soprano Deborah Humble, and the direness of her Erda's warnings to Wotan are all the more chilling for being so splendidly sung. Humble invests troves of rich, burnished tone and unerring dramatic instincts in her performance of 'Weiche, Wotan, weiche!' The result is one of the most compelling recorded accounts of the brief but crucial rôle, one in which every note of the part is wholly in the voice and no compromises are required. Humble rivals Lili Chookasian and Oralia Domínguez for sheer vocal quality and uses German text as imaginatively as Maria von Ilosvay and Marga Höffgen. Arrogant and foolish indeed is the Wotan who fails to heed the counsel of such an Erda!

British tenor Kim Begley is the uncommon veteran of Wagner and Richard Strauss rôles whose carefully-honed technique and well-judged performances have preserved the beauty and flexibility of the voice, and he sings Loge in this performance with nimbleness and finesse which many younger singers should envy. Ever an imaginative artist, Begley makes much of the text, his diction giving his singing of 'Immer ist Undank Loges Lohn!' additional bite. He infuses 'Ein Runenzauber zwingt das Gold zum Reif’ with unexpected nuances, establishing Loge as the sole fount of reason and understanding in Das Rheingold. In Scene Three, Begley's reading of 'Nibelheim hier: durch bleiche Nebel' is appealingly forthright, and he shapes both 'Ohe! Ohe! Schreckliche Schlange' and 'Dort, die Kröte! Greife sie rasch!' with the intuition of a born Wagnerian, accentuating key words without altering the emphases in Wagner's phrasing. He unleashes a world-weary fury in 'Da, Vetter, sitze du fest!' in Scene Four, furthered by his bright enunciation of 'Ist er gelöst?' Begley phrases 'Lauschtest du seinem Liebesgruß?' with bel canto grace, the voice flowing through the music with far greater pulchritude than many listeners might think possible in Wagner repertory. This is one of Begley's finest recordings and a Loge that rivals the best interpretations on disc.

Solely among recorded performances of Das Rheingold, American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung must endure comparisons with many of the greatest Wagnerians of the past century as Fricka. Having recently garnered acclaim for her vocally and dramatically voluptuous Venus in the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Tannhäuser, DeYoung here establishes her Fricka as a worthy successor to celebrated interpretations of the rôle by Elisabeth Höngen, Ira Malaniuk, Rita Gorr, and the incomparable Kirsten Flagstad, whose Fricka in the DECCA studio recording conducted by Sir Georg Solti remains one of the most-debated performances on disc. DeYoung's vocalism is ungainly to a degree, and she is most effectively in her element when under greatest stress, but the voice is a legitimate Fricka instrument that possesses metal and femininity in equal measures. The mood that she conjures with her granitic 'Wotan, Gemahl, erwäche!' is one of consummate political dominance, Fricka's moral authority outweighing Wotan's ambition. DeYoung deploys mountains of tone in 'So schirme sie jetzt' and 'Wotan, Gemahl, unsel'ger Mann!' In the lower register, where Fricka's music often takes her, she can summon the focus of a contralto with velvety sumptuousness that contrasts stunningly with the laser-like upper register, the top of the voice essentially that of a dramatic soprano. In Scene Four, DeYoung envelops her rousing statement of 'Lieblichste Schwester süsseste Lust!' with sisterly concern and spousal scorn. DeYoung's performance leaves nothing to chance, her first effort at portraying Fricka disclosing a commendable absorption of the rôle. A number of Frickas have credibly conveyed the aggrieved wife's contempt for Wotan's misadventures, but few singers have given voice to her protestations as unfalteringly as DeYoung does in this performance.

As a Wotan admired for remarkable perspicacity as an interpreter of Lieder rather than Wagnerian declamation, baritone Matthias Goerne has much in common with his storied countryman Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Goerne shares his illustrious predecessor's poetic approach to text and seemingly boundless palette of vocal colors, but in his first portrayal of Wotan it is George London rather than Fischer-Dieskau whose example Goerne's singing brings to mind. Unlike Fischer-Dieskau, who encountered passages in Wotan’s music that required more voice than he could supply, Goerne possesses the range and the orotundity of tone for the part, which he plays with machismo and bristling pride. Having waited to sing Wotan until he had experience with a character like Berg’s Wozzeck under his belt, Goerne here makes one of the most auspicious rôle débuts in recent memory. The soaring sovereignty with which he phrases 'Endlich Loge! Eiltest du so,' a passage of which many Wotans make little, is indicative of his intuitive grasp of both the character and his music. Throughout the first half of the opera, Goerne alternates petulance with pure muscle in depicting Wotan’s shifting allegiances and thirst for power. Facing Fricka’s withering disdain and the bungling turpitude of the giants and Nibelungs, Goerne’s Wotan assumes the capacity of unanswerable supremacy, taking command in​ Scene Four with an imposing account of 'Soll ich sorgen und fürchten.' Greeting Walhalla, his perceived refuge from the perils and responsibilities of wielding the ring, Goerne sings 'Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge' stunningly, complemented by a poised but pointed 'So grüss' ich die Burg.’ Few singers have elucidated the motivations and flaws of the Rheingold Wotan at any points in their careers as Goerne here does in his first attempt. Heartening as the profundity of his interpretation of the rôle is, it is his singing that wins the greater share of the laurels. Any listener who continues to believe that tired barking is the trademark of a successful Wotan should hear this performance. Goerne’s singing harkens back to past generations, when Wotans like Friedrich Schorr, Hans Hotter, and George London revealed that brawn need not impede beauty.

Die Walküre is the Ring opera that works best beyond the context of the complete Cycle, but Das Rheingold is in many ways the most accessible of the four works that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen. There is a concentrated circumspection in Rheingold’s uninterrupted narrative that is not duplicated elsewhere in Der Ring, and Wagner’s music at once occupies a lofty plane of inspiration and exemplifies effective theatricality. The observer who suggests, perhaps because of its less-daunting dimensions, that Das Rheingold is an ‘easier’ piece than Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung has surely never been involved with performing, producing, or recording it. This NAXOS recording of the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s Rheingold, the first installment in a complete Ring Cycle scheduled for realization in increments by the end of 2018, is an achievement for which every participant and all Wagnerians must give thanks. Its weakest link is far from ruinous, and its foremost strengths—the Wotan of Matthias Goerne, the playing of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the conducting of Jaap van Zweden—foretell a Ring to challenge notions of great Wagner performances being solely things of the past.

Principe del pianoforte: Italian pianist Ludovico Troncanetti [Photo © by the artist; used with permission]

​The acclaimed American thespian Kelsey Grammer, not only television’s beloved Dr. Frasier Crane but also a lauded interpreter of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, is quoted as having said that ‘praying is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you’re listening. Playing piano allows you to do both at the same time.’ Whether or not one prays or meditates, it cannot be denied that both playing and hearing the piano can be exercises in purest spirituality. Indeed, to hear Arthur Schnabel play Beethoven or Ivan Moravec play Chopin can be akin to a spiritual experience, one with potential both to calm and to excite. Since the development of the instrument in the Eighteenth Century, the piano has occupied positions of particular prominence in all genres of Classical Music. At virtually any given time in the past quarter-millennium, there have been enough Classically-trained pianists in the world to fill Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, but there are hardly ever enough truly good ones to man a proper football match. The second decade of the Twenty-First Century is an age in which passion and proficiency are often subservient to promotion, and it is sobering to contemplate how many extraordinary artists, how many Schnabels and Moravecs, are unappreciated because some money-hungry agent or record label executive has not instructed music lovers to notice them. Solely being one of the world’s most accomplished pianists is no longer enough to sustain a successful career: one must perform, not merely play. In the esteem of those for whom music is still primarily defined by exchanges among composers and artists, there will always be room for pianists who play because they love playing, pianists for whom constant study and drive for improvement of technique and interpretation is at the service of music, not fame. Italian pianist Ludovico Troncanetti is an artist who personifies Kelsey Grammer’s insightful elucidation of the dual nature of the piano. He is a consummate performer whose endeavors at the keyboard exude theatricality, but he is first and foremost an introspective artist whose intensity is the offspring of an omnipresent commitment to refining not just his technique but also his ability to communicate with composers and audiences. His music-making listens as palpably as it speaks.

Unlike many musicians (or many musicians’ claims), Troncanetti was not an acknowledged prodigy from an early age. ‘I don’t think we can talk about childhood as I started playing the piano at thirteen—by chance!’ he recalls with a laugh. ‘I remember [that] I was listening [to] much more symphonic music rather than [music] for piano solo. I really loved Horowitz and Cziffra, and nowadays my taste [hasn’t] changed at all!’ Still, he developed rapidly as both a technician and an artist, his raw talent refined by fastidious study and self-imposed discipline. ‘As far as I’m [now] much more mature, I can say [that] I appreciate and understand more pianists than before,’ he shares. After pausing for a moment, he smilingly adds, ‘I don’t have a favorite one!’

This rejection of favoritism also extends to his choices of repertory. Troncanetti eschews specialization, wisely seeking to avoid being confined artistically by identification with any one niche of the piano’s extensive repertoire, but he possesses an unmistakable affinity for interpreting the music of Franz Liszt. One of the most ill-informed injustices in the Classical Music community is the continuing perception of Liszt’s piano music as a series of emotionally-barren virtuoso display pieces. ‘Unfortunately, this thought about Liszt is very common, sometimes as a compliment [and] sometimes as a defect,’ Troncanetti opines. ‘Amateurs should know [that] Liszt used his virtuosity in order to convey his own feelings, thoughts, moods, and sensitiveness through the music; not the contrary. In other words, according to Liszt, technique is the means and not the aim.’ In Troncanetti’s view, many modern listeners recognize Liszt more as a musical circus act than as a practicing artist and pedagogue—a musician primarily concerned with what Shakespeare called ‘outward shows.’ ‘As a teacher, Liszt offered his students little technical advice, expecting them to “wash their dirty linen at home,” as he phrased it,’ the passionate young Italian intimates. ‘Instead, he focused on musical interpretation with a combination of anecdote, metaphor, and wit. In my personal opinion, a good and clear example of all this is the Grosses Konzertsolo (S.176), in which the composer perfectly combines his piano skills and [an] avalanche of tormented feelings.’ His mention of Liszt’s teaching style turns Troncanetti’s thoughts to the lessons that he would seek to impart to his own students. ‘If I were a teacher,’ he begins, ‘first of all, I’d recommend [that] my pupils make sure that what they’re playing corresponds to what they feel inside themselves. Secondly, I’d suggest not to abuse the pedal and to do their best to play “legato” with it as little as possible.’ This leads to contemplation of what Troncanetti perceives as one of the greatest vices of contemporary pianism. ‘As [my] last advice,’ he muses, ‘I’d [share that I’d] appreciate if they didn’t “run” on the keyboard too much. Musicians are not sprinters!’ He is the rare artist who takes his own advice: two of the greatest joys of his playing are the liquidity of his legato playing and the unhurried articulation of his phrasing, each note granted its full weight in the line regardless of its duration.

When asked from which composer he would most like to commission a piece fashioned to exhibit his unique gifts, he says without hesitation, ‘That’s [a] very funny and curious question! For sure, I’d ask Liszt and [Swedish pop group] ABBA for a piece specially-tailored for me! It would be a sort of mix of the Liszt personal mood and ABBA’s unforgettable musicality and joy!’ The choice of Liszt is natural, the composer’s music having launched Troncanetti’s public career. He remembers, ‘The first piece I played in public was the First Mephisto Waltz (S.514), when I was seventeen. It’s still in my repertoire, and, comparing to the first time I played it, I certainly say [that I now] play it definitely more slowly, more clearly, and [highlighting] all the harmonies that interweave and make the piece so amusing!’ His description of his approach to Mephisto Waltz No. 1 is, in fact, representative of the way in which he seeks to play all repertory, whether a piece was composed two centuries or two weeks ago. How does he define what it is that he tries to achieve with his playing? ‘I’d say the balance between virtuosity and sound,’ he summarizes. ‘I always do my best to try to balance them perfectly and make the sound as clear as possible and use the pedal just where it's necessary.’

In molding his career as a concert pianist, Troncanetti is a solo artist in the truest sense of the designation. He does not have formal management or representation, preferring to make his own decisions and allow his playing to serve as the persona that agents are so keen to fabricate for their clients. He has the boon of being as handsome as the leading men of Hollywood’s gilded past, but he is also cognizant of the difficulties of pursuing a career without a manager's guidance through the business aspects of an artist’s life. Nothing distracts him from the music, however. ‘The greatest challenge in [artists’] careers is the concert itself!’ he exclaims. ‘Every single time we perform, we always test ourselves! It doesn’t have anything to do with the time you spend practicing: that’s utterly a personal question. Whether you practice twenty-four hours or just one per day, you'll always have that crisp, inevitable, and funny feeling which makes you feel responsible and ready to face the audience—and yourself, too. It’s a never-ending challenge which lasts during all your career. No choice; each of us has to deal with it. That’s the special thing of our job.’

His unpretentious embrace of this ‘special thing of [the] job’ sets Troncanetti's playing apart from that of his colleagues. Perhaps it seems counterintuitive to suggest that his performances are more complete, more interpretively fully-formed experiences for listeners because the pianist himself regards them as works in progress, but this pianist’s dedication to perpetual self-improvement makes every performance a part of a journey that has as its ultimate destination not perfection but profoundest connection with both music and hearer. It is this quest that is the hallmark of Troncanetti’s playing, whether in the rehearsal room or the concert hall. For him, playing is a means of sharing aspects of his psyche with audiences in a manner that words could never accomplish. ‘I want [audiences to] remember my capacity to share my feelings, to be emphatic; just the way I go straight to their souls without showing off,’ he says. ‘If they remember me for this, I’d feel so immensely grateful—the happiest man in the world!’

Happiness is a state that is sadly rare in the lives of many artists. In some cases, this is perhaps because the choice to pursue a career as an artist is a surrender to external pressures rather than a response to internal desires. When playing the piano, the fingers either sound the right notes or they do not, but a pianist's artistry is defined by less-tangible qualities. When carefully-groomed dilettantes are celebrated as important artists because their publicists insist that it should be so, it can be difficult to discern a legitimate artist among the throngs of pretenders. Artists are men who view life from the inside out, and this perspective can blind those incapable of seeing the smiles among the scowls and tears. It is impossible to overlook the smiles in Ludovico Troncanetti’s playing. More remarkably, it is impossible to overlook the composers’ smiles that emerge from the sound worlds he creates as he plays their music. Happiness is perhaps the most elusive of human emotions but also among the most contagious. It is also cyclical, and the happiness with which Ludovico Troncanetti infuses his playing, happiness derived from forging friendships with and via music, is returned and redoubled by the joy that hearing his performances inspires.

In performance: Italian pianist Ludovico Troncanetti in his natural habitat [Photo © by the artist; used with permission

Ludovico Troncanetti is based in Milan, Italy. To learn more about this incredible artist’s work or to make booking inquiries, please contact him via email.

Sincerest thanks are extended to Mr. Troncanetti for his time and candor in responding to questions for this profile.

Few partnerships among artists and their muses have affected the development of a genre as wondrously as the relationship between Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868) and the remarkable Spanish diva who eventually became his wife, Isabella Colbran (1785 – 1845), enriched opera. When Semiramide premièred at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in 1823 with Colbran in the title rôle, the thirty-year-old Rossini was already nearing the end of his career as a composer of opera, a career that enveloped Europe in a musical temporale that uprooted the groves of bel canto from Vienna to London. Like the earlier Tancredi, Semiramide allied Rossini’s musical prowess with a drama by Voltaire, the warped tale of the murderous queen of Babylon inspiring Rossini to create not only one of his most distinguished scores but also an especially fine part for the Falcon-esque Colbran. Not even memories of Colbran’s fire-breathing interpretation of Semiramide were sufficient to preserve the opera’s place in the repertory, but occasional revivals reminded subsequent generations of the score’s merits. No less a judge of artistic quality than Oscar Wilde admired Semiramide when he heard a performance in Cincinnati in 1882. Uniting a phenomenal cast with a team of first-rate musicians under the direction of Artistic Director Antony Walker, a conductor with a rare gift for bel canto, Washington Concert Opera’s 22 November concert performance of the opera has every ingredient necessary to prepare a feast that satisfies the hunger for a Semiramide that serves every morsel with the musicality that Rossini the consummate operatic chef concocted.

Among many American music lovers, Semiramide is only slightly more familiar than Guillaume Tell, holding the advantage over the later score of having both a frequently-heard Overture and a famous aria, the title character’s ‘Bel raggio lusinghier.’ Like the obscurity in which so many of Rossini's serious operas still slumber, the neglect to which Semiramide has been subjected is in no way mandated by the quality of the score. Interestingly, Semiramide was first performed by the Metropolitan Opera on tour in Boston as early as 1892, when the title rôle was sung by the legendary Adelina Patti, and was introduced to the MET’s New York audience two years later by Dame Nellie Melba. In January 1894, an anonymous critic wrote in The New York Times that ‘it is not likely that any one takes Semiramide very seriously in these days. It is a string of display pieces which give the singers abundant opportunity to exhibit the agility of their vocal organs. The music has no connection with the plot, which is very imperfectly explained even by the libretto, and which, indeed, is better left unexplained.’ Is it possible that New Yorkers in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century heard a different Semiramide than the one that inspired Rodney Milnes to write in Opera in response to the 1990 MET revival of the opera that ‘it is a work that grips the imagination from first to last’? In actuality, Semiramide’s famous Overture is the rare such work in the Rossini canon that incorporates thematic material from the score it was intended to introduce, and the level of inspiration in evidence in Rossini’s settings of Gaetano Rossi’s text elevates the opera to a higher histrionic plane than that occupied by many of the composer’s operas. Whether or not a listener is willing to accept Semiramide as a profound work, the challenges that the score poses to singers cannot be denied, and it is the clearing of these musical hurdles that is certain to be the defining virtue of Washington Concert Opera’s performance of the opera.

Rossinian cousins: Soprano Jessica Pratt, Washington Concert Opera’s Semiramide, as Amira in Gioachino Rossini’s Ciro in Babilonia at Pesaro’s Rossini Festival, 2012 [Photo by Eugenio Pini, © by Rossini Festival, Pesaro; used with permission]

An Englishwoman by birth and an Australian since her teens, soprano Jessica Pratt recently sang the title rôle in Semiramide for the first time with Opéra Municipal de la Ville de Marseille. The finicky French press wrote that her performance was of a quality that caused the audience to wish that time would stop in order to prolong enjoyment of her singing. There is surely some sort of cosmic significance in the fact that it was a pair of fellow Australians whose efforts prevented Semiramide from being lost forever in the mists of Babylon’s hanging gardens. Dame Nellie Melba was Semiramide in eight of the Metropolitan Opera’s nine performances of the opera in the Nineteenth Century: after 1895, Semiramide was not heard again at the MET until 1990, depriving MET audiences of hearing the great Australian interpreter of the Twentieth Century, Dame Joan Sutherland, who sang the rôle opposite the Arsace of Marilyn Horne in California, Boston, and Chicago. Melba’s and Sutherland’s voices were very different instruments from what historical accounts suggest that Colbran’s was, but these ladies memorably carried Semiramide’s mantle until it could be hoisted aloft in the Twenty-First Century by their talented countrywoman. Bringing her newly-minted portrayal of Rossini’s conflicted queen to Washington, Pratt is committed to refining and deepening the characterization that garnered acclaim in Marseille. ‘I would like to highlight her vulnerability and her very precarious position, her determination to survive and rule in a masculine world,’ the soprano commented. Whereas many singers are understandably concerned solely with meeting the technical demands of the rôle, Pratt, one of the finest technicians among today’s generation of young bel canto singers, is dedicated to revealing unexpected facets of Semiramide’s personality. ‘I would like her to be seen less as a fearsome tyrant queen and more as a brave, intelligent, and ambitious woman trying her best to survive in a world where every day could be her last if her past crime comes to common knowledge.’ That she sets this goal whilst facing some of Rossini’s most ferocious bravura writing is a testament to her artistic fearlessness and confidence in the solidity of her technical foundation.

Ardent Arsace: Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, Arsace in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide on 22 November 2015 [Photo © by Michel Juvet; used with permission]

Created by coloratura contralto Rosa Mariani, whose brother Luciano was Rossini's first Oroe, the rôle of the noble warrior Arsace in Semiramide is among Rossini's most challenging parts for the modern mezzo-soprano voice—and, indeed, one of the most formidable travesti rôles in opera. Ideally, an Arsace must be both chest-thumpingly masculine and sensitive, a combination that is difficult for a female singer portraying a male character to achieve. In Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Semiramide, Arsace will be brought to life by one of the world's most acclaimed Rossini singers, Alaska-born mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. In a career spanning two decades, Genaux has sung many of Rossini’s great travesti rôles, as well as his contralto heroines such as Angelina in La Cenerentola, Isabella in L’italiana in Algeri, and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia. Like Marilyn Horne before her, she has scored well-deserved successes as Arsace in Semiramide, not least opposite Angela Meade and Lawrence Brownlee at Caramoor in 2009. Having previously sung Angelina in La Cenerentola and Falliero in Bianca e Falliero for Washington Concert Opera, Genaux comes to Washington on the heels of a much-lauded Norwegian début as Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti ed i Montecchi with Stavanger Symfoniorkester and Fabio Biondi. ‘I’m very excited to sing the role of Arsace again,’ Genaux recently said. ‘Semiramide is one of my favorite operas: the music is so full and rich, with gorgeous duets and ensembles paired with the virtuosity and intensity of the arias. To me, it’s one of Rossini's finest works, and I can't wait to share this amazing experience with the Washington Concert Opera!’ That she has such esteem for Semiramide is of course very meaningful considering Genaux’s experience with Rossini repertory. Not surprisingly, her affection for the opera is greatly influenced by the music for Arsace. ‘Arsace is very representative of the mezzo rôles in Rossini's dramatic operas in that he is a young man who, through the course of the opera, is called upon by circumstances to take on the responsibilities of an adult,’ Genaux stated. ‘I love walking in his shoes every time I sing him, feeling how the bewilderment and uncertainty of the youth matures into the conviction and complete dedication of the man.’

Idiomatic Idreno: Tenor Taylor Stayton, Idreno in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide on 22 November 2015 [Photo © by Amy Allen; used with permission]

The third variable in Semiramide’s Pythagorean equation of ambitions, amorous intrigues, and assassinations is the Indian king Idreno, who will be sung in Washington by thrilling young tenore di graziaTaylor Stayton. Idreno’s allegiances and perspectives are continually trapped in the crossfire of the drama throughout the opera, and his music—much of which has often been cut for a variety of reasons, foremost among which is tenors’ inability to sing it—reflects his near-constant state of flux. One of America’s most exciting young singers and one capable of mastering Idreno’s music on Rossini’s terms rather than his own, Stayton recently wowed audiences at the Metropolitan Opera with his singing as Percy in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, a rôle in which he has shone since his time at Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts. Though Rossini and Donizetti are often misleadingly pigeonholed together, Stayton is keenly aware of the stylistic chasm that divides Semiramide from Anna Bolena. ‘There is a definitely a difference, musically, between Rossini and Donizetti,’ he indicated. ‘Percy is the beautiful standard of Donizetti: the long legato lines, ascending to slow beautiful cadences at the ends of arias, and always demanding complete vocal control. For me, Idreno is more [representative] of the intense vocal fireworks that Rossini is known for in his operas and [of] maintaining that vocal control with virtuosic agility—a completely different ball game.’ Particularly with music demanding technical concentration as great as that required by Idreno’s searing—and stratospheric!—Act One aria ‘Ah! quel giorno ognor rammento,’ it can be very difficult to achieve a credible characterization of a rôle in the concert setting. ‘Since WCO champions concert versions of opera,’ Stayton remarked, ‘my focus is on the music. I hope the audience will enjoy and have as much fun listening to Semiramide as we do performing the opera.’

For the lower-voiced male rôles in Semiramide, Washington Concert Opera’s performance offers a trio of fantastic voices wielded by expert stylists. Assur, a part in which Samuel Ramey excelled to the degree that a New York critic wrote that Ramey’s performance of the music at the MET put the bel in bel canto, is entrusted to bass-baritone Wayne Tigges, a singer whose versatility, not unlike Ramey’s, enables him to follow his Assur for Washington Concert Opera with an assumption of the titular seagoing wanderer in Virginia Opera's Spring 2016 production of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. Oroe, the High Priest of Baal, will be sung by bass-baritone Evan Hughes, a native Californian whose sonorous voice and interpretive intelligence have delighted audiences in recital halls and opera houses. Chinese bass Weí Wu, the engaging Friedhold in WCO’s March 2015 performance of Richard Strauss’s Guntram, returns to Lisner Auditorium to intone the dramatically vital utterances of L’ombra di Nino.

Despite the increased traction that the opera has achieved on the European circuit in recent years, it has now been more than two decades since Semiramide was performed at the Metropolitan Opera. Of course, it was not until 1997 that La Cenerentola, one of Rossini’s most popular scores, was performed at the MET, where recent seasons have offered audiences première productions of Rossini’s Armida and Le comte Ory. Without question, the difficulty of the music puts Semiramide out of the reach of all but the most gifted Rossinians. Fortunately, it is an ensemble of precisely such artists that Washington Concert Opera will assemble in Lisner Auditorium on 22 November. With a rare performance of Donizetti’s La favorite in the original French scheduled for 4 March 2016, Washington Concert Opera’s 2015 – 2016 Season again provides audiences with opportunities to experience gems of bel canto as they were meant to be performed.

Sincerest thanks to Jessica Pratt, Vivica Genaux, and Taylor Stayton for responding to questions for this preview and to Kendra Rubinfeld of Kendra Rubinfeld PR and Tim Weiler of O-PR Communications for facilitating the artists’ responses.

For more information about Washington Concert Opera’s 2015 – 2016 Season and to purchase tickets, please visit the company’s website.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891 – 1953): Peter and the Wolf, Opus 67, plus music by Paul Dukas, Sir Edward Elgar, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Mahler, Modest Mussorgsky, Giacomo Puccini, Erik Satie, Robert Schumann, Bedřich Smetana, Richard Wagner, and Alexander von Zemlinsky—Alice Cooper, narrator; Bundesjugendorchester; Alexander Shelley, conductor [Recorded in Probenstudio Stolberger Straße, Cologne, Germany, during April 2014 (Peter and the Wolf), Funkhaus Berlin Nalepastraße, Germany, during September 2014 (other musical excerpts), and 5A Studios, London, UK, during June 2015 (narration); Deutsche Grammophon 479 4888 (also available with narration in German by Campino, 479 4894); 1 CD, 49:34; Available from DGG, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany - English version | German version), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Neither recording Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with narrations provided by celebrities of all artistic (and non-artistic) varieties nor reimagining Classics with the goal of making them more accessible for Twenty-First-Century audiences is uncommon, but neither endeavor has produced results more delightful than Deutsche Grammophon’s Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood. With the orphaned Peter relocated to the care of his Tommy Chong-esque grandfather in an idealized Los Angeles, Giants Are Small’s concept places the familiar story in a context both timeless and surprisingly, menacingly, wondrously modern. Composed in four days in 1936 in fulfillment of a commission for a work designed to encourage the development of musical taste among young schoolchildren, Peter and the Wolf has in the past seventy years amassed a discography containing performances narrated by luminaries of culture and politics ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt to Dame Edna Everage. Like so many works of divergent degrees of profundity, Peter and the Wolf has retained the popularity that it garnered in the decade after its first performance, according to Prokofiev a failure played to a mostly-empty house, not because it is a simplistic piece but because it cleverly, almost unperceivably inspires listeners of all ages to think and imagine. Prokofiev’s Leitmotivs in Peter and the Wolf are hardly of Wagnerian dimensions, musically or dramatically, but associating Prokofiev’s melodic units and instrumental timbres with Peter, his Grandfather, and the creatures of their acquaintance is a wonderful education in the art of interpreting musical characterization. Heightening the inherent eloquence of Prokofiev’s score, the heart of Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood beats not in a caricatured musical marionette show but in a vibrant, earnest depiction of a displaced young boy’s journey into a frightening, turbulent new world.

The brainchild of visual artist Doug Fitch, filmmaker and producer Edouard Getaz, and multimedia entrepreneur Frédéric Gumy, Giants Are Small is the product of an initiative focused on engendering fascinating new frames of reference for some of the most beloved works in the repertory. The prequel narrative devised for Peter and the Wolf, establishing Peter’s origins in Russia and the circumstances of his transplantation into the strange world of Hollywood, is nothing short of brilliant, an extension of Prokofiev’s metaphorical story that is a thoughtful, organic addendum rather than an imposition. Imaginative moments are plentiful, but the sequence at the end of the prequel linking Giants Are Small’s backstory to the adaptation of Prokofiev’s original tale proves unexpectedly moving. As Peter seeks sanctuary in his bedroom and peruses his photo album, seeing photos of himself as an infant, as a toddler, fishing by a lake, with his parents, and finally alone, the listener is given a window into the boy’s very adult senses of loss and isolation. The subsequent encounters with each member of Peter’s new milieu, including the wolf, therefore assume the increased significance of elements of the lad’s assimilation into his new existence. Aided by the voice work of Cristina Aragon as Dr. Mendoza and Fitch as the newscasters, Alice Cooper’s narration is an integral component of the tremendous success of Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood. Both in Giants Are Small’s prequel and Prokofiev’s score, Cooper’s mellifluous voice is virtually an instrument in the orchestra, used like the bassoon, the clarinet, or the oboe. Cooper’s voice is an instrument for which any composer might be proud to write. It is no surprise that Cooper’s musicality is impressive, but his affinity for Dickensian narration is unexpected. He delivers the narration without a modicum of affectation or condescension, never inflating Peter’s drama beyond the dimensions set by Prokofiev’s music. In the company of his fellow Peter narrators, Cooper’s approach combines Lorne Greene’s sonorousness, Sir Ben Kingsley’s articulation, and Sir Peter Ustinov’s sly humor but is entirely his own. It is not inconsequential when considering his musical pedigree and his faculty for revealing the music of words that Cooper’s iconic album School’s Out credited both Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim among its artistic personnel. In Prokofiev’s drama, Cooper’s performance is no less effective than his splendidly witty reading of ‘King Herod’s Song’ in the 1996 London cast recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. Even in a career that has taken him to the top of the charts, this disc is one of Alice Cooper’s finest achievements.

Under the baton of young British conductor Alexander Shelley, whose rhythmic flexibility gives Prokofiev’s score an engaging ‘swing’ worthy of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, the young musicians of the Bundesjugendorchester play Prokofiev’s score and the excerpts from other composers’ works with an ideal combination of technical prowess and youthful exuberance. It is unfortunate that the fallacy persists that, like Humperdinck’s Händel und Gretel, Peter and the Wolf is an undemanding piece because it was conceived as an entertainment for children. Peter and the Wolf is no Siegfried or Mahler symphony, but Prokofiev’s score deserves the respect given to his ‘serious’ music. One of the foremost accomplishments of Shelley’s work to date is his uncanny gift for looking past but not indiscriminately discarding accumulated traditions and forming his own interpretations of familiar pieces. In Shelley’s hands, the music selected to complement themes from Prokofiev’s score in Giants Are Small’s prequel fits seamlessly into the flow of the story, woven together by Cooper’s vocal silk. Represented by the Prelude from Act One of Lohengrin, the Prelude from Act Three of Tristan und Isolde, and the Walkürenritt from Act Three of Die Walküre, the music of Richard Wagner is featured prominently, and the Bundesjugendorchester players maintain a high level of proficiency in the gossamer string writing. Robert Schumann’s ‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’ from Kinderszenen and Erik Satie’s ‘Je te veux’ make effective appearances, as do bits from the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’ and ‘Catacombs’ from Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the first movement of Zemlinsky’s The Little Mermaid, Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, and the Knights’ Dance from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet. ‘W.M.B.’ and ‘Nimrod’ from Sir Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations are thoughtfully employed, and it is intriguing to note how aptly Russian the principal theme from Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava seems in the setting of an evocation of Peter’s heritage. Only a fleeting few bars from the Largo introduction to Act Three of Puccini’s Tosca seem superfluous, but how Gershwin-like ‘Quando m’en vo,’ Musetta’s waltz from La bohème, sounds as played here! The contrasting playfulness and peril in Prokofiev’s score are intertwined spellbindingly in Shelley’s and the Bundesjugendorchester’s performance, every detail examined both for its own importance and its function in the work as a whole. Shelley’s storytelling is no less effervescent than Cooper’s, and conductor and orchestra ‘speak’ as compellingly as the narrator.

Peter and the Wolf is a work that will never gain universal acceptance among the most elitist cliques of the cognoscenti, for whom snobbery is its own kind of advocacy. It is a piece that was intended by its composer not for close study in the concert halls of great orchestras but for the enjoyment and musical edification of schoolchildren, and what is wrong with that? In a world plagued by disorder and distress, there must be moments of frivolity, moments when children and adults can come together in fun, not fear. Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood provides fifty minutes of those moments. It is a very timely reminder that, though there are dangers of which a boy can hardly dream, there are love and friendship enough in the world to sustain and swell even the smallest spark of hope.

CHARLES-FRANÇOIS GOUNOD (1818 – 1893): La colombe—Erin Morley (Sylvie), Javier Camarena (Horace), Michèle Losier (Mazet), Laurent Naouri (Maître Jean); Hallé Orchestra; Sir Mark Elder, conductor [Recorded at Hallé St Peter’s, Ancoats, Manchester, UK, in June 2015; Opera Rara ORC53; 2 CDs, 79:59; Available from Opera Rara, harmonia mundi USA, Amazon (USA), jpc (de), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

When, six years after it was first performed in Baden-Baden, Charles Gounod’s frothy opéra comique La colombe premièred in Paris in 1866, France was a nation in flux. Napoléon III’s Second Empire was crumbling rapidly, imperial designs in Mexico were unraveling, and a retaliatory invasion of Korean territory was bringing oriental and occidental interests into conflict on an unprecedented scale. It was a time in which jovial evenings at the theatre were surely welcomed by all stations of society. Based upon Jean de la Fontaine’s poem Le faucon, Jules Barbier’s and Michel Carré’s libretto for La colombe infused the Opéra Comique with a spirit of guarded jocularity that twinkled in the sunny glow of Gounod’s score. Missing from La colombe are the grandeur and religiosity of Faust, the unapologetic Romantic excess of Roméo et Juliette, and even the wistful charm of Mireille, but Gounod’s little dove wields a singular allure all of her own. Gounod is a composer in descriptions of whom mentions of his consummate theatrical sensibilities are often laced with pejorative connotations, his skill for writing effectively for the stage inexplicably interpreted as a superiority of invention over inspiration, but the enduring popularity of Gounod's operas when those of many of his contemporaries have disappeared into the footnotes of books no one reads reflects the appeal that the music has exerted on the public for the past 150 years. A 1947 French Radio performance with an idiomatic cast including Janine Micheau as Sylvie offered glimpses of La colombe’s beautiful musical plumage, but Opera Rara’s studio recording of the opera, expertly engineered by Jonathan Stokes and Neil Hutchinson for Classic Sound and presented with documentation by Hugh Macdonald that is wholly worthy of the label's legacy, frees Gounod's score from its gilded cage and allows it to soar into the Twenty-First Century on wings of restored radiance.

It is not surprising for an Opera Rara release to provide listeners with opportunities to savor little-known scores as their composers intended them to be performed, but even among the treasures in the label’s discography this recording of La colombe is especially valuable. French coach Nicole Tibbels earns gratitude for facilitating a performance in which, in speech and song, the American leading lady and Mexican leading man are virtually indistinguishable from their native Québécoise and French colleagues. From the first notes of the Introduction, the authentic Gallic atmosphere is perpetuated by the Hallé’s playing and Sir Mark Elder’s conducting. Whether performing music by Gounod, Wagner, or Elgar, Elder and the Hallé musicians consistently combine British discernment and discipline with idiomatic mastery of the music at hand. In La colombe, Elder paces Gounod’s score with attention to detail that does not distract him from the carefully-constructed architecture of the opera as a whole. The challenges of Gounod’s score are met with virtuosic confidence by the Hallé players, the joie de vivre that streams through the music cascading through every bar of this performance. The orchestra’s playing credibly relocates the performance from Peter Street to Place Boieldieu.

As sung by Québécoise mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier, a more beguiling start to Act One than Mazet’s romance ‘Apaisez, blanche colombe’ is unimaginable. Possessing a voice of a type ever in short supply, ideal for rôles like Siebel in Gounod’s Faust—also a collaboration with Barbier and Carré—that demand both a measure of thrust and lightness of approach, Losier sings the romance enchantingly, her perfect placement of nasalized vowels proving that the correct production of these sounds does not require unattractive distortion of the tone. Losier makes no concerted efforts at sounding masculine, which is to the good as her timbre is so lovely. In Mazet's trio with Horace and Maître Jean that follows, ‘Qu’il garde son argent,’ Losier is joined by tenor Javier Camarena and bass-baritone Laurent Naouri. Singing Horace, Camarena displays every quality that contributed to his Metropolitan Opera début being one of the most memorable in recent seasons. Gounod’s music does not make the kinds of demands that rôles like Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Tonio in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment inflict upon him, but Camarena here voices Horace’s top B♭s in the trio as impressively as he has delivered the top Cs in Tonio’s ‘Pour mon âme, quel destin!’ Though this is not music that provides Camarena with fodder for his bravura technique, his comfort with the high tessitura is marvelous: not since the primes of Nicolai Gedda and Alain Vanzo has music like Horace’s been sung so capably and without strain. After dispatching his lines in the trio with gusto, Naouri, one of France’s finest singers, raucously vents his character’s frustrations in Maître Jean’s ariette, ‘Les amoreux.’ Accomplished in a wide repertory, Naouri knows his way round Gounod’s style, emoting with the glee of a child following a beloved secret path. Naouri’s sustained tones are sometimes slightly unsteady, but his intonation is largely unerring. Moreover, he finds in Maître Jean a part that might have been written for him. The vibrant air ‘Je veux interroger ce jeune homme et connaître’ introduces Sylvie, and in singing it soprano Erin Morley proclaims, ‘Alright, I am here: laissez les bons temps rouler!’ As she has been an admired Olympia in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann at the MET, the security of her top C♯s and D♯s is not unexpected, but the elation that she conveys in singing the sopracuti is remarkable. Morley has also been a Rhinemaiden in Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung and an aptly high-flying Waldvogel in Siegfried at the MET, so hers is not a standard-issue leggiero voice without a firm core. In her performance of the air, her energy is matched by imagination. Losier returns with a galvanizing account of Mazet’s couplets, ‘Ah! les femmes! les femmes!’ The Fs and Gs at the top of the stave hold no terrors for her, and she copes with equal aplomb with the trills and top B♭. Morley's top B♭ is tested in Sylvie’s terzetto with Mazet and Horace, ‘Ô vision enchanteresse,’ and the soprano passes the test without resorting to cheating, musically or dramatically. Joined by Naouri for the quatuor that ends Act One, ‘Ô douce joie,’ the singers deliver their lines exuberantly, Morley tossing off Sylvie’s top D uninhibitedly.

Elder and the Hallé set the stage for Act Two with an ebullient performance of the Entr’acte, revealing every detail of the cleverness of Gounod’s part-writing. Though he excels equally in comic and dramatic rôles, Maître Jean’s air ‘Le grand art de cuisine’ is clearly home territory for Naouri. The wit and humor that emanate from his singing of the aria are charming, and Naouri’s vocalism is here at its strongest. Losier and Camarena make Mazet’s and Horace’s duo ‘Il faut d’abord dresser la table’ a highlight of the performance, the shimmer of Losier’s singing complemented by Camarena’s effortless top B. Sylvie’s romance ‘Que de rêves charmants emportés sans retour!’ is sung by Morley with boundless enthusiasm tempered by an intuitive grasp of the contours of Gounod’s melodies. Splendid as her top notes are, the resonant middle octave of the soprano’s voice is particularly advantageous, and the thoughtfulness with which she uses text as the springboard that propels her characterization of Sylvie is inspiriting. An unencumbered flow of attractive, graceful tone is the hallmark of Camarena’s singing of Horace’s madrigal, ‘Ces attraits que chacun admire.’ Despite a few vowels that betray his Latino heritage, Camarena is as convincing a Francophone hero as Michel Sénéchal, and he brings precisely the proper vocal weight to Gounod’s dulcet but not anemic vocal lines. The sparkling quartettino ‘Déjà son cœur semble tout bas souscrire a tous mes vœux!’ receives expert handling from each member of the cast, Naouri anchoring the ensemble with vocal solidity, Losier’s quicksilver inflections glistening, Camarena portraying the love-wearied idealist with poise, and Morley delivering the top line with real distinction. Soprano and tenor interweave their voices like the finest chocolate and Breton caramel in ‘Hélas, seigneur, pardonnez-moi si j’ose vous demader l’unique chose,’ Sylvie’s and Horace’s duo, making the number the opera’s emotional climax. Spared the draconian dénouement of de la Fontaine’s poem, the curtain falls on La colombe to the strains of ‘Apaisez, blanche colombe,’ in this performance of which the fine soloists rise to the occasion of Gounod’s celebratory music with compelling bravado. Like the dove sailing into the heavens, Morley ascends to the heights to which Sylvie’s coloratura transports her with imperturbable elegance and the sound of a smile in the voice that listeners cannot help replicating on their faces, just as Gounod, Barbier, and Carré surely intended.

Paris at the time of the Opéra-Comique première of La colombe was a city in transition, clasping modernity with hands still stained with the blood of the Revolution and Terror. Whether in 1789, on the eve of occupation in World War II, as gunmen took aim at the artists of Charlie Hebdo, or in the wake of terrorist attacks that indiscriminately took lives in cafés and concert hall, Paris is ever a work in progress, somewhere between revitalization and reinvention. La colombe is set in Florence, but there is no doubt that the eternal ethos of Paris infuses every page of Gounod’s score. Opera Rara’s La colombe is what every opera recording should aspire to be: a performance that explores every nuance of the composer’s score and the librettists’ text with appropriate style and musicality. Like a rainbow after a ferocious storm, this perfectly-timed, frolicsome La colombe embodies Emily Dickinson’s familiar conceit: hope is indeed the thing with feathers.

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Aida—Anja Harteros (Aida), Jonas Kaufmann (Radamès), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Amneris), Ludovic Tézier (Amonasro), Erwin Schrott (Ramfis), Marco Spotti (Il re d’Egitto), Paolo Fanale (Messaggero), Eleonora Buratto (Sacerdotessa); Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Sir Antonio Pappano [Recorded in Sala Santa Cecilia, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy, during February 2015; Warner Classics 0825646106639; 3 CDs, 145:36; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Those who love the music of Giuseppe Verdi or opera on a grand scale cannot fail to greet the release of a new recording of Aida with excitement. Many performances of the opera in the past three decades have done anything but excite true operaphiles, however, the dearth of singers and conductors with the requisite technical and interpretive capacities to perform Aida at the level that the music demands and deserves having steadily grown more widespread. Truly, when hearing many recent efforts at performing the score it seems that eons have passed since the evening of 3 January 1985, when Leontyne Price gave her final performance of a complete rôle at the Metropolitan Opera as Aida. She was not as formidably secure in the music as she had often been throughout her quarter-century tenure at the MET, but she was still Leontyne Price—and, pivotally, she was still Aida in a way that almost no sopranos have been in the thirty years since her retirement from the stage. What so many singers, conductors, and directors now seem to fail to grasp is that an Aida's success depends upon far more than a solid top C in 'O patria mia.' Whether sung on stage or in studio, the rôle requires not only technical and dramatic concentration of the highest order but also a setting in which success is fostered, not compromised. Warner's new recording featuring the musical forces of Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the institution that contributed so meaningfully to Renata Tebaldi's first studio recording of Aida more than six decades ago, creates an environment not of cardboard pyramids and a spray-painted Nile but one of unfailing musicality and appreciation of the atmosphere that emanates from the pages of Verdi's score. This is not a perfect Aida, but, following Leontyne Price's example, it is unmistakably a sincere, legitimately devout one—in short, an Aida that honors rather than hiding Verdi.

For many listeners, the principal attraction of this Aida will understandably be its preservation of Jonas Kaufmann's inaugural interpretation of Radamès, one of Verdi's most demanding tenor rôles. This is a wholly valid reason for hearing this Aida, of course, and one that is rewarded with some fine singing, but Kaufmann's performance is thankfully not the recording's only virtue. The prevailing asset of this performance is the conducting of Sir Antonio Pappano. Not surprisingly, his approach to the score is strongly rooted in the grand Italian tradition but is also quite original. In some passages, particularly in Act One, Pappano's tempi seem laborious on first hearing, but the results that the conductor achieves ultimately reward listeners for having faith in his approach. Even in the controllable environment of the recording studio, ensembles have rarely been as ideally balanced and cleanly articulated as they are under Pappano's direction. The Preludio that introduces the opera is paced very expansively, but taut rhythmic control worthy of a Bach fugue ensures that momentum is not sacrificed to beauty. ​​The Santa Cecilia musicians play with passion that never jeopardizes the reliable fidelity of their executions of Verdi’s instructions. The high string writing in the Preludio is delivered with a rapt beauty that fully discloses the music’s kinship with similar passages in Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. In the public scenes, not least the Triumphal Scene, the sheer grandeur of the music is stirringly conveyed without obscuring the intensely private emotions that flow beneath the surface. In the introduction to Aida’s celebrated aria ‘O patria mia,’ the crickets among the reeds and the lapping of the inky Nile at its banks are audible, viscerally placing Aida in the scene that Verdi intended and touchingly evincing her isolation and increasing anxiety. Both the ‘Danza sacra delle sacerdotesse’ in Act One and the ‘Danza di piccolo schiavi mori’ in Act Two are also played with brio and bustling rhythmic vitality.The orchestra’s idiomatic command of the difficulties of Verdi’s score is matched by the choral singing. Apt to be taken for granted, choristers' jobs in a performance or recording of Aida are of great importance: perhaps a well-sung Aida is not ruined by a poor showing by the chorus, but even the poorest Aida is improved by a strong performance by the chorus. As the Egyptian populace, Amneris’s Moorish slaves, and the priests who stand in judgment of Radamès, the Santa Cecilia choristers sing powerfully and characterfully.

Rather than mimicking many productions’ casting by employing second-rate singers as the Messaggero and Sacerdotessa, this performance benefits from the work of a pair of excellent artists for whom Aida is atypical vocal territory. The days in which one might hear voices of the quality of those of Charles Anthony, Robert Nagy, and the young James McCracken as the Messaggero are perhaps gone forever, but this recording gives a delightful nod to this tradition. Tenor Paolo Fanale voices the Messaggero’s ‘Il sacro suolo dell’Egitto è invaso dei barbari Etiopi’ in Act One with a Lieder singer’s acute pointing of words and a youthful, rousingly handsome timbre that retains its pliancy from the bottom of the range to the part’s top G. Soprano Eleanora Buratto is equally effective as the ethereal Sacerdotessa, singing ‘Possente, possente Fthà, del mondo spirito animator’ in Act One with sensuality that lends the ritual blessing of the Egyptian warriors a suggestion of eroticism. She returns in Act Three with an emerald-hued ‘Soccori, soccori a noi’ and phrases ‘Immenso, immeno Fthà del mondo spirito animator’ in Act Four enchantingly. The beauty of Buratto’s voice is itself a worthy offering to the gods.

Italian bass Marco Spotti sings Verdi’s declamatory music for il Re with suitable pomposity and authority. Spotti’s voice is not a plush, opulent instrument, but its core of iron serves him—and Verdi—well in this rôle. In Act One, he manfully braves the depths of ‘Alta cagion v’aduna, o fidi Egizii’ and hurls out ‘Su! del Nilo al sacro lido accorrete, Egizii eroi’ with unanswerable bravado. He addresses the victorious Radamès in Act Two with an imposingly stentorian ‘Salvator della patria, io ti saluto.’ Spotti does not command the tonal amplitude that some singers have unleashed in il Re’s music, but it is a great pleasure to hear his music sung so securely. Some listeners may be surprised to learn by hearing Spotti’s spot-on performance that wobbling in il Re’s music is not, in fact, demanded by Verdi’s score.

Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott is a tremendously versatile singer, with intelligent portrayals of rôles ranging from Mozart’s Figaro and Don Giovanni to Colline in Puccini’s La bohème to his credit. Except in the context of a project such as this recording, Ramfis is now a rôle unlikely to appeal to a singer of Schrott’s caliber, but he here sings the part with stony allure. He opens the opera with a resonant statement of ‘Sì: corre voce che l’Etiope ardisca sfidarci ancora,’ and he articulates ‘Gloria ai Numi! ognun rammenti ch’essi reggono gli eventi’ with greater imagination than the passage typically inspires. Throughout the performance, Schrott creates a complex character who is implacable but not wholly unsympathetic. His firm, propulsive singing of ‘Spirto del Nume sovra noi discendi!’ drives the Judgment Scene in Act Four to its chilling conclusion. Schrott’s incisive portrayal of Ramfis is a crucial spoke of the wheel of fate that ultimately crushes Aida and Radamès but also considerably more engaging than the usual, relentlessly ramrod personification of the part.

French baritone Ludovic Tézier had not sung Amonasro before taking the rôle in this recording, but he offers a rounded, fully-formed interpretation of one of Verdi’s most grueling baritone rôles. It is not only Amonasro’s music that is daunting: it is easy to depict him as an embittered bully and thus to ignore the nobility that his daughter’s virtue suggests that he exemplified at some point in his life. Tézier’s Amonasro appears in Act Two with the force of a herd of beasts stampeding across the Serengeti. Paraded among the vanquished Ethiopians, he sings ‘Suo padre. Anch’io pugnai, vinti noi fummo’ with biting irony. This contrasts markedly with his august shading of tone in the Andante sostenuto ‘Quest’assisa ch’io vesto vi dica che il mio Re,’ the repeated rises to top F costing him little effort. In the Act Three scene with Aida, Tézier intones ‘A te grave cagion m’adduce, Aida’ menacingly, the father’s wounded pride suddenly turned against his daughter, but there is tenderness in the baritone’s thorny reading of ‘Rivedrai le foreste imbalsamate, le fresche valli.’ There is little doubt that this is an Amonasro willing to resort to brute physicality should his verbal persuasion prove ineffective, but he maintains an inherent aristocracy even when confronting Radamès. A studio recording is not always an indication of how a portrayal will work on stage, but on disc Tézier is a vividly-enacted Amonasro who sings Verdi’s music exceptionally well.

Though surely not the sole raison d’être for this Aida, Jonas Kaufmann’s freshman Radamès is a primary source of interest in the recording. Acclaimed in recent seasons as Manrico in Il trovatore, Alvaro in La forza del destino, and Don Carlo, he has also enjoyed successes as the Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto, Alfredo in La traviata, and Cassio in Otello. It is strange, then, that the music of Verdi often seems to be regarded by many observers as an addendum to rather than a central component of his repertory. Radamès was one of the best rôles for Franco Corelli, to whom Kaufmann is frequently compared, but the comparison is a misjudgment. Kaufmann's is a more compact, more flexible instrument—he has sung Mozart’s Idomeneo to general praise, after all—with less refulgence but near-equal reliability in the upper register. If Corelli’s voice was a trumpet in a rôle like Radamès, Kaufmann’s is an oboe, darker in timbre, reedier, and more refined but no less thrilling in climaxes. Perhaps only Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio and the Kaiser in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten face entrance music as fearsome as Radamès’s recitative ‘Se quel guerrier io fossi!’ and aria ‘Celeste Aida, forma divina’ in Act One of Aida. Kaufmann phrases both recitative and aria expansively and produces the aria’s first top B♭ with élan. His conscientious effort at honoring Verdi’s request for a morendo on the repetition of the tone is accomplished more with falsetto than true mezza voce, but it is beautifully done. Kaufmann encounters no difficulties in the high tessitura of Act Two with which he is not eminently capable of dealing, and he depicts the returning conqueror on a jubilant scale. In Act Three, he voices ‘Pur ti riveggo, mia dolce Aida’ with seductive intensity. The inner conflict that tears at Radamès as he weighs his duty against his love for Aida is apparent in Kaufmann’s expressive singing. Discovered in the act of unwittingly betraying his countrymen to Amonasro, he surrenders himself with an exclamation of ‘Sacredote, io resto a te’ punctuated by ringing top As. Sparring with Amneris in Act Four before facing Radamès’s trial for treason, Kaufmann voices ‘Di mie discolpe i giudici mai non udran l’accento’ arrestingly, lashing at the top B♭ with determination. Silent in his own defense, he descends into the tomb where his life is condemned to end with an account of ‘La fatal pietra sovra me si chiuse’ in which his fingers can almost be felt caressing the offending stone. The sorrow that exudes from Kaufmann’s phrasing of ‘Morir! si pura e bella!’ as Radamès thinks of Aida turns to panic when she appears from the shadows, but the quiet radiance with which he and his Aida trade top B♭s in ‘O terra addio’ gives the final scene the aura of a transcendent Liebestod. There are compromises in Kaufmann’s singing: though not heavy, his voice is a baritonal instrument, not the ideal spinto voice of a Corelli or a Richard Tucker, and Radamès’s high center of vocal gravity is not always completely comfortable for Kaufmann. A benchmark of his artistry is his commitment to wholly meeting the technical requirements of a rôle, however, and he succeeds as Radamès as almost none of his contemporaries have managed to do.

It is significant that, like Azucena in Il trovatore, Verdi considered Amneris the emotional and dramatic nucleus of Aida. Like Eboli in Don Carlo, her own actions alter the destiny of the man she loves, and her tragedy is being unable to alter either herself or the damning juggernaut she sets in motion. Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk is the member of this cast with the most extensive experience in her rôle, and she portrays a dangerous Amneris vulnerable only to her own insecurities. In the Act One duet with Radamès, there is an air of playfulness in her singing of ‘Quale insolita gioia nel tuo sguardo,’ an attitude that changes in an instant to one of barely-concealed scorn when, as Aida enters, she purrs ‘Vieni, o diletta, appressati.’ She reveals the perilous extent of Amneris’s jealousy with her venomous ‘Trema! o rea schiava!’ Hailing Radamès as the decreed savior of her people, Semenchuk portrays a haughty but deeply amorous Amneris. She and Giulietta Simionato are unique in making something of the scene for Amneris and her Moorish slaves at the start of Act Two, a rare instance of Verdi including a scene of little dramatic importance in an otherwise tightly-constructed score. As Senenchuk sings it, though, ‘Ah! vieni, vieni, amor mio, m’inebria fammi beato il cor’ assumes a degree of significance by granting the listener a glimpse of Amneris with her guard down. The contempt with which she articulates ‘Io son l’amica tua’ in the subsequent duet with Aida is telling, and it is with a flood of malice that she admits to the despairing Aida that Radamès not only survived the battle with the Ethiopians but rose to glory in the fray—a flood of malice that overflows into her solemnly-voiced contributions to the final pages of Act Three. As Verdi envisioned, it is Amneris who dominates Act Four in this performance. Semenchuk’s stark ‘L’abborrita rivale a me sfuggia’ is defined by artful manipulations of the contrasts between the singer’s vocal registers, and her exasperation with Radamès’s obstinacy in ‘Già i sacerdoti adunansi’ grows to a fury epitomized by her pair of climactic, white-hot top B♭s. Semenchuk commandeers the Judgment Scene not with overwrought histrionics but by portraying with absolute sincerity a powerful woman powerless to halt the course of her own justice. Her searing top A at the conclusion of the scene is the sound of her soul breaking beneath the figurative weight of the stone that will seal Radamès’s tomb. In the opera’s final scene and throughout the performance, Semenchuk’s Amneris is a woman not of insinuations and tears but of action and instigation. Most importantly, hers is a voice of ample dimensions for the rôle, only occasionally slightly unwieldy, and she sings as impressively as she acts with the voice.

Following Kaufmann's and Tézier's examples, this recording and the concert performance that followed the studio sessions were German soprano Anja Harteros's first attempts at assaying the title rôle in Aida. Like Maria Callas and Zinka Milanov before her, Harteros is an Aida for whom the rôle is defined by an emotional journey rather than a single aria and its famous high note. A resourceful singer whose operatic repertory extends from Händel to Richard Strauss, Harteros here connects with Aida’s plight with an immediacy that is especially commendable in the context of a studio recording. At her first entrance in Act One, she introduces the listener to a circumspect Aida who joins in the trio with Amneris and Radamès with an unsettling ‘Ohimè! di guerra fremere l’atroce grido in sento.’ In Radamès’s company, her confidence blossoms until her true spirit bursts forth on the fortissimo top B. The top C in the ensemble in which Radamès is appointed commander of the Egyptian defense taxes her, but she is careful to approach the note without applying undue pressure to the voice. Harteros’s performance of ‘Ritorna vincitor! E dal mio labbro uscì l’empia parola!’ simmers with doubt and self-recrimination, Aida physically pained by the splitting of her loyalties between victory for her people and her lover’s safety. She accentuates the despondence of ‘L’insana parola, o Numi, sperdete!’ and dispatches the fortissimo top B♭ like a blow against her predicament. Then, her frenzy gives way to delicacy with the soprano’s eloquent handling of ‘I sacri nomi di padre, d’amante né profferir poss’io, ne ricordar.’ In the scene with Amneris in Act Two, Harteros enunciates ‘Felice esser poss’io lungi dal suol natio, qui dove ignota m’è la sorte del padre e dei fratelli?’ with emotional honesty, unflinchingly ascending to the top B♭. The expressivity of her ‘Ah! pietà! Quest’amor nella tomba io spegnerò’ is evidence of a profound understanding of Verdi’s meticulously-crafted melodic line, and she treats the top C as an organic extension of the line rather than an isolated note intended to highlight the singer’s vocal prowess. She approaches the galvanizing repeated top B♭s and C♭s in the Triumphal Scene with similar acuity, facing the notes as they come rather than breaking the line—and the character’s demeanor—to prepare for them. As Callas often found with the pair of top Cs in the ensemble that ends Act One of Bellini’s Norma, how much more easily the notes come when they are simply sung, not scrutinized! The great scene in Act Three is generally perceived as the measure of an Aida’s success or failure, and many a moving Aida has been dismissed solely because of a poor top C in ‘O patria mia.’ In this performance, Harteros’s singing of the recitative ‘Qui Radamès verrà!’ is as riveting as her exquisitely-wrought traversal of ‘O patria mia.’ The serene dignity with which she sculpts the line in ‘O cieli azzuri, o dolci aure native’ in the aria is breathtaking, and she soars to a truly dolce if slightly blanched top C. Both fear and relief course through her cry of ‘Ciel! mio padre!’ when Amonasro unexpectedly appears on the bank of the Nile, and she repeats his sentiments with uncertainty in her hesitant but increasingly tranquil ‘Rivedrò le foreste imbalsamate! le fresche valli, i nostri templi d’or!’ Harteros’s ‘Fuggiam gli ardori inospiti di queste lande ignude’ is the heartfelt plea of a woman who senses that happiness is slipping from her grasp. Emerging from the darkness of her subterranean tomb in the opera’s final scene, Harteros’s Aida embraces Kaufmann’s Radamès with a voice drenched not with sadness but with the ecstasy of eternal devotion and self-sacrifice. Their ‘O terra addio’​ is like a pas de deux in sound, their voices intertwining like beams of light blending into a single beacon. Singers’ first assumptions of rôles as demanding as Aida invariably leave room for further refinement, but Harteros’s initial Aida is a study in subtle vocal colorations and beautiful, well-schooled singing. Whether Aida is a rôle that she will choose to add to her stage repertory remains to be seen, but the Aida discography is richer for having welcomed her.

It is no exaggeration to state that this Aida, a rare studio recording in an age in which ‘live’ recordings have become the industry standard, was one of the most eagerly-anticipated releases of 2015. It is also no exaggeration to state that many eagerly-awaited recordings have proved disappointing to those eagerly awaiting them. Any committed Verdian has both a favorite Aida and a favorite Aida that a new recording and a new interpreter of the title rôle are unlikely to supplant except with a strenuous fight. In addition to being an enjoyable performance in its own right, Warner’s new Aida is a true contender. Perhaps its most admirable achievement is its restoration of confidence in the Verdian credentials of this ensemble of singers, musician, and conductor.

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): Semiramide—Jessica Pratt (Semiramide), Vivica Genaux (Arsace), Taylor Stayton (Idreno), Wayne Tigges (Assur), Evan Hughes (Oroe), Natalie Conte (Azema), Patrick Cook (Mitrane), Weí Wu (L’ombra di Nino); Washington Concert Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Antony Walker, conductor [Lisner Auditorium, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA; Sunday, 22 November 2015]

In the simplest essence of a wondrously complicated art form, opera is a study in the surrender of reality to imagination. Audiences in Raleigh, Rome, or Riyadh are asked to accept that, with composers and librettists as their travel agents, they are whisked in the relative comfort of their seats to locales known and unknown. There are women who look like men, men who sound like women, and women dressed as men impersonating women. Barbers in Seville somehow speak Italian, Veronese youths converse even from distant balconies in perfect French, and Spanish noblewomen and their English maids spout defiance at Turkish pashas auf Deutsch. Gods descend from the heavens, volcanoes erupt, towns are swallowed by seas, and avalanches end mountainside liaisons. Amidst all of these peculiarities and improbabilities, among the dwarves and dragons, however, there are veins of emotional truth and humanity that surge through the layers of artifice like geysers. Beyond the stage, people rarely pause to sing five-minute arias as they die, but people die—of disease like Violetta and Mimì, in tragic misadventures like Gilda and Siegfried, and by their own hands like Werther and Cio-Cio San. People betray and are betrayed, love and are loved, fear and are feared. At its core, opera is neither obviously relevant nor a straightforward means of escape from reality. The most gifted composers of opera created scores that inspire audiences to think, and it is in the thinking that the relevance and escape are born. Audiences cry for Violetta and Mimì not because they know Violettas and Mimìs but because there are in virtually every life stories like theirs. Many critics and musicologists exclude Gioachino Rossini from the ranks of great composers of opera, but the listener willing and able to look beyond the farcical comedy in Il barbiere di Siviglia finds a timeless tale of young people in love. In Le siège de Corinthe, there are the painfully modern collisions of passion and faith. In Semiramide, premièred at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice on 3 February 1823, the volleys of roulades yield a drama shaped by warped relationships, political ambitions, hidden identities, and assassinations realized and thwarted. His final opera composed for an Italian theatre, Semiramide is the culmination of the lyric art that Rossini inherited from Händel and Hasse via Jommelli, Mysliveček, Mozart, and Cherubini. With its litany of intrigues and power-brokering, could any opera be better-suited to being brought to life in the American capital by Washington Concert Opera than Semiramide?

Concert performance is an ideal medium for Rossini’s Semiramide. Setting a libretto based, like that of his 1813 Tancredi, upon a drama by Voltaire, Rossini had in Semiramide a subject that engaged his imagination on an exalted level. Unusually for Rossini, the Overture—joyfully played in Lisner Auditorium by the Washington Concert Opera Orchestra—makes use of thematic material from the opera, perhaps the finest manifestation of which is the sublime ​Andantino for ​a quartet of ​horns​. The wealth of musical invention in Semiramide is extraordinary by any standard but truly remarkable for Rossini, who, though only thirty years old at the time of Semiramide’s première, had lost patience with the whims and caprices of Italian opera and its practitioners. In Washington Concert Opera’s March performance of Guntram, Artistic Director Antony Walker established himself as an insightful interpreter of the music of Richard Strauss, but pacing Semiramide enabled him to return to the bel canto repertory of which he is an acknowledged master. Walker is an animated conductor who puts his whole body at the service of the music, so there is nothing dainty about his bel canto: when Rossini requested extremes of volume and dramatic thrust, Walker complied unhesitatingly. Moments of lyrical restraint were handled with equal imagination, and the singers were clearly encouraged to take risks in a supportive, nurturing environment. As in the Overture, the orchestral musicians played capably throughout the performance, their confidence more noticeable than in several WCO performances in the recent past. Rossini is rarely cited as an innovative orchestrator despite the ingenuity of his part-writing, but how marvelously he composed for the woodwinds in Semiramide! Fortunately, the WCO wind players met the demands of Rossini’s score exuberantly, and their high level of musical excellence was undermined by only a few mishaps. [The sources of several awkward squeaks and squawks in quiet moments were mysterious. Was the shade of Nino lurking, poltergeist-like, among the horns?] Gita Ladd’s leadership of the cello section remains a trove of mellow tone and artful phrasing. Trained by Bruce Stasyna, the singers of the WCO Chorus were, as ever, to be commended for both their preparation and the gusto of their performance. In Act One, they sang with rousing pagan piety, and their account of ‘Di plausi qual clamor giulivo eccheggia’ was aptly evocative of trepidation. ‘Un traditor, con empio ardir’ at the start of the Act Two finale was exhilaratingly delivered, and the choristers’ closing thoughts, ‘Vieni, Arsace, al trionfo, alla Reggia,’ were expressed with celebratory musicality. Undoubtedly owing both to conscientious rehearsal and genuine affection for Rossini’s score, this Semiramide was, in terms of orchestral playing, choral singing, and conducting, among WCO’s finest performances, one that not only satisfied in the moment but also intensified appreciation of Rossini’s genius.

As is often the case in WCO performances, the choristers’ ranks were mined for singers for secondary rôles, and the results in this Semiramide were indeed gems. Taking the part of Mitrane, the captain of the guard, tenor Patrick Cook sang strongly, the timbre attractive and the technique capable of fulfilling all of Rossini’s requests. He was particularly noteworthy in Act Two, articulating ‘Alla Reggia d’intorno, canto Arbace dispone I tuoi più fidi’ ​and ‘Calmati, Principessa’ with clear diction and equivalent dramatic clarity. The princess Azema has far less to sing than her importance as the object of Arsace’s, Idreno’s, and Assur’s affections would seem to warrant, but soprano Natalie Conte sang every note entrusted to her impressively, effortlessly filling the auditorium with gleaming sound. She might well prove a worthy Semiramide.

L’ombra e l’assassino: Bass Weí Wu as L’ombra di Nino (left, foreground), bass-baritone Wayne Tigges as Assur (center, on stage), Maestro Antony Walker, and the WCO Chorus and Orchestra in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide, 22 November 2015 [Photo by Don Lassell, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Having Chinese bass Weí Wu, a galvanizing presence as Friedhold in WCO’s Guntram, on hand to intone the warnings of L’ombra di Nino, the ghost of Semiramide’s murdered husband (and, it is eventually revealed, Arsace’s—né Ninia—father), was the epitome of luxury casting. His is a voice destined for Sarastro and Gurnemanz, and he used the instrument to tremendous effect in Nino’s dire pronouncements from the tomb, music obviously influenced by the scene for the Commendatore’s effigy in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

A commanding presence both vocally and physically as Oroe, the High Priest of the Magi, young bass-baritone Evan Hughes brought muscle and nuance to the considerable range of his music. Beginning with a sinewy account of the recitative​ ‘Si, gran Nume, t’intesi’ in the opera’s Introduzione, he proceeded to a fiery voicing of Oroe’s lines in the quartetto with Semiramide, Assur, and Idreno, 'Di tanti Regi, e popoli.' In Act Two, his scene with the chorus, ‘In questo augusto soggiorno arcano,’ was sung with blazing intensity. The zeal with which Hughes’s Oroe incited Arsace to exact revenge on Assur was viscerally conveyed by the flinty grandiloquence of his singing. Hughes sounded as though he could have sung Assur on a moment’s notice, but his Oroe was the sonorously-sung dramatic spine of the performance.

The duplicitous Assur was portrayed with smug smirks and big, bold tone by bass-baritone Wayne Tigges, a singer whose versatility and snarling, somewhat nasal timbre recall Norman Treigle. Throughout the performance, Tigges’s singing possessed towering impact despite his occasionally seeming under-rehearsed. The voice was slow to warm up, but in the quartetto with Semiramide, Idreno, and Oroe in Act One he sailed through Assur’s roulades fearlessly if not always accurately. In the duet with Semiramide in Act Two, a prototype for the duet for Nabucco and Abigaille in Act Three of Verdi’s Nabucco, Tigges’s Assur prodded and threatened his queen with relish. Assur’s mad scene, one of the finest scenes in the opera and a prefiguring of Macbeth’s encounter with the apparition of Banco in Verdi’s Macbeth, drew from Tigges his best singing of the evening. The aria, ‘Deh! ti ferma,’ was phrased with subtlety and finesse, and the hateful character could for a moment almost be pitied. The cabaletta, ‘Que’ Numi furenti, quell’ombre frementi,’ was voiced with electrifying machismo. Not all of Tigges’s passagework was executed cleanly: the defining quality of his Assur was bravado rather than bravura, but it was a characterization of unmistakable malevolence. Even in music for which it is not ideally suited, the pleasures of hearing such a hearty, healthy voice used with flair are self-recommending, and Tigges provided many moments of edge-of-the-seat vocal excitement.

Il re di Rossini: Tenor Taylor Stayton as Idreno in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide, 22 November 2015 [Photo by Don Lassell, © by Washington Concert Opera]

A native Ohioan and an alumnus of Philadelphia’s star-making Academy of Vocal Arts, tenor Taylor Stayton is carving a place for himself among the celebrated tenori di grazia of his generation. His singing of Idreno in Washington Concert Opera’s Semiramide, his début in the rôle, expanded that place, furthering the reputation as a bel canto stylist confirmed by his recent performances as Percy in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Metropolitan Opera.​ Even by Rossini’s standards, Idreno is an extraordinarily difficult rôle, his bravura demands on par with the most challenging music ever composed for the tenor voice. From his appearance in Act One in the terzetto with Oroe and Assur, ‘Là, dal Gange, a te primiero,’ his coloratura is often terrifying, but Stayton’s performance exuded confidence. ​So confident was his singing, in fact, that the loss of Idreno’s magnificent aria in Act One, ‘Ah dov’è, dov’è il cimento,’ with its pair of top Cs and climactic top D, was truly lamentable. Semiramide constitutes a long evening, of course, but cutting ‘Ah dov'è’ deprived Stayton of an opportunity to further display his Rossinian mettle. The Act Two aria con coro ‘La speranza più soave’ littered the tenor's path with musical hurdles, however, and he cleared every one of them with the assurance of an Olympian. Negotiating the ferocious coloratura with the appearance of ease, he rose to top B and C​ with ringing enthusiasm. Looking the part of the calm, collected, debonair leading man, Stayton’s fantastically-vocalized performance exuded suavity and swagger.

L'uomo più piuttosto della festa: Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux as Arsace in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide, 22 November 2015 [Photo by Don Lassell, © by Washington Concert Opera]

In a career now spanning two decades, mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux has made a specialty of Rossini’s travesti rôles, having credibly evinced masculinity while dispatching coloratura with astounding technical faculty in parts like Falliero in Bianca e Falliero, Malcolm in La donna del lago, Néoclès in the La Scala version of Le siège de Corinthe, and the title rôle in Tancredi. As Arsace in WCO’s Semiramide, her coloratura singing was a marvel, but no less remarkable, particularly in a concert performance, was her nuanced acting. Her Arsace seemed truly shocked by turns of events, and Genaux’s reading of Nino’s letter describing the circumstances of his death should be a model for all interpreters of Verdi’s Lady Macbeth and Violetta. The quiet awe of her singing of Arsace’s opening recitative, ‘Eccomi alfine in Babilonia,’ was intriguing, and the Andantino ‘Ah! quel giorno ognor rammento’ was magnetically sung. Her 'Oh, come da quel di tutto'​ ​was musically and dramatically magical. Genaux declaimed Arsace’s recitatives with wide-eyed wonder and joined Tigges in a darkly suggestive performance of the duet ‘È dunque vero,’ her shaping of the line in ‘Bella imago degli Dei’​ appropriately amorous and her comment to Assur that he does not understand love youthfully sincere rather than mean-spirited. ‘Serbami ognor sì fido il cor,’ the first of Arsace’s duets with Semiramide, the pinnacles of Rossini’s genius and veritable templates for Bellini’s duets for Norma and Adalgisa and Donizetti’s scene for Anna Bolena and Giovanna Seymour, united mezzo-soprano and soprano in a vocal exhibition of the art of bel canto, the ladies’ breath control enabling outstanding feats of sustained phrasing. Genaux’s singing was equally accomplished in ‘Alle più calde immagini.’​ ​Again duetting with Semiramide in Act Two, the mezzo-soprano’s singing in ‘Se la vita ancor t’è cara’ personified a nobility of spirit made even more apparent in ‘Quella, ricordati.’ The triplets in ‘Ma implacabile’ were delivered with astonishing degrees of rhythmic precision and synchronization. ​The Washington audience obviously felt that Genaux’s performance of Arsace’s aria con coro ‘In sì barbara sciagura’ was the zenith of the performance, and the imperturbable dexterity with which she dashed through the fiendish coloratura in the bottom octave of the voice proved them right. The final duet with Semiramide, ‘Ebben, a te, ferisci,’ was engagingly sung, the desperation and fear in ‘Giorno d’orrore, e di contento!’ reaching exalted heights of expression in the perfectly-executed trills and coloratura in thirds. Genaux infused ‘Madre, addio!’​ with far more emotion than two words could ever be thought to express. There were passages in mid-range in which Genaux’s voice seemed to lose support, but she compensated with especially rich tones at the bottom of the voice. Musically and dramatically, her performance was moving and revealing: it was to possible to fully appreciate the extent to which Arsace is a man in crisis because the voice was under such meticulous control.

Figlio e madre: Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux as Arsace (left) and soprano Jessica Pratt (right) in the title rôle in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Rossini’s Semiramide, 22 November 2015 [Photo by Don Lassell, © by Washington Concert Opera]

It was only a short time ago that English-born, Australian by relocation, and now Italian by adoption soprano Jessica Pratt sang the title rôle in Semiramide for the first time, but her comfort with Rossini’s music was greater than some interpreters of Semiramide have acquired after many years of experience. Appearing like a goddess from a Botticelli painting after the male-dominated start of Act One, Pratt regally took command of her music from her first phrase in the quartetto with Idreno, Oroe, and Assur, ‘Trema il tempio, infausto e vento,’ her voice unfurling above the men’s voices like the Stars and Stripes above the nearby White House. The opera’s most familiar vocal number, the cavatina con coro ‘Bel raggio lusinghier,’ was delicately sung, not even the slightest suggestion of nervousness audible in Pratt’s sumptuously-phrased cantilena, but the weakness of the lower voice was evident. She caressed the text of ‘Dolce pensiero, di quell’istante,’ and the meteoric interpolated E6 with which she crowned the aria ​may well have been heard on the opposite bank of the Potomac. Partnering Genaux in the ​duet ‘Serbami ognor sì fido il cor,’ she increasingly sang with the assurance of a true mistress of bel canto confident of being in the company of an equal. She and her colleagues blended their voices stunningly in the quintetto in the Act One finale, ‘Giuri ognuno, a’ sommi Dei,’ she, Genaux, and Stayton building wonderful arcs of sound upon the unshakable foundation laid by Hughes and Tigges. Most at ease at the top of her range, where the voice rang out with amplitude uncommon for a singer with Pratt’s coloratura ability, she voiced ‘Qual mesto gemito da quella tomba’ in the middle of the voice with credible dramatic apprehension but a lack of the brawn that the music needs. Her voice stood out in the frenetic stretta, ‘Ah! Sconvolta nell’ordine eterno,’ ending Act One with a laser-bright starburst above the imposing wall of sound. Beginning Act Two with a resolute ‘Assur, I cenni miei fur sacri, irrevocabili,’ Pratt portrayed an endearingly feminine Semiramide who nonetheless would endure none of Assur’s treacherous threats in their duet, intrepidly engaging Tigges in a match of vocal wills. Then, she regained the falsely safer ground of conversing with Arsace, her voice growing fuller and more piercing as she learned that the man she loved was, in truth, her long-absent son. Her fluency in Rossini’s difficult triplets matched Genaux’s—no small achirvement!​​ In ‘Ebben, a te, ferisci!’ and ‘Giorno d’orrore, e di contento!’ the soprano’s bravura technique shone: not since Dame Joan Sutherland​—who Pratt’s tonal plushness and billowing light-auburn hair bring to mind—sang the title rôle opposite Giulietta Simionato, Lauris Elms, Monica Sinclair, and, legendarily, Marilyn Horne have Semiramides and Arsaces been as evenly-matched in terms of raw ability as Pratt and Genaux were in Washington. Pratt’s traversal of Semiramide’s Preghiera, ‘Al mio pregar t’arrendi,’ was beguilingly-phrased, but here, too, the relative pallor of the lower voice betrayed the singer’s first-rate intentions. Meeting her demise as the unintended victim of her son’s sword, this Semiramide sang gloriously in the terzetto with Arsace and Assur, ‘L’usato ardir.’ The notion of a character being misunderstood is often invoked comically, but Pratt’s interpretation of Semiramide suggested that there are far greater depths to the lady than other singers’ performances have suggested. Whatever she has done, she is no scheming Lucrezia Borgia. Compelled by the concert setting to seek the woman solely in Rossini’s score, Pratt brought her to life with a significantly wider spectrum of emotions than many staged productions have allowed the complicated queen. Such is the truest measure of a singer’s artistry, and Pratt’s performance qualified her as a rewardingly expressive artist.

Semiramide is a difficult opera—difficult to sing, difficult to conduct, difficult to stage; or, in the context of Washington Concert Opera’s performance, difficult to bring to the stage. That an opera company large or small can assemble an ensemble of conductor, choristers, instrumentalists, and renowned singers, some of whom have never before performed their assigned rôles, and, in the span of a week, prepare an opera like Semiramide for performance is little short of miraculous. That the performance that resulted from Washington Concert Opera’s preparations was as enjoyable as this Semiramide is, in reality, anything but a miracle. Opera is not an art of perfection. Above all, it is an art of collaboration and communication, achieved not by miracles but by motivation. Not every note was perfect, but the performance that transpired on the stage of Lisner Auditorium was a collaboration of committed artists that communicated the exquisite potency of the opera with which Rossini bade Addio to his native land.

Il Maestro: WCO Artistic Director and Conductor Antony Walker during Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide, 22 November 2015 [Photo by Don Lassell, © by Washington Concert Opera]

WOLDEMAR BARGIEL (1828 – 1897), MAX BRUCH (1838 – 1920), MANUEL DE FALLA (1876 – 1946), GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845 – 1924), JULES MASSENET (1842 – 1912), CORINNE MORRIS, ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (born 1921), CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835 – 1921), PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840 – 1893), and JOHN WILLIAMS (born 1932): Macedonian Sessions—Corinne Morris, cello; F.A.M.E.’S. Macedonian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Philip Hesketh, conductor [Recorded in F.A.M.E.’S. Project Studio M1, Skopje, Macedonia, 29 June – 1 July 2013; Morris Music Productions MMP1307; 1 CD, 61:08; Available on CD and in digital form from Amazon UK]

There is not in medicine, science, or religion any remedy to the maladies of men more restorative than music. Music has the capacity to comfort as neither the words nor the deeds of men can do, a capacity to, as Beethoven described it, go from heart to heart, undiluted and without need for translation or interpretation. There are also in music sparks that, when exposed to the proper elements, ignite resilience on a scale that obliterates adversities internal and external. The healing powers of music are epitomized both by gifted cellist Corinne Morris and by her remarkable disc Macedonian Sessions, so named because the disc was recorded in Skopje, Macedonia, with F.A.M.E.’S. Macedonian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Philip Hesketh. It is virtually impossible—and patronizing—to attempt to recreate with feeble words the ‘darkness visible’ into which Morris was plunged when a debilitating injury separated her from the cello, but the joy of her return to the instrument, facilitated by a corrective procedure developed for the treatment of athletes, sprints through every bar of Macedonian Sessions. There are a few moments on the disc in which the cellist’s intonation is not completely perfect, but there is not one stroke of her bow that does not reach the listener’s heart with a jubilant, profoundly grateful cry of ‘I am back!’

Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei (Opus 47) is the most substantial piece on Macedonian Sessions, and it offers at the disc’s start a wonderfully complete overview of Morris’s artistry. Demanding both virtuosity and expressivity, the Protestant Bruch’s 1880 setting of Jewish themes, taking its title from the Aramaic prayer recited at the start of Yom Kippur, is played by Morris with vitality and emotional sincerity. Bruch’s intentions in composing Kol Nidrei were solely musical rather than religious or sentimental, and Morris’s avoidance of saccharine affectation enhances the raw impact of the music. Camille Saint-Saëns’s Allegro Appassionato (Opus 43) is also a piece in which feeling and fleet passagework are combined with ingenuity, and Morris brings an appealing Gallic airiness to her performance of the piece, complemented by the effervescent charm evinced by Hesketh and the Macedonian musicians, who prove to be wonderful, infallibly musical companions on Morris’s journey throughout Macedonian Sessions.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne (Opus 19, No. 4) is a sublime masterpiece in miniature, and Morris’s dulcet but dramatic style finds an ideal outlet in the piece, the cellist’s burnished tones extracting every thread of meaning from the tapestry of the music. Adapted from the second movement of the composer’s Opus 11 String Quartet No. 1, the famously plaintive principal theme of Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile, here played in an arrangement that honors its origins in the Quartet, is derived from Russian folksong. So poignant is Tchaikovsky’s representation in sound of the collective Russian soul that it is recorded in the composer’s own correspondence that Leo Tolstoy was moved to tears by hearing the Andante Cantabile for the first time. His response to hearing Morris’s shimmering performance of that haunting subject might have been the same, his tears blending with exclamations of joy at the rebirth of so valuable an artist. Morris’s vibrato gently caresses melodic lines rather than obscuring pitches, and, especially in the Tchaikovsky selections, she finds the emotions within the music instead of arbitrarily establishing moods and then molding her performances to adhere to them.

The name Woldemar Bargiel is now virtually unknown even to curious musicians, and were he not Clara Schumann’s half-brother he might be wholly forgotten. The quality of Bargiel’s Adagio (Opus 38), played with sonorous tone and emotive phrasing by Morris and the orchestra, prompts curiosity about Bargiel’s work, not least his seldom-performed String Quartets. A well-crafted piece that validates the influence of Bargiel’s acquaintance with the work of his half-sister and her husband, Robert Schumann, as well as Felix Mendelssohn and even the young Brahms, the Adagio receives from Morris and her Macedonian colleagues a reading of depth and heartfelt intensity, the orchestra’s strings creating a halo of sound in the center of which Morris’s playing gleams.

The iconic Theme from John Williams’s score for Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust film Schindler’s List, so memorably played on the motion picture soundtrack by Itzhak Perlman, has rightly transcended the context of the film and assumed a place in the concert repertory. Hopefully, Morris’s performance on Macedonian Sessions will inspire other cellists to add the piece to their repertories. Like the Hebraic themes in Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, the indelible melody of Williams’s Schindler’s List Theme possesses a bizarrely disquieting dignity, and there is an almost Klezmer-like cadence to Morris’s playing. Through the resounding warmth of her cello, an 1876 instrument by Claude Augustin Miremont, the contrasting optimism and pathos of the music are subtly but resolutely disclosed. Here and throughout the music on Macedonian Sessions, Morris’s marvelous bowing technique is allied with an intuitive grasp of the structures of each piece, the latter being a trait that Hesketh shares.

Originally intended as the slow movement for a sonata that was never completed, Gabriel Fauré’s C-minor Elégie (Opus 24) was written for cello and piano and later orchestrated by the composer. The inimitable Catalan cellist Pau Casals premièred the orchestrated version, and Morris’s playing of the piece on Macedonian Sessions brings to mind the rhythmic solidity and polished-garnet timbre that characterized Casals’s mature artistry. The contrast between the bittersweet wistfulness of the piece’s first subject and the red-blooded energy of the tempestuous central section is heightened by the instinctive differentiation of Morris’s approach, her varied playing looking far beyond mere changes of tempo. The familiar strains of the gorgeously lyrical ‘Méditation’ from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs are no less effective when played on the cello than on the violin. Indeed, so lovely is Morris’s playing of the piece’s ethereal harmonics that only the most attentive of casual listeners might perceive the change in instrumentation. The French portion of Morris’s soul soars in her graciously idiomatic playing of the music of Fauré and Massenet.

Originally written for the composer’s beloved bandoneón, Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion transforms the Skopje studio and the listener’s imagination into a deserted bar in Buenos Aires. It is just after closing, when the sounds of a new day begin to disturb the weary barkeep’s reverie. Morris’s bewitching performance of Piazzolla’s music steals in with the determined playfulness of day chasing night into the corners, illuminating the dark peripheries of the piece. The transcription of the ‘Ritual Fire Dance’ from Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo employed by Morris is no less effective in its conjuring of a specific but universal atmosphere. The earthy qualities of de Falla’s witty tone painting scintillate in Morris’s performance, and her efforts are seconded by particularly cogent work from Hesketh and the young Macedonian musicians.

The arrangement for cello and orchestra of Morris’s own song ‘Un’ ultima volta’ has an unapologetic Romantic lushness that transports the listener to Italy in the 1950s, to windswept towns by the Mediterranean and piazze baked by the sun. Composed for voice and orchestra whilst Morris was unable to play the cello, the song’s gentle melancholy is beautifully conveyed by the unmistakably ‘vocal’ cello line. Like Bargiel’s Adagio, ‘Un’ ultima volta’ whets the appetite for more of Morris’s compositions. Not surprisingly, there is an aura of authoritativeness to her playing of ‘Un’ ultima volta,’ but this is true of her performances of every selection on the disc. In filling the fluid melodic lines of the song, she becomes the Renata Tebaldi of the cello, the reserves of power bolstering the tone always audible but never obtrusive. This is music that embraces late-Romantic, Italianate tonalism as affectionately as Gian Carlo Menotti did in Amelia al ballo and The Last Savage, and Morris plays as enjoyably as she composed.

Macedonian Sessions is in many ways as much a statement of individual triumph as it is a musical experience. Above all, though, it is a love story told in eleven pieces via which a master musical communicator regains and rejuvenates her power of speech. As spoken by Corinne Morris and her cello, music is a language not of words but of responses to life both too intimate and too intricate to be verbalized. For all of the egotism, vanity, and cut-throat competition that afflict today’s Performing Arts community, it remains a quintessentially Existential environment in which, as John Donne might have suggested, one artist’s incapacitation is a loss inflicted upon all artists and laypeople alike. Not least owing to Macedonian Sessions, Corinne Morris’s reunion with the cello is likewise a felicitous occasion that enriches the Arts beyond measure. Solely from a musical perspective, though, few ‘Welcome Back’ celebrations are as delectable as Macedonian Sessions.

JAMES DUNLOP: Ascension– Alice Burn, Northumbrian smallpipes (Hunting Hall Suite); Portsmouth Cathedral Choir; Dr. David Price, Director [Recorded in Portsmouth Cathedral during October 2015; Riverwood Air Music RAWCD01; 1 CD, 44:54; Available from Riverwood Air Music and major music retailers]

Cited most often in reference to the respective French, German, and Italian operatic repertories, national schools of composition and musical expression are now seldom encountered in the world’s theatres and conservatories except in scholarly tomes. With a history measured not in mere years but in centuries and millennia, the English choral tradition is both one of the most enduring and among the most beloved of national ‘schools’ of musical training and performance practice. From Tudor courts to the dark days of the World Wars, English composers from Thomas Tallis and William Byrd to Sir Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten have given voice to the cares of their generations in music for choir. Few environments nurture the careers of composers of choral music as affectionately and discerningly as the British Isles, where the endeavors of cathedral and university choirs, community choral societies, and choir festivals are testaments to a deep-rooted national pride in the cultivation and quality of choral singing. Even under such hospitable conditions, however, traditions cannot survive without periodic rejuvenation. Splendidly recorded in Portsmouth Cathedral, Riverwood Air Music’s Ascension is representative of the kind of rejuvenation that keeps both English choral music and Classical Music in general vital and thriving: uniting the creations of a masterful composer with the work of an accomplished choir and one of Britain’s best chorus trainers and conductors, Ascension breaks new ground for a genre built for centuries upon the imperishable handiwork of guardians of England’s emblematic choral legacy.

Much is made of young composer James Dunlop’s Royal Marine service, but it should not be supposed that this is in any way a marketing ploy as cynicism born of observation of today’s Classical Music industry might insinuate. From the first bars of Ascension Fanfare, it is apparent that Dunlop possesses an artistic voice that earns him a position among the ranks of important advocates of contemporary choral music and places him in the glorious lineage of English composers for massed voices. Indeed, much should be made of Dunlop’s military service, but it is his compositional arsenal that here commands admiration. Ascension Fanfare is a difficult piece, but the Portsmouth Cathedral Choir and Dr. David Price conquer its demands with unflinching and unfailingly musical attack, drawing the listener into the disc’s very personal explorations of the theme of Christ’s Ascension. Making insightful use of words from John 16:5 – 7, I Must Leave evinces both the anguished intimacy of a lute song by John Dowland and the concentrated intensity of Sir Michael Tippett’s settings of African-American spirituals in A Child of Our Time. Dr. Price displays a wonderful gift for managing balances among voices whether in four- or six-part harmony, and his comprehension of the architecture of Dunlop’s music enables the choristers to communicate the angst of I Must Leave without ignoring the delicacy that also characterizes the piece. The reverent awe with which Dunlop communicates the wonder of Christ’s Ascension from the midst of his disciples in Presence of Eleven is sonorously manifested in the chorus’s performance, the pianissimo conclusion lofted heavenward with pure, perfect intonation.

Ingeniously incorporating the familiar tones of the ‘Westminster chimes’ into its musical soundscape, Westminster Quarters is an intriguingly original piece, here performed with aptly bell-like tones by the Portsmouth Cathedral choristers. The tenors and basses intone Dunlop’s plainchant setting of ‘Ave Maria’ with the precision of a single voice, honoring the praxis of the Sarum Use prevalent in England since the early Middle Ages.

Written for Northumbrian smallpipes and chorus, Hunting Hall Suite is an invigoratingly innovative work, one in which both traditions and expectations are delightfully turned on their heads. In both of the Suite’s movements, ‘Awakening’ and ‘Ceilidh in the Piggery,’ smallpipes virtuoso Alice Burn plays superbly, her mastery of the ferociously difficult instrument lending Dunlop’s music an added layer of exuberant expression. In ‘Awakening,’ smallpipes and choir duel provocatively, conjuring a primordial scene of both man’s and nature’s rejection of darkness. The frolicsome cèilidh of the second movement places the listener at the center of festivities at a Gaelic wedding, the music so cleverly written as to seem wholly extemporaneous in this performance. The uninhibited liquidity of Burn’s playing and the choir’s singing flows through Dunlop’s music with unmistakable joy. There is a unmistakable specificity in the sonic landscape of Hunting Hall Suite, but this is music that might resound along the banks of the Tees, from the shores of Cape Breton, or among the forests of the Blue Ridge.

The evocatively eloquent Deal is dedicated to the memory of the eleven Royal Marine musicians killed in the 1989 IRA bombing of the Royal Marines School of Music then housed in the East Barracks in the Kent town of Deal, near Dover. Dunlop pays tribute to his fallen forebears in music of somber but optimistic solemnity, the voices used with telling economy that heightens the poignancy of the text. In all of the performances on Ascension, the choristers’ diction is a model of clarity, but the unaffected crispness of their articulation of the text in Deal highlights both the piece’s abiding ethos and the subtle nuances of Dunlop’s word settings. Windrush, a setting of lines from John Keats’s ‘A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever,’ is distinguished by the contrast achieved by offsetting the low writing for the sopranos with the tenor soloist's ascents to top A, beautifully sung by Adrian Green. The altos’ repetitions of the word ‘searching,’ their careful enunciations of the consonants halting the sound, create an extraordinary expressive effect. The pathos of Ascend finds a tremendously touching outlet in the choir’s singing, the cadences of the music resolved with a final ‘mmm’ redolent of emotion too raw for words. The sopranos’ beautiful harmony in thirds on the ascending line of ‘Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands’ in Miracle, the words taken from Proverbs 30:4, lifts the spirits both of the music and of the listener, echoing the most basic human hope in the benevolence of Providence.

​Dedicated to the D-Day Museum Trust, ​the serene Adagio ​Heroes' Tide​ receives from Dr. Price and the singers under his direction a performance that churns with surging, stirringly-voiced imagery borrowed from the diaries of Britons who landed on Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches on D-Day. Throughout the piece, Dunlop’s manipulations of dynamics are executed by Dr. Price and the choristers with fidelity that enhances the impact of words and music. The disjointed sentiments of the text recall the confusion of battle, and the expressivity of the statement of ‘Thank the lord for saving us’ in the piece’s final bars is profoundly touching. The depth of Dunlop’s connection with the text is apparent, and the choristers sing Heroes’ Tide as if telling their own stories of survival.

From Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, there is a singular power in English choral music that is found in no other repertory. It is perhaps pedantic to suggest that the essence of the nation reverberates in the singing of its choirs, but there is in the pieces on Ascension a vein of musical individuality that is as perceptive a reflection of an unique Zeitgeist as any culture might hope to claim as its own. A listener need not be English in order to be moved by Ascension, however. Perhaps the real power of choral music, English or not, is its implicit universality, the necessity of cooperation among voices regardless of their owners’ differences. James Dunlop harnesses this power as sagaciously as any of his musical ancestors, and Ascension is inspiriting evidence of the undiminished capacity of song to unite and uplift.

GIULIO CACCINI (1551 – 1618), FRANCESCO CAVALLI (1602 – 1676), JOAN AMBROSIO DALZA (1508 – ?), ANDREA FALCONIERI (1585 – 1656), GIROLAMO FRESCOBALDI (1583 – 1643), CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567 – 1643), DIEGO ORTIZ (1510 – 1570), GASPAR SANZ (1640 – 1710), BARBARA STROZZI (1619 – 1677): Momenti d’amore—Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, soprano; Pera Ensemble; Mehmet C. Yeşilçay, oud, percussion, and director [Recorded in Munich during Summer 2013; Berlin Classics 0300664BC; 1 CD, 50:58; Available from Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), and major music retailers]

What explanation is there for the fact that denizens of a world made smaller in a figurative sense by innovations and technological advances so often seem to be continually drifting further and further apart? Why do we choose to be offended by coffee cups and holiday-themed garments but ignore children who have no winter coats and villages that lack potable water? Why has the ability to instantaneously interact with people anywhere in the world compelled the de-prioritization of humanity and basic decency? Why are suspicion and bigotry so much easier for us than acceptance and forgiveness? Topical as they are (or seem to be), these are questions that artists have sought to answer since modes of communication were first utilized for purposes beyond the most basic pursuit of survival. From Peri’s Dafne and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo to Nico Muhly’s Two Boys and Jake Heggie’s Great Scott, music for voices and instruments has had as one of its most important objectives the task of examining those elements of humanity that unite and divide people. Whether the individuals involved are Orpheus and Eurydice, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, or Peter Grimes and Ellen Orford, the circumstances that thwart their efforts at bridging differences are invariably born of cultural misunderstandings and prejudices. Berlin Classics’ Momenti d’amore offers Twenty-First-Century listeners perspectives on the eternal struggles of human minds and hearts drawn from the enchanting, elusive world of Seventeenth-Century Italy. In performances such as those on this disc, even music of poor quality might seem like rediscovered gems, but the pieces chosen for Momenti d’amore are true treasures of their era. Vitally, Momenti d’amore is a disc that proclaims to today’s listeners that complex problems often have simple solutions that have nothing to do with technology or once-per-year charity. The crucial first step on the journey to understanding and thus to peace, Momenti d’amore reminds us, is listening.

The guiding principal of Pera Ensemble, founded in 2005 by Mehmet C. Yeşilçay and Mehmet İhsan Özer and named to honor the Greek term for Istanbul’s artistically- and ethnically-diverse Beyoğlu neighborhood, is thoughtful fusion of Eastern and Western musical traditions. Pera Ensemble’s musicians—James Hewitt on Baroque violin, Serkan Mesut Halili on qanun, Christoph Sommer on lute, theorbo, and Baroque guitar, Franziska Grunze on viola da gamba, and percussionist Murat Coşkun—are dedicated to blending the exotic sounds of traditional Middle Eastern instruments with the timbres—sometimes equally exotic to modern ears—of instruments prevalent in European Early Music. In several widely-acclaimed previous recordings for Berlin Classics, Pera Ensemble’s defining precept has proved a thrilling impetus for unforgettable music-making, but Momenti d’amore is an exceptionally effective recording in which playing of rollicking exuberance reveals the refined discernment of the concept. Under Yeşilçay’s impassioned direction, tempi are chosen with care in each selection to facilitate performances of technical mastery and near-ideal expressive impact. The marvel of the results achieved by Pera Ensemble is that these pieces sound as though they would be equally at home in the ancient streets of Istanbul and the crumbling palazzi of Venice. It is a boon in the context of this disc that so little primary-source information about instrumentation and the realization of continuo survives. Yeşilçay and Pera Ensemble are therefore able to allow their imaginations to soar without trampling on composers’ intentions. The traversals of the music on Momenti d’amore are not ‘safe,’ unadventurous performances that adhere to innocuous notions of historically-appropriate performance practices: this is playing informed by visceral responses to the music, not by having read in books how it ought to be performed.

True to the disc’s title, the quintet of instrumental pieces on Momenti d’amore provide plentiful moments to love, Pera Ensemble’s playing exuding not just technical but also expressive virtuosity. The piquant Passacalle by Andrea Falconieri is delivered with an incredible rhythmic vitality that makes it not a stylized dance but an actual one, the energy of the musicians’ playing igniting the combustive melodic lines. Falconieri’s Ciaccona is traversed with equal poise and panache, the piece—and Pera Ensemble’s playing of it—proving an ideal companion for the Passacalle. Gaspar Sanz’s expertly-crafted Zarabande is also rousingly played by the Ensemble. Joan Ambrosio Dalza’s dazzling Piva and Diego Ortiz’s Recercada segunda are fantastic pieces that create their soundscapes with primary colors, and Pera Ensemble’s spirited performances bring both numbers to life with stunning immediacy. Bolstered by the invigorating pulse of Yeşilçay’s and Coşkun’s percussion, the ensemble’s playing coruscates with ingenuity, innovation, and the simple joy of making music.

The most exquisite instrument in Pera Ensemble is the voice of Italian soprano Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, a singer for whom the listener’s experience is as important as the fulfillment of her own musical goals. Many young singers are concerned solely with having the notes required by a piece in their voices, but this young singer is equally committed to ensuring that she also has the emotions evinced by the music in her heart. The dividends paid by this investment in expressivity are invaluable, not least in performances of stylized music like that heard on Momenti d’amore. Here, though, Lombardi Mazzulli follows the examples of her Pera Ensemble comrades by leaving the tired, dry ‘traditional’ manner of performing this music to less-imaginative singers. There is nothing unstylish about the soprano’s singing on this disc, however. Gorgeous singing is always stylish, and few performances of music of the vintage of that heard on Momenti d’amore are as gorgeously sung as Lombardi Mazzulli’s, her intonation unerring and the full compass of her voice splendidly even. One of the most gladdening aspects of this disc is its prevailing sense of cooperation: there is never a suggestion of a diva and her accompanists, only of seven brilliant musicians combining their talents like perfectly-fitted puzzle pieces.

Barbara Strozzi is one of the most intriguing figures of the early Italian Baroque. Likely the daughter of a servant and perhaps a courtesan herself, she enjoyed the patronage of a father who recognized and, somewhat atypically in their era, valued her musical talent. Strozzi’s cantata L'Eraclito amoroso (Op. 2, No. 14) is a work of considerable histrionic power, virtually a summation of the expressive capacities of Seventeenth-Century Italian vocal music. Responding to the red-blooded playing of her colleagues, Lombardi Mazzulli sings the tortured phrase 'Ogni tristezza assalgami' with beguiling intensity, the darker sentiments of the text ultimately seeming all the more poignant for being voiced with such beauty and sensuality. A celebrated singer as well as a composer, Strozzi set words with great clarity and effectiveness, and Lombardi Mazzulli’s singing elucidates these qualities in L’Eraclito amoroso. Falconieri’s ‘Cara è la rosa e vaga’ from Il primo libro di Villanelle, first published in Naples in 1616, comes near to matching the level of inspiration evident in Strozzi’s cantata, and Lombardi Mazzulli’s performance of it, supported by superlative playing by her colleagues, bathes every nuance of the music in the liquid ease of her vocalism, the golden tone floating through Falconieri’s ornaments with the grace of a spring zephyr rustling flower petals.

Justly or unjustly, Claudio Monteverdi is widely regarded as the first ‘great composer’ in the history of Western music. It is now established beyond doubt that Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, though inarguably the earliest score still performed with some frequency, was not the first opera in the modern sense as was often erroneously stated in previous generations, but it is difficult to dispute the notion that Monteverdi was the first composer to unite words and music in a manner that has retained its potency. Hearing Pera Ensemble perform ‘Qual sguardo sdegnosetto’ from Scherzi musicali cioè arie et madrigali, no. 2 (SV. 247) and ‘Ohimè ch'io cado’ from the 1624 Quarto scherzo delle ariose vaghezze confirms the legitimacy of Monteverdi’s exalted reputation. Lombardi Mazzulli phrases ‘Qual sguatdo sdegnosetto’ with a poet’s intelligence and intuitive feel for words’ meaning, and her tonal colorations take on chameleonic hues as dictated by the music’s sentimental meanderings. Her ‘Ohimè ch’io cado’ is a masterclass in the art of allying sequences of ravishingly-produced notes with subtly-inflected articulation of text. Girolamo Frescobaldi was no less masterful than Monteverdi at the art of making poetry sing, and his aria di passacaglia‘Così mi disprezzate?’ is a pinnacle in his output. Lombardi Mazzulli and Pera Ensemble scale the musical and emotional heights of Frescobaldi’s aria with the surefootedness of world-class climbers. Perhaps ‘Ohimè ch’io cado’ is no Everest, but the vista provided by Lombardi Mazzulli’s performance of it is phenomenal.

Lombardi Mazzulli shone as the Moorish queen Zelemina in Spoleto Festival USA’s 2015 modern-première production of Francesco Cavalli’s Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona, and her singing of Giunone’s aria ‘Dalle gelose mie cure incessanti lacera’ from Act Two of the same composer’s La Calisto is one of the principal glories of Momenti d’amore. She is never less than superb in any of the selections on the disc, but her experience with Cavalli’s music [she has also recorded the title rôle in Cavalli’s Artemisia] facilitates an interpretation of Giunone’s aria that blazes with dramatic intensity. The character’s jealousy simmers in Lombardi Mazzulli’s singing, and Pera Ensemble’s boisterous playing provides a brightly-lit stage upon which her surprisingly complete characterization plays out. Extracted from Giulio Caccini’s 1601 Le nuove musiche, no. 21, ‘Odi, Euterpe, il dolce canto’ is indeed a ‘sweet song,’ made all the sweeter by the dulcet tone with which Lombardi Mazzulli sings it. Crossing the Mediterranean from Italy to Spain, the lilting ​Sephardic lullaby ‘Durme​’ makes an euphonious finale to Momenti d’amore, a last moment of love of the purest variety. Lombardi Mazzulli’s voice caresses the anonymous text like a mother’s hand soothing her child. Here, too, though, Pera Ensemble’s performance defies expectations: rather than shaping ‘Durme’ as a song designed to gently accompany a child into the land of dreams, this is a lullaby that conjures its own exotic dreamscape.

Early Music is seemingly regarded by many musicians and listeners as an impenetrable fortress of rigid, inviolable doctrines that discourage the participation of all but the most specialized of performers. Different cultures, too, often seem to be viewed as walls that cannot be overcome. Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad that ‘travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,’ and Momenti d’amore is a voyage that demands that even the most casual and complacent listeners shut out all distractions, abandon preconceptions and prejudices, and follow where the music leads. Not even the finest recordings can resolve the troubles of a deeply-flawed world, but a disc like Momenti d’amore serves as a profoundly engaging testament to what music can achieve. Music is a dialogue, one that ideally eschews faith, race, and every source of divisiveness. Owing to the open-hearted sincerity of these performances by Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli and Pera Ensemble, it is not necessary to understand Italian to feel every emotion that flows through the selections on Momenti d’amore. If only this inspiring, haunting, emboldening disc could prove to every pair of ears on earth that we need not understand one another’s languages, religions, or ways of life in order to love, trust, and foster peace among us.

[1] GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845 – 1924): Ballade in F sharp major for Piano Solo, Opus 19 and MAURICE RAVEL (1875 – 1937): Piano Concerto in G major and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major—Yuja Wang, piano; Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich; Lionel Bringuier, conductor [Recorded in Tonhalle, Zürich, Switzerland, in April 2015 (Ravel) and Teldex Studio, Berlin, Germany, in May 2015 (Fauré); Deutsche Grammophon 479 4954; 1 CD, 50:15; Available from DGG, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH SCRIABIN (1872 – 1915): Nuances– Works for Solo Piano, 1885 – 1912—Valentina Lisitsa, piano [Recorded in Britten-Pears Studio, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK, 15 – 17 December 2014; DECCA 478 8435; 1 CD, 76:56; Available from DECCA Classics, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

It is difficult to imagine three composers of relative chronological proximity whose methodologies were more fundamentally different than Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, and Alexander Scriabin. Born in the picturesque south of France, Fauré, the elder statesman in this artistic triumvirate, was a product of the traditional French conservatoire system of education and a star pupil of Camille Saint-Saëns, from whom he learned the rudiments of Western music from Bach to Wagner. Ravel, too, was a native of the south of France, in his case a Basque town near the Spanish border, and a student at the world-famous Conservatoire de Paris, where Fauré became director in 1905, but his formal educational experience was more one of rejection than of beneficial tutelage. A native Muscovite, Scriabin studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he successfully matriculated as a pianist but not as a composer because, like Ravel, his recalcitrant unconventionality failed to please his tutors. The foremost point of intersection of the careers of these diverse composers is music for the piano. Fauré enlarged the piano’s solo repertoire with a body of work that remains under-appreciated and lamentably under-explored by pianists of quality. Ravel’s music for piano, though limited in quantity by the notoriously slow rate at which he composed, exhibits all of the originality for which he is renowned. Spanning his entire career, Scriabin’s piano music collectively traverses as broad a spectrum of styles and ambitions as any composer’s efforts in any genre have done, his Sonatas as significant a benefaction to the piano literature as Beethoven’s and Brahms’s. As with recent recordings of unexpectedly complementary works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and Lutosławski, new discs on Universal labels likewise disclose unanticipated parallels in the piano music of Fauré, Ravel, and Scriabin. Like the composers whose music they espouse, Yuja Wang and Valentina Lisitsa are very different pianists, technically and temperamentally, but these discs, both of which are engineered and produced with meticulous attention to the acoustics needed to give every detail of the composers’ writing its due, confirm that these talented ladies epitomize an abiding commitment to approaching the scores before them with fresh eyes, ears, and fingers. In their hands, the kinships among the dissimilar works of Fauré, Ravel, and Scriabin are made remarkably apparent. Beauty often dwells in strange places that the layperson can reach only with the aid of a guide capable of discerning what others overlook or ignore. Yuja Wang and Valentina Lisitsa guide the listener into the elusive nuclei of the piano music of Fauré, Ravel, and Scriabin, and what beauties they discover there!

Beginning with a performance of Ravel’s daunting, high-spirited Concerto in G major, Wang makes a valuable contribution to Deutsche Grammophon’s initiative to record all of Ravel’s orchestral music with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and young French conductor Lionel Bringuier, who possesses qualities that are infrequently encountered among conductors of his generation. He consistently displays an ability to discern among the ledger lines of composers’ scores the elements of the music that transcend the notes. In music as emotionally chameleonic as Ravel’s, he intuitively senses which passages need fire and which need finesse, and he manages instrumental timbres with acuity akin to Baroque masters’ manipulation of counterpoint. It is unfortunate that, in a post-Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan environment, designating an individual a promising conductor can have pejorative connotations, sometimes deservedly so, but Bringuier is a truly promising conductor without willfulness or damaging idiosyncrasies. His approach to conducting Ravel is not unlike Ernest Ansermet’s, his emphases on clarity and delicacy never overriding surges of power when required by the music. The Tonhalle musicians play excellently under Bringuier’s direction, here spotlighting the most minute details of Ravel’s orchestrations without shifting focus away from the overall structure of the music or from the soloist. In the Concerto’s first movement, marked Allegramente – Andante – Tempo I, Wang, Bringuier, and the Tonhalle players balance virtuosity with restraint, refusing to bruise the music with the pomposity with which many performances have assaulted it. Wang’s confident mastery of the tricky writing for the piano is extremely impressive, and she proves herself to be an assured mistress of negotiating the almost schizophrenic, jazz-influenced shifts of mood in the music. The core of tranquility in her playing of the Andante section, answered by instinctive conducting by Bringuier that ideally serves both Wang and Ravel, contrasts with the return to the movement’s initial Allegramente. The Adagio assai second movement receives from Wang and Bringuier a performance shaped by the pianist’s crisp but deeply affectionate phrasing of the extended melodic line. The offensive stereotype of Asian artists focusing on the metronome markings rather than the meanings of music sadly persists, but the Beijing-born Wang’s playing of Ravel’s music reveals the incredible stupidity and shortsightedness of that notion. The brisk Presto movement that ends the Concerto inspires Wang to an exhibition of technical prowess that is far more than a pyrotechnics display. Bringuier and the Tonhalle-Orchester build pedestals of sound upon which Wang places the cornerstones of her interpretation. Then, she and her colleagues string garlands of jubilant sounds across Ravel’s music that illuminate the genius of his writing for both piano and orchestra. Wang and Bringuier offer an unmistakably youthful reading of the Concerto that lacks none of the lucidity and drama of classic interpretations by Jacqueline Blancard, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and Martha Argerich.

Commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein after his right arm was lost in the Great War and premièred by him in Vienna in 1932, the Concerto for the Left Hand in D major was, like the G-major Concerto, strongly influenced by jazz, very much en vogue in France in the entre-deux-guerres years. The architecture of the Concerto for the Left Hand remains baffling to many musicians, some advocating a clearly-delineated three-part interpretation and others adhering to Ravel’s assertion that the work was conceived and created as a single, through-composed entity. In their performance on this disc, Wang and Bringuier leave academic analyses of the score to scholars with nothing better to do and simply perform the music. Wang’s visceral account of the opening Lento – Andante – sequence is defined by the pianist’s athletic execution of the opening cadenza, her chiseling of the broad swaths of thematic material from the fine-grained stone of Ravel’s music uncovering surprising niceties of sentiment exegesis. The explosive power of the central Allegro – episode ignites a conflagration fanned by both Wang’s wrists and Bringuier’s baton, the conductor stirring the flames in the orchestra and the pianist soaring through them with the determination of a Brünnhilde of the keyboard. The return to Tempo I redoubles Wang’s already formidable focus, and she and Bringuier build the Concerto’s final pages to an exhilarating climax.

The valley between the peaks of Wang’s performances of the Ravel Concerti is a flexible but rhythmically-taut reading of Fauré’s impeccably-wrought Ballade in F sharp major (Opus 19). The transitions of tempo, beginning in Andante cantabile and moving through Allegro moderato, Andante, Allegro, and Andante before resolving the piece in Allegro moderato, are handled with panache, but the real hallmark of her interpretation of the Ballade is an entrancingly Gallic charm. Whether playing music by Ravel or Fauré, with this disc Wang expands her reputation as an artist capable of fashioning a tremendous range of colors with her palette of black and white keys.

Few composers have covered more stylistic ground in their work for a single instrument than Scriabin did with his music for solo piano. Strongly influenced at the outset of his career as a composer by Chopin, Scriabin worked in virtually all of the forms that his Polish predecessor essentially redefined: etude, mazurka, nocturne, polonaise, prelude, and waltz. As his career progressed, Scriabin increasingly integrated into his music elements of the mysticism and philosophical interests that characterized his life, moving ever further from mainstream, late-Romantic tonalism and ultimately developing his own conceptualized system of atonalism both similar to and markedly different from the work of the Second Viennese School. Logically, then, the pianist who successfully plays Scriabin’s music must have at the ready an uncommon versatility, and in this regard the composer could hope for no more qualified an exponent than Valentina Lisitsa. In the early works, the precise articulation of her fingering would be equally effective in music by Haydn or Clementi, and the forthrightness of her playing of the later, more obliquely Impressionistic pieces yields many instances in which layers of emotional depth obscured in many performances are drawn to the surface. Lisitsa obviously deliberated repertory choices for Nuances at length, and her knowledge of, affection for, and connection with Scriabin’s music are audible in every bar on Nuances. Presenting the pieces more or less consecutively in order of composition and sampling twenty-seven years of Scriabin’s career, Lisitsa engenders both an uncommonly intimate portrait of the composer and a sort of musical family tree, tracing its roots into the soil from which he grew as a musician and looking beyond its highest branches into the wider grove of Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century music into which the seeds of his innovation were dispersed.

The pair of waltzes chosen for Nuances are played with unhurried brilliance, every cascade of notes sparkling with its own individual effect but blending organically with its brethren in the settings of sustained melodic arcs. Waltz in F minor (Opus 1) is clearly an early work, sounding like a lost piece by Chopin or even Schubert, but Lisitsa plays both this and the sentimentally ambiguous Waltz G sharp minor (WoO 7) with the same close attention to the singular accents of Scriabin’s musical language that she devotes to the great masterworks of the composer’s maturity. It is again Chopin who provided the models for Scriabin’s Prélude and Impromptu à la mazur from Trois Pièces (Opus 2) and the Nocturne in A flat major (WoO 3), and Lisitsa pays homage to Chopin without allowing the listener to forget that these are Scriabin’s works.

The Scherzi in E flat major and A flat major (WoO 4 and 5) and Klavierstücke in B flat minor (Anh. 16) inhabit the world of Schumann and Brahms, and Lisitsa again honors the inspirations whilst elucidating the flair with which Scriabin synthesized elements of the music from which he learned into his own distinctive idiom. Recalling Bach, the Fugues in F minor (WoO 13) and E minor (WoO 20) demand concentration no less than what is required by Das Wohltemperierte Klavier and, unsurprisingly, receive it from Lisitsa. No less intense is her playing of the Mazurkas in B minor and F major (WoO 15 and 16), but even among a progression of authoritative performances her accounts of the Nocturne from Opus 9 and Prélude et Nocturne pour la main gauche—a foreshadowing of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand—are exceptional. It is interesting that Nuances was recorded at Aldeburgh as, like Benjamin Britten’s performances of works by Purcell, Bach, and Schubert, Lisitsa’s playing of Scriabin’s music demonstrates a fellow composer’s sensibilities. She prefers the alternative version of Patetico, the twelfth of the Opus 8 Études, and the unaffected gracefulness of her playing wholly justifies the choice.

The Two Impromptus of Opus 14 are marvelously differentiated by the pianist’s insightful approach, the Allegretto piece dispatched with dynamism and its Andante cantabile partner distinguished by open-hearted expressivity that is wholly free of artifice. Both the Allegro de concert in B flat major (Opus 18) and the animated Allegro maestoso Polonaise (Opus 21) are pieces that, though not long in duration, ask for great stamina from the pianist, and Lisitsa delivers in spades. She takes Scriabin’s Presto marking in the Opus 46 Scherzo at face value, charging through the piece with the unstoppable momentum of an avalanche. The Opus 41 Poème is far more contemplative, and Lisitsa plays it with unapologetic emotional honesty. This trait, too, molds her performance of Poème, the first of the Deux Pièces that constitute Opus 59.

Closing with the first and third of the Opus 65 Études, Lisitsa’s survey of Scriabin’s music is enriched by a galvanizing performance of the Allegretto Étude, the spirit of Chopin now more distant but still hovering at the peripheries of the music. The frenetic Molto vivace receives from the pianist a performance that encapsulates the essence of Scriabin’s art: respect and a measure of nostalgia for the past, trust in the present, and a vibrantly original vision of the future.

On the surface, there is little to connect the music of Fauré and Ravel with that of Scriabin. As men, the circumstances of their births, educations, and existences were very different, and as artists they pursued their own individual paths. So, too, do Yuja Wang and Valentina Lisitsa come to the piano with vastly varied experiences at the hearts of their artistic identities, but the ladies’ playing of the music of Fauré, Ravel, and Scriabin on this pair of wonderful discs confirms anew that music at its best remains a community of shared ideals.

ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH SCRIABIN (1872 – 1915): Préludes, Op. 11, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 10, 14 – 16, 20; Prélude, Op. 22, No. 1; Prélude, Op. 27, No. 1; Prélude, Op. 35, No. 2; Poème, Op. 41; Danse, Op. 73, No. 2 Flammes sombres; Polonaise, Op. 21; Poème tragique, Op. 34; and Poème satanique, Op. 36 and FRÉDÉRIC FRANÇOIS CHOPIN (1810 – 1849): Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 and 24 Études for Piano, Opp. 10 and 25– Valentina Lisitsa, piano [Duke Performances, Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 11 December 2015]

There is a cherished aphorism that suggests that the road leading musicians to the stage of Carnegie Hall is paved with ‘practice, practice, practice.’ Were Carnegie Hall the nexus of a musical Utopia, this would perhaps be the end of the story: those musicians whose talent and perseverance achieve the perfect equilibrium that cannot be taught in any conservatory would assume the places that they deserve in the firmament of artistic luminaries, and all would be right with the world. This, alas, is anything but a world in which all is right, no Utopia in which the deserving are rewarded without fail. This is a world in which extraordinarily gifted artists struggle in obscurity while the recognition their endeavors merit is enjoyed by pretenders whose artistry is in marketing, not music. ​Even in the realm of Classical Music, where musicians’ abilities to play pieces ought to be far more significant than how they look whilst plying their trade, success is too often gauged not by the quality of a performance but by how many people ‘tweet’ about it. Regrettably, concert-going can be a dishearteningly disappointing experience, especially for young people launching their maiden voyages into ‘serious’ music: what could be more discouraging than finding that admired performers are mere shadows of their punctiliously-promoted reputations? What sustains Classical Music in the dystopian reality of the Twenty-First Century are those glorious instances in which celebrated musicians exceed the expectations engendered by the ballyhoo that heralds them. The Duke Performances Piano Recital series at Duke University provided its audience with such an instance with a recital in Baldwin Auditorium by internationally-acclaimed pianist Valentina Lisitsa. Artists are often mercurial creatures, and the social media maelstroms of which she is a consummate mistress have whirled with commentary on the pianist's political candor, particularly on the topic of the unrest in her native Ukraine. After establishing her credentials as a collaborative artist with a stint as accompanist for Virginia-born violinist Hilary Hahn, it was via a series of widely-viewed YouTube videos—many of them recorded in her adopted home base of New Bern, North Carolina, incidentally—that Lisitsa, a devotee of the piano since the age of three, promulgated evidence of her musical gifts on a global scale. In Durham, she eviscerated any doubts about her ability to match in the concert hall her tantalizing panache before cameras and studio microphones with thoughtfully-planned, luminously-delivered performances of music by Alexdander Scriabin and Frédéric Chopin. Recitals by the greatest pianists can be tedious, but Lisitsa's playing captured the audience's attention from the first note and retained it until she triumphantly bade the enthusiastic throng goodnight.

With a series of acclaimed DECCA recordings to her credit, Lisitsa is among the few pianists in recent memory to have devoted a significant expenditure of creative energy to studying and playing Scriabin’s piano music. Her most recent disc, Nuances [reviewed here], offered a compelling survey of music from virtually the entire span of Scriabin’s compositional career, and her playing of his music in Baldwin Auditorium further confirmed that she is a Scriabin interpreter of the caliber of Vladimir Sofronitsky, the composer’s son-in-law. Though born not in Moscow but in Kiev, Lisitsa seems to share artistic DNA with the Muscovite composer, her interpretations of his music for piano exhibiting the authority of Artur Schnabel's playing of Beethoven and Alicia de Larrocha's handling of Mozart repertory. Like the sequence of works on Nuances, the selections for the portion of her Duke recital dedicated to Scriabin's music displayed an appreciable savvy for using pieces from all phases of Scriabin's career to cogently illustrate the progressive development of his distinctive style.

Opening with the Prelude in B Major (Opus 2, No. 2), the pianist’s traversal of music by Scriabin was remarkable for the range of hues that she coaxed from the instrument. Her technique is well-suited to Scriabin’s style, the great flexibility of her wrists and ease in managing intervals of an octave and greater enabling her to illuminate the expressivity of even the most fatiguing passages. Throughout the recital, her use of the pedals was exemplary: her ability to sustain a single tone whilst applying and releasing the pedals engendered feats of phrasing for which Scriabin surely hoped but must have thought all but impossible. The eight Préludes drawn from the twenty-four that comprise Scriabin’s Opus 11 were chosen with an obvious grasp of their compatibility. As Lisitsa played them, the transitions among individual Préludes were as smooth as those among movements of a sonata. With Nos. 2 in A minor, 4 in E minor, 14 in E-flat minor, 15 in D-flat minor, 16 in B-flat minor, and 20 in C minor, minor keys dominated, but Lisitsa’s playing was wholly free from heaviness. The variety of her accounts of the Préludes was facilitated by far more than different key signatures and tempi: she was a bard telling timeless stories, not just a pianist producing notes. The powerful Préludes Nos. 5 in D Major and 10 in C-sharp Major were conquered, not merely played. Here and in the three subsequent Préludes, the G-sharp minor from Quatre Préludes (Opus 22, No. 1), the G minor from Deux Préludes (Opus 27, No. 1), and the D-flat Major from Trois Préludes (Opus 35, No. 2), Lisitsa built and released anxiety in the music with uncanny dramatic instincts. Under her touch, the major-key Préludes were not without murky shadows, and the numbers in minor keys benefited from glimpses of wry humor.

Scriabin’s Opus 41 Poème is an interlude of marked emotional directness, and Lisitsa dove into its depths without losing sight of the surface, the glow of sunlight never succumbing to the extinguishing abyss. Her performance of Flammes sombres, the second of the Opus 73 Deux Danses, sizzled with ardor, the relative sobriety of the music sharpening the sting of her uninhibited playing. The Polonaise (Opus 21) is, like its cousin in Act Three of Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin, a vital fusion of Polish form with Russian spirit. It was impossible to overlook these traits in Lisitsa’s performance. She ended the first half of the recital with Poème tragique (Opus 34) and Poème satanique (Opus 36), two of Scriabin’s most unique works, and both were fired into the auditorium like meteorites. The ‘tragic’ trajectory of the Opus 34 Poème was traced with imagination and boldly expansive phrasing. The interpretive significance of every virtuosic flourish was carefully examined and integrated into Lisitsa’s approach to the music. No one in Baldwin Auditorium ‘went down to Georgia’ during Friday evening’s performance of Poème satanique, but Charlie Daniels would have been most pleased by Lisitsa’s fearless, ferociously inflammatory playing of Scriabin’s diabolical music.

Like most composers of music for piano whose careers began in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, Scriabin was strongly influenced by the work of Frédéric Chopin. Not an artist who is content to accept—or ask her audiences to accept—conventional wisdom without meticulously evaluating the solidity of its foundations, Lisitsa delved into a sonorous explication of the kinship between the Polish composer’s music and the work of his Russian successor by employing for the second half of her Duke recital a programme of pieces by Chopin. In its unabashed Romanticism, her playing of the physically frail but emotionally flamboyant composer’s music recalled the Chopin interpretations of Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, the latter having also been a champion of Scriabin’s music, but the full-bodied delicacy with which she emphasized the bel canto melodic lines, sometimes seeming to transform the Steinway before her into a turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Bösendorfer, brought to mind Ingrid Haebler’s little-remembered but sublime Chopin interpretations. Unfortunately, Lisitsa was compelled to share the second half of her recital with the conversational obbligato of a gentleman—seated at the front, as such gentlemen invariably are—who seemed physiologically incapable of silence. Such was Lisitsa’s preparation that, though she played from memory, her concentration was never disturbed. The intensity with which she phrased Chopin’s barnstorming Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor (Opus 31) was explosive. The familiar strains of the Scherzo’s first bars poured into the auditorium like the boiling waters of a geyser. Never shrinking from dynamic extremes, Lisitsa could fill the space with massive outbursts of sound or, like Zinka Milanov soaring to her trademark pianissimo top B♭ in Act One of La Gioconda, reduce the tone to an always-audible whisper. The symmetry of her playing of the Scherzo was defined by the contrasting rhythmic precision of repetitions of the principal theme and the elasticity of her handling of the development.

Collectively, the twenty-four Études that constitute Chopin’s Opera 10 and 25 are a sequence of works as important to the keyboard as Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. In the Études, Chopin magnificently tested and in many ways redefined the capabilities of the piano, following Beethoven's lead in establishing the instrument as a concertizing entity in its own right. The foremost wonder of Lisitsa's readings of the Études was her attention to the links among the pieces. Performed without pause, the Études were presented like tableaux vivants within an elaborate musical cyclorama. It seems invidious to consider Lisitsa’s performance of the Études as anything but a gargantuan but astoundingly coherent whole. As in Scriabin’s music, she utilized crescendi and rallentandi in highly individual ways, highlighting the Études’ episodic nature. When playing arpeggios, she often seemed to be playing a harp rather than a piano, and the instrument responded to her touch as though it were an extension of her own body. Lisitsa’s is a dramatic style of pianism, but her technique is clearly founded upon an effort to evince tension in the music by relaxing the musculature employed in playing. Indeed, there were moments on Friday evening when it would have been easy to assume that the music was coming from the lady on stage rather than from the piano. In truth, the instrument was sporadically unworthy of her: the brightness of the upper two octaves of the compass typical of a Steinway undermined the homogeneity of tone that Lisitsa sought, but this limitation did not lessen her astonishing ability to reveal the inner voices ‘singing’ in the Études. The lighter of the Études were sweetly playful, and the darker moments alternated tenderness and thundering potency. As Chopin’s music flowed from Lisitsa’s fingers, the only possible reaction was to surrender oneself to the deluge and rejoice in being submerged in sounds so lovingly shared.

Since its composition in 1847, Franz Liszt’s (1811 – 1886) Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor (S.244/2) has been a staple of the repertoires of pianists capable of playing it—and, to be frank, of the repertoires of more than a few pianists not up to the task. One of Lisitsa’s most-viewed YouTube videos preserves a performance of the Rhapsody, but her playing of the piece as the encore in her Duke recital possessed a frisson that no recording can convey. The lilting rhythms of the lassú were realized with great bite, and the incendiary frishka intoxicated with the hearty flavor of one of Hungary’s legendary ‘bull’s blood’ wines. The Rhapsody offered an opportunity for Lisitsa to unabashedly display her awesome virtuosity, of course, but in the context of this recital it also emerged as a natural bridge between the milieux of Chopin and Scriabin. Lisitsa’s performance of the Rhapsody was not without a welcome dose of showmanship, but even her showmanship is soulful.

Ideally, a recital should reveal as much about the pianist as about the composers whose music is performed. Anyone who entered Baldwin Auditorium on Friday evening without a familiarity with the music of Alexander Scriabin should have departed with as intimate an acquaintance with the composer and his artistry as many music lovers acquire via lifetimes of listening. Music for the piano by few composers is more widely known than that by Frédéric Chopin, but Chopin, too, was essentially reintroduced, his music played not as polite, pretty salon pieces but as genre-defining offspring of an incomparable artistic mind. There were a few wrong notes, amounting to nothing, but, crucially, the expressive ethos of Friday evening's recital was resoundingly right. Valentina Lisitsa revealed the glistening facets of her artistic personality with a recital that exuded confidence and faith in the communicative power of music. Such magisterial playing is not achieved solely by ‘practice, practice, practice,’ but how wonderful it is to experience the work of an artist who, in practice and not just in reputation, truly deserves that distinction.

Artist in Action: Internationally-acclaimed pianist Valentina Lisitsa, recitalist in Duke Performances Piano Recital series at Baldwin Auditorium on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, 11 December 2015 [Photo by Gilbert François, © by DECCA / Universal Music Group]

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK (1714 – 1787): Iphigénie en Tauride—Caitlin Hulcup (Iphigénie), Grant Doyle (Oreste), Christopher Saunders (Pylade), Christopher Richardson (Thoas), Margaret Plummer (Une prêtresse, Une grecque, Diane), Nicholas Dinopoulos (Un scythe, Un ministre du sanctuaire); Cantillation; Orchestra of the Antipodes; Erin Helyard, Associate Conductor and harpsichord; Antony Walker, Conductor [Recorded ‘live’ during performances by Pinchgut Opera in City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney, Australia, on 3, 5, 7, and 9 December 2014; Pinchgut LIVE PG006; 2 CDs, 111:01; Available from Pinchgut Opera and major music retailers]

When Iphigénie en Tauride premièred at Paris’s Salle du Palais-Royal on 18 May 1779, the sixty-four-year-old Christoph Willibald Gluck was at the end of his three-decade career as a composer of opera. His final opera, Iphigénie en Tauride is in many ways the culmination of the refashioning of opera seria that Gluck initiated with his 1762 Orfeo ed Euridice and continued in Alceste, Armide, and Iphigénie en Aulide. In the second of his Iphigenia operas, Gluck viscerally explores a multitude of emotions, none of which overstays its welcome: there is not in the score of Iphigénie en Tauride one superfluous or dramatically insignificant note. Performances of Gluck’s ‘reform’ operas have traditionally approached the music either from the perspective of the Baroque models of Lully and Rameau or from that of later exemplars of similar serious opera like Cherubini, Beethoven, and Weber. It is true both that without Thésée and Dardanus there may never have been an Iphigénie en Tauride and that without Gluck’s opera there may have been no Médée, Fidelio, or Der Freischütz, but Gluck’s music is to a marked degree sui generis. By Eighteenth-Century standards, Gluck’s was a long life, and his first operas were written when Händel remained active as a composer of opera and his last when Mozart’s Idomeneo was only two years in future. Among his contemporaries, Gluck’s operatic skill set was unique: Hasse’s style was more gallant, Haydn’s operas were less harmonically progressive, Mysliveček’s vocal lines were more instrumental in nature, Salieri’s idiom was more cosmopolitan, and Mozart’s operas even in his youth were less stylized. Whether Gluck was successful in his aim to return to opera a measure of its histrionic inheritance from Greek drama can be debated by pedagogues, but hearing Pinchgut LIVE's new recording of Iphigénie en Tauride, a souvenir of Pinchgut Opera's acclaimed December 2014 production of the opera, leaves no questions about the musical and theatrical efficacy of Gluck's last opera unanswered.

There are many examples of shared guidance of an Arts institution engendering more tribulations than triumphs, but Pinchgut Opera’s productions are superb evidence of what can be achieved when like-minded advocates for opera combine their respective strengths. Guided by Antony Walker, who conducted this production of Iphigénie en Tauride, and Erin Helyard, who served as Associate Conductor and provided the quicksilver harpsichord continuo, Pinchgut’s endeavors benefit from the collaboration of two first-rate musical minds. Walker’s stylish, spirited pacing of a wide repertory has been showcased in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, and this recording confirms that his command of Gluck’s music is no less noteworthy than his mastery of Nineteenth-Century opera. Under Walker’s direction, the playing of Pinchgut Opera’s resident period-instrument ensemble, Orchestra of the Antipodes, is as red-blooded and large-scaled as Gluck’s score requires. This is not historically-informed playing of the dainty, quills-and-catgut variety. The sounds produced by Orchestra of the Antipodes fabricate a credible recreation of music first performed in 1779 but also enable the listener to appreciate the noble grandeur that so engaged the imaginations of Berlioz and Wagner. The taut construction of Gluck’s score notwithstanding, Iphigénie en Tauride can be surprisingly dull in performance and on disc, but Walker paces the performance that plays out on this recording with unflagging energy and momentum. The elocutions of the ‘Calme’ and ‘Tempète’ of the opera's orchestral introduction are revealing: Walker accentuates the contrast by closely following Gluck's instructions. Walker’s fidelity to the score is admirable, not least for the extent to which adhering to the mandates of the music—and those of Nicolas-François Guillard’s libretto—sharpens the focus of the drama. The continuity of the performance that Walker paces makes it virtually impossible to believe that some of Iphigénie’s most memorable pages are borrowed from other Gluck scores, including the opening scene (sourced from the not-unjustly-neglected L’île de Merlin) and Iphigénie’s impactful ‘Ô malheureuse Iphigénie’ (adapted from an aria in La clemenza di Tito). This is a testament both to Gluck’s talent for molding coherent music dramas and to Walker’s intelligent handling of the music. The alert, ingratiating playing of Orchestra of the Antipodes is complemented by the singing of Cantillation. Throughout the performance, the choristers sing with excellent intonation and precisely the dramatic profile required by each scene. The chorus is of great importance in all of Gluck's ‘reform’ operas but perhaps more so in Iphigénie en Tauride than any other. Responding to Walker’s intuitive management of tempi, Cantillation's singers provide uncommonly well-integrated accounts of Gluck's choruses, thrilling and touching in turns. In many performances of Iphigénie en Tauride, the soloists are betrayed by poor conducting, orchestral playing, or choral singing: in Pinchgut Opera's recording, the efforts of Walker, Helyard, Orchestra of the Antipodes, and Cantillation are vital components of the performance's tremendous success.

Observers who have very publicly caviled at the increasingly ‘international’ casting of English National Opera productions should consider shifting their loyalties to Pinchgut Opera, where there is a firm dedication to casting singers from Australia and Oceania. Furthermore, Pinchgut’s ongoing commitment to recording their productions enables listeners beyond Australia to hear singers whose work is not yet as known internationally as it deserves to be. For their production of Iphigénie en Tauride, Pinchgut assembled an ensemble of Australian singers whose fluency in Gluck’s musical language is impeccable. Portraying both an unnamed Scythe and the Ministre du sanctuaire, bass-baritone Nicholas Dinopoulos—an Oreste in the making—sings handsomely and powerfully, the authority of his voicing of the latter part’s ‘Étrangers malheureux, il faut vous séparer’ markedly increasing the menace of the scene in Act Two in which he appears. His music in Iphigénie en Tauride is neither demanding nor extensive in comparison with other works in his repertoire, but Dinopoulos is a singer whose attractive, assured vocalism and unaffected acting are always noticed. This is also true of mezzo-soprano Margaret Plummer, whose firm, focused tones are heard with pleasure in Gluck’s music for the Prêtresse and the anonymous Grecque. It is as Iphigénie’s deus ex machine Diane that Plummer is most memorable, however. The resonant, aptly unanswerable beauty with which she delivers Diane’s ‘Arrêtez! écoutez mes décrets éternels’ in Act Three is indeed divine. Like Dinopoulos, Plummer is a singer who leaves her mark on a performance and one ready to assume her place as one of opera’s finest leading ladies.

The Scythian King Thoas is sung with villainous glee and robust, rock-solid tone by bass-baritone Christopher Richardson. In Act One, the singer introduces himself with a burly voicing of ‘Dieux! le malheur en tous lieux suit mes pas,’ and he proceeds to sing the Andante ‘De noirs pressentiments mon âme intimidée’ with laudable flair, the repeated top F♯s and Gs seeming to trouble him very little. Not heard again until Act Four, Richardson returns with a ringing account of ‘De tes forfaits la trame est découverte,’ his aggressive but debonair vocalism bringing the cruel, complicated Thoas to unexpectedly sympathetic life.

The career of Central Queensland native tenor Christopher Saunders is a narrative of hardship, resilience, and recovery. Injured in an automobile accident whilst en route to hospital to receive a diagnosis of Bell's Palsy, Saunders is a musical phoenix who rebuilt not only his voice but also his confidence. Singing the rôle of Oreste’s cousin, friend, and comrade-in-arms Pylade in Pinchgut’s Iphigénie en Tauride, he veritably defines what is possible through perseverance. One cannot rebuild the Taj Mahal with Lego bricks, however, and Saunders’s valiant efforts would have achieved nothing had there not been top-quality vocal material with which to work. Pylade was written for and first performed by the celebrated French haute-contre Joseph Legros, whose upper register extended at least to E♭5, and was interpreted in an 1821 revival of the opera by Adolphe Nourrit, renowned for his singing of stratospheric music composed for him by Rossini. Gluck’s demands on Pylade are more modest, but the rôle is a trove of deceptive lyricism. Saunders sings Pylade’s Act One recitative ‘Notre projet est un mystère’ with elegance, the distinctive nasal vowels of the French text suiting the constitution of Saunders’s voice. Pylade’s lovely Cantabile con moto ‘Unis dès la plus tendre enfance’ in Act Two is one of the finest portions of Saunders’s performance, the top As lightly touched in a manner redolent of the voix mixte known to have been employed by hautes-contre of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. Saunders does not wholly avoid strain in the upper register, but the moments of stress legitimize the tenor’s deeply-felt depiction of Pylade’s misfortunes. In the Act Three trio with Iphigénie and Oreste, Saunders sings passionately, and his articulation of the recitative ‘Ô moment trop heureux!’ exudes sincerity. His thoughtful ‘Dieux! fléchissez son cœur’ with Oreste is a heart-rending statement of a friend’s anguish that is seconded by an affecting performance of the Allegro espressivo ‘Ah! mon ami, j'implore ta pitié.’ Saunders phrases ‘Divinité des grandes âmes’ with dignity, and his voice audibly brightens in Act Four when Pylade learns that Oreste has been reunited with his sister and saved from sacrifice. There is no doubt that Saunders infuses his singing with emotions channeled from his own personal experiences and is all the more persuasive an artist for it. In this Iphigénie en Tauride, he is a marvelously direct, moving Pylade who sings plangently even when under duress.

From the first bar of his recitative ‘Ô mon ami, c'est moi qui cause ton trépas!’ in Act One, Adelaide-born baritone Grant Doyle portrays an Oreste of integrity and vulnerability. Even before being condemned to slaughter upon his landing on Taurisé’s inhospitable shores, Oreste’s lot has been one of tragedy and misadventure: partly in retribution for his having been complicit in the alleged sacrifice of their daughter Iphigénie [she was, in fact, rescued by Diana and installed in the goddess’s temple on Tauris], Oreste’s mother Clytaemnestra murdered his father Agamemnon and was subsequently murdered herself by Oreste as vengeance for his father. Matricide having been frowned upon even in the bloody world of Euripides, Oreste has been tormented by the Furies, finding solace only in the company of the loyal Pylade. The weight of Oreste’s torment resounds in Doyle’s athletic singing of the Allegro ‘Dieux qui me poursuivez, Dieux, auteurs de mes crimes’ in Act Two, and he declaims the recitative ‘Dieux protecteurs de ces affreux rivages’ with unstinting strength. In fact, Doyle’s emphatic, rousingly masculine vocalism occasionally overwhelms the music, his Oreste therefore sounding more haranguing than heroic. The innovative Andante ‘Le calme rentre dans mon cœur’ is essentially a mad scene in which Oreste is mercilessly hounded by the Furies, and Doyle responds with a performance in which the character’s mental state is uncertain but the singer’s assurance is unflappable. There is tenderness in the baritone’s singing of Oreste’s lines in the Act Three trio with Iphigénie and Pylade, as well as in his ruggedly affectionate ‘Dieux! fléchissez son cœur’ with Pylade. Doyle’s brusque enunciation of the Lento ‘Quoi? toujours à mes vœux vous êtes insensible,’ though vocally impressive, reduces the emotional effect of the number. In Act Four, however, Doyle’s performance is ideal, musically and dramatically. He sings the Larghetto ‘Que ces regrets touchants pour mon cœur ont de charmes!’ with suavity and easy command of the tessitura, but it is his refined treatment of the Moderato cantabile ‘Partage mon bonheur’ that is the apex of Doyle’s performance. Oreste’s destiny ameliorates at last, and the character’s relief permeates the baritone’s singing. Doyle is a captivating actor, but, above all, it is very gratifying to hear a voice of true substance in one of Gluck’s most significant baritone rôles.

In the six decades since the first recording of the opera was released, the title rôle in Iphigénie en Tauride has fared well before microphones, both in studio and on stage. Important singers who have donned Iphigénie’s sacred robes include Patricia Neway, Maria Callas, Hilde Zadek, Sena Jurinac, Régine Crespin, Marilyn Horne, Diana Montague, and Christine Goerke, an eclectic society of singing actresses with little more in common than having sung Iphigénie. Though she memorably recorded Iphigénie’s ‘Non, cet affreux devoir,’ the absence of Dame Janet Baker’s name from the ranks of Iphigénies on disc is surprising. Without question, Baker was the most celebrated Gluck interpreter of her generation, and it is Baker whose vocal prowess and acumen as an actress that mezzo-soprano Caitlin Hulcup’s singing of Iphigénie in this performance often recalls. Accomplished in a repertory spanning multiple centuries of musical invention, Hulcup finds in Gluck’s long-suffering Iphigénie a rôle that might have been written with her individual gifts in mind. Like Baker, she grants music and text equal importance, maximizing the communicative capacities of Iphigénie’s strenuous vocal lines. The unimpeachable security of her repeated ascents to G at the top of the stave in ‘Grands Dieux! soyez-nous secourables’ in Act One illustrates the level of excellence that Hulcup achieves in this music. Her ‘Ô race de Pélops! race toujours fatale!’ is fiery but sophisticated, Iphigénie’s aristocratic demeanor always apparent. The air ‘Ô toi, qui prolongeas mes jours’ is marked by Gluck as très doux, and this perfectly describes Hulcup’s singing, as well. With pitch tuned to A = 430 Hz, a reasonable representation of tuning in Paris in 1779 [a law passed eighty years later standardized pitch in France at A = 435 Hz] and approximately a quarter-tone lower than modern concert pitch, the top As are not altogether comfortable for Hulcup, but she turns occasional hints of overextension to her advantage. The mezzo-soprano’s portrayal of the troubled Iphigénie gains further dimension in Act Two, not least with her subtle singing of the recitative ‘Je vois toute l'horreur que ma présence vous inspire’ and her penetrating ‘Ô Ciel! de mes tourments la cause et le témoin.’ The Classical poise of her voicing of the pained Cantabile con espressione ‘Ô malheueurse Iphigénie’ is a credit to herself and to Gluck, the top As taxing her vocal resources but compellingly conveying the character’s despair and desperation. The recitative ‘Je cède à vos désirs’ and Larghetto cantabile air ‘D'une image, hélas! trop chérie’ in Act Three are delivered with abundant tonal beauty, and Hulcup reaches dizzying heights of tragic expression in the trio with Oreste and Pylade. Her performance of ‘Je pourrais du tyran tromper la barbarie’ alone qualifies her as world-class Iphigénie, but she crowns her interpretation with particularly fine, fearless sing in Act Four. The top As in the recitative ‘Non, cet affreux devoir je ne puis le remplir’ display increased freedom, and she suffuses ‘Ah! laissons là ce souvenir funeste’ with sounds befitting the daughter of a royal house. Not long after singing Iphigénie in Sydney, Hulcup expanded her Gluckian résumé with a much-appreciated portrayal of the titular troubadour in Orfeo ed Euridice for Scottish Opera. Singers with special affinities for Gluck’s music are rare, but even among their sparse company Hulcup is exceptional. A worthy rival to Callas, Jurinac, and Goerke, hers is as well-sung an Iphigénie as has been heard in the modern age.

Expectations are always high when Pinchgut Opera launches a new season. [The 2016 Pinchgut schedule offers the inspired pairing of Haydn’s Armida and Händel’s Theodora.] What sets Pinchgut Opera apart from most of the world’s opera companies is the consistency with which their productions meet and exceed those lofty expectations. Perhaps the land of kangaroos and koalas is not the first locale that comes to mind in contemplation of settings for performances of his ‘reform’ operas that fully realize Gluck’s musical and theatrical goals. It should be. With splendid performances all round, this Iphigénie en Tauride establishes Pinchgut Opera as Gluck’s Bayreuth.

GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759): Messiah, HWV 56—Julia Doyle (soprano), Lawrence Zazzo (countertenor), Steve Davislim (tenor), Neal Davies (bass-baritone); Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks; B’Rock Belgian Baroque Orchestra Ghent; Peter Dijkstra, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in Herkulessaal, Munich, Germany, 21 – 27 November 2014; BR-KLASSIK 900510; 2 CDs, 135:58; Available from BR-KLASSIK, ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

It was perhaps with tinges of irony and bitterness that Georg Friedrich Händel famously suggested that the reception for his Messiah in London, his adopted home since the second decade of the Eighteenth Century, would be tempered by the city’s Jewish population’s objection to the oratorio’s Christian subject and ladies’ rejection of its inherent morality. Composed in 1741 and premièred in Dublin in 1742, Messiah reached London in 1743, when Händel, the predominant composer of Italian opera in the English capital since the première of his Rinaldo in 1711, was disenfranchised not only with the whims of egotistical singers but also with the fickleness of English audiences. Falling victim first to the machinations of a rival opera company supported by the Prince of Wales and later to the popularity of satires of Italian opera in its Händelian guise like John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Händel abandoned the composition of opera after completing Deidamia in 1741 and with Messiah struck a decisive blow for the English oratorio genre that he had redefined with his 1732 revision of his earlier masque Esther. Like several of Händel’s operas, Messiah exists in multiple forms, ranging from that in which it was first heard in Dublin in 1742 to the 1754 version prepared for and bequeathed by Händel to London’s Foundling Hospital and an arrangement made by Mozart and eventually published in 1803 with further alterations by Johann Adam Hiller. Until the advent of the historically-informed performance practice movement, allegiances among Twentieth-Century Messiah performers were split between editions by Ebenezer Prout and Watkins Shaw, neither of which answered all of the questions posed by the perennially-popular oratorio. The foremost question that a performance of Messiah, if its aim is to faithfully recreate how voices and instruments are likely to have sounded in the Eighteenth Century or if it adjusts the scale of the music to conform with modern performance standards, must ultimately answer is whether the doggedly temperamental Händel would have granted it his approval. There is no doubt that even the brusque Saxon would have found copious words of praise for BR-KLASSIK’s new Messiah, masterfully culled from recordings of performances given in Munich’s Herkulessaal in November 2014. Uniting the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks with the B’Rock Belgian Baroque Orchestra Ghent under the baton of Dutch conductor Peter Dijkstra, this Messiah is unexpectedly one of the most successful recorded performances of this monumental score.

Without in any way denigrating the fine work done by non-native speakers in performances and recordings of the piece, one of this Messiah’s foremost strengths is its quartet of English-speaking soloists, an advantage that is apparent from the first bars of ‘Comfort ye, my people,’ magnificently sung by Malaysian-born, Australian-reared tenor Steve Davislim, the sole soloist here recorded in Messiah for the first time. His firm, focused, consistently appealing tones are deployed with intelligence in Händel’s familiar melodic lines, and his technique is equal to both the bravura and the dramatic demands of the tenor arias. Davislim ornaments ‘Ev’ry valley shall be exalted’ tastefully, but the apex of his performance—and, indeed, one of the finest passages in the performance as a whole—is his restrained but expressive account of ‘Behold, and see if there be any sorrow.’ Furthermore, he is the rare tenor who truly conquers rather than merely surviving the daunting ‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron,’ and his contributions to the still-too-often-omitted ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ intensifies gratitude for its inclusion. Few recorded performances of the tenor arias equal Davislim’s. Welsh bass-baritone Neal Davies, ever an involved, accomplished singer, is on splendid form in this performance, singing strongly but thoughtfully. His emphatic style of utterance can sometimes overpower Händel’s music, but, beginning with unsubtle but stylish traversals of ‘Thus saith the Lord’ and ‘For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,’ his forthright singing is here a decided asset. Davies’s anthracite-hued voicing of ‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light’ conjures a reverent aura of wonder, and he sails through the fiorature of ‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together’ and ‘The trumpet shall sound,’ its B section beautifully accompanied only by the organ, with unflinching brilliance. This is among the bass-baritone’s most effective outings on disc. American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo largely avoids the hootiness heard in many of his similarly-voiced colleagues’ performances of the alto solos in Messiah, and his singing is notable for its secure intonation throughout the range. Sustained tones occasionally develop a slight suggestion of unsteadiness, but Zazzo is an imaginative, artful singer who controls his vocal resources with great skill. He sings ‘But who may abide the day of his coming,’ ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion,’ and the alto’s portion of ‘He shall feed his flock’ handsomely, his embellishments unfailingly musical. Countertenors’ performances rarely rival female altos’ singing of the poignant ‘He was despised and rejected of men,’ but Zazzo has nothing to fear in comparison with even the greatest interpreters among recorded ladies, Kathleen Ferrier, Helen Watts, and Dame Janet Baker. His voice exudes exaltation in ‘Thou art gone up on high,’ which he dispatches with considerable technical acumen, and he partners Davislim well in ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ Zazzo was in marginally better voice in his earlier Messiah with René Jacobs on harmonia mundi, but this is the more memorable performance. Lancastrian soprano Julia Doyle has also been heard in a previous recording of Messiah, in her case the Polyphony traversal on the Hyperion label. She, too, improves upon her singing on her first recording—no mean feat. In the series of recitatives and accompagnati relaying the narrative of Christ’s birth, beginning with ‘There were shepherds abiding in the fields,’ Doyle’s voice rings out excitingly, and she sings ‘Rejoice greatly, o daughter of Zion’ beguilingly, using the lilting rhythm to credibly convey the elation of the text. Doyle follows Zazzo’s ‘He shall feed his flock’ with a lovingly-phrased ‘Come unto him all ye that labour’ in which she interpolates a particularly ravishing top B♭. Both ‘How beautiful are the feet’ and ‘If God be for us’ are sung with poise and alluringly even tone, but Doyle’s performance of ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ is rightly a thing apart: melding excellent diction and an obvious affinity for the music with spot-on commands of pitch and rhythm, the soprano makes the aria the emotional catharsis that Händel surely meant it to be. She and her male colleagues comprise a refreshingly well-matched quartet betrayed by none of its members, one of the finest complements of soloists recorded in Messiah in recent years.

Only thirty-six years old at the time of the performances that produced this recording, Dijkstra has clearly acquired through his leadership of choral ensembles including Nederlands Kamerkoor, Sveriges Radiokören, and Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks talents for developing rapports with choristers and encouraging them to surpass their highest standards of singing that elude many conductors. In this Messiah, both the Bavarian choir and the B'Rock musicians supply performances of superb quality. Few scores are apt to be more familiar to period-instrument ensembles than Messiah, but the B'Rock instrumentalists play Händel’s music with no indications of routine, only complete mastery. Purists whose ideas of historically-informed performance practices prohibit healthy doses of thoughtfully-conceived innovation will undoubtedly object to B'Rock’s use of theorbo in the continuo. That is regrettable, as it is so sublimely done that the notion of Händel himself objecting is unfathomable. The more canonical harpsichord and organ are played with equal accomplishment. Throughout the performance, B'Rock’s musicians find in Händel’s music outlets for both virtuosity and expressivity. Anyone expecting the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks singers to produce elephantine sounds with accents more appropriate to the Händel of Halle than of Dublin or London will be very surprised by this recording. Responding to Dijkstra’s guidance and singing in clear, cleanly-articulated English, the choristers achieve balances that are ideal for each chorus in succession, ranging from the hushed awe of ‘Since by man came death’ to the colossal ‘Amen’ that ends the work. ‘And the glory of the Lord,’ ‘And he shall purify the sons of Levi,’ and ‘For unto us a child is born’ are joyously declaimed, and the choristers take over ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ from Zazzo with the irrepressible glee of people with news too thrilling to be withheld. The distance effect sought by Händel in ‘Glory to God in the highest’ is only approximated with contrasts in dynamics, but the choir’s singing is appropriately exultant. As sung in this performance, a more compelling close to Part One and opening for Part Two than ‘His yoke is easy’ and ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ are unimaginable, and the sequence of choruses beginning with ‘Surely, he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’ and extending to ‘All we like sheep’ is shaped with enthralling dramatic thrust. The choir's delivery of ‘He trusted in God’ veritably explodes with irony, diverging markedly from the rousing statement of faith in ‘Lift up your heads.’ Messiah's ‘Hallelujah!’ may not be the best of Händel’s choruses or even of his ‘Hallelujah’ choruses, but there is no question that it is his most famous; not undeservedly so. The performance that ‘Hallelujah!’ receives from Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks on this recording justifies the number’s fame, the handling of contrapuntal passages assured and the sopranos’ ascents to top A unperturbed. The final chorus, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,’ is sung with unstinting power, providing an inspiring coda to an uncommonly cohesive, inspiriting performance.

Even in today’s problematic Classical recording industry, new recordings of Händel’s Messiah are anything but scarce. Perhaps Messiah is regarded by some artists and labels as a ‘safe,’ marketable work, and there is a measure of legitimacy in that logic. With many wonderful performances in the Messiah discography, however, new recordings face fierce competition, competition that threatens to marginalize them. With performances of the distinction offered on this recording by soloists, choir, orchestra, and conductor alike, BR-KLASSIK’s Messiah cannot be marginalized: it is a Messiah that earns a place among the most enjoyable, most moving Messiahs on disc.

WILLIAM BOLCOM (born 1938): Canciones de Lorca (2006) and Prometheus (2009)—René Barbera, tenor; Jeffrey Biegel, piano; Pacific Chorale; Pacific Symphony; Carl St. Clair, Music Director and Conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in concert at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, California, USA, 18 – 20 November 2010 (Prometheus) and 24 – 26 October 2013 (Canciones de Lorca); NAXOS 8.559788; 1 CD, 54:52; Available from ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Born in Seattle in 1938, William Bolcom has since studies with mentors of the caliber of George Frederick McKay, John Verrall, Darius Milhaud, and Olivier Messiaen aided him in finding and refining his individual voice been among America’s finest composers, the recipient of both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Medal of Arts. Like Mozart, he has excelled in virtually every musical genre, creating works of beauty and brilliance for recital halls, concert venues, and opera houses and spanning more than a half-century of stylistic innovations, ranging from serialism and Twenty-First-Century post-modernism to unabashedly lyrical tonalism. Bolcom’s mammoth, three-hour setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, recorded by NAXOS with an ensemble of talented American singers including the composer’s wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, is in many ways a summation of the composer’s creative ideologies. In their very different veins, so, too, are Canciones de Lorca and Prometheus, both recorded by NAXOS in performance in Costa Mesa, California, and here paired on a most welcome release in the label’s American Classics series. Created under very different circumstances, these works share an ethos anchored by the assertion that, in many aspects of humanity, the impulse to create is far stronger than the will to destroy. Bolcom’s gift for writing for voices, whether individual voices in Lieder or groups of voices in works for the stage, is a vital component of the composer’s own voice, and NAXOS’s recording of poignant, persuasive performances of Canciones de Lorca and Prometheus is a gift to listeners who appreciate Bolcom’s musical ingenuity and the lessons it offers in the art of binding of wounds and healing of scars with song.

Composed for world-famous tenor Plácido Domingo to inaugurate the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts in 2006, Bolcom’s Canciones de Lorca are precisely what the title suggests: songs utilizing texts by Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898 – 1936). Active during the Guerra Civil, one of the bloodiest and most brutal periods in Spain’s history, and almost certainly executed in 1936 by the Nationalist forces that ultimately ushered the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco into power [the writer’s body was never found, and a recent exhumation yielded no new clues], García Lorca was for the Spaniards whose lives were disrupted or ended by the Civil War what Walt Whitman was to victims of the American Civil War and Wilfred Owen was to the combatants of the Great War: the progenitor of a Zeitgeist for an age that might otherwise be represented in history only by broken, unintelligible voices. A member of the Generación del 27 that suffused the reluctant Spanish literary establishment with elements of the Early-Twentieth-Century modernism already taking hold elsewhere in Europe, García Lorca was consumed by two great loves, for nature and music, and his poetry hypnotically fuses the imagery of the former with the cadences of the latter. Employing idioms that pay homage to García Lorca’s Andalusian heritage, Bolcom’s Canciones invert the lens and, by focusing the light of music on the poet’s words, illuminate the essence of the man who wrote them. Tenor René Barbera is an ideal conduit for this exchange of ideas between García Lorca and Bolcom. Though the music allows Barbera few excursions into the highest reaches that are the greatest glory of the voice, it is difficult to imagine even the esteemed Domingo singing Bolcom’s Canciones as well as the younger tenor sang them in the performances that yielded this recording. Audience coughs are frequently audible during both Canciones de Lorca and , but, aside from an unnatural balance in the earlier work that places Barbera slightly too far forward in relation to the generally excellent Pacific Symphony, NAXOS’s engineering provides Bolcom’s music with a flattering ambiance. As heard on this disc, very closely recorded, Barbera’s voice seems larger and darker than it sounds in theatres, but the tonal beauty and sure pitch that characterize his work are much in evidence. In the opening canción, ‘Balanza,’ Barbera’s singing establishes an atmosphere reminiscent of Spain’s troubadour tradition, the vocal line intertwining with the text like a shimmering thread in the orchestral fabric that envelops the subsequent first Interlude, vibrantly played by the Pacific Symphony. Conductor Carl St. Clair shapes Canciones de Lorca with clear-sighted attention to the sonorities of both Bolcom’s music and García Lorca’s words, and he provides Barbera with reliably thoughtful support. The tenor voices ‘La casada infiel,’ ‘Alba,’ and ‘Danza da lúa en Santiago’ resonantly, the strength and focus of his lower register growing more impressive with every phrase. His accounts of ‘Árboles’ and ‘Soneto de la dulce queja’ breathe the same air that wafts through Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España, nodding to García Lorca’s close acquaintance with his musical countryman. Entitled ‘A Poet in New York,’ the second Interlude is a character study of the creative personality with a subtly disquieting vein of longing, emphasized by St. Clair’s carefully-controlled but elastic pacing. Barbera’s singing is at its best in the closing canción, ‘El poeta llega a La Habana,’ which he sings with a burnished timbre and brawn that recall the young Domingo. The clarity of Barbera’s diction is a testament not only to the emotional depths of García Lorca’s words but also to the sensitivity of Bolcom’s musical settings of them, as well as to the singer’s own considerable abilities as a communicative artist.

Like nearly all American artists, Bolcom was affected tangibly and intangibly by the terrorist attacks that transpired on 11 September 2011. A tangible result of the events of that fateful day is Prometheus, a work for chorus, piano, and orchestra that owes much to the structural model of Beethoven’s Opus 80 Fantasy in C minor for soloists, chorus, piano, and orchestra. Allying his music with verses by Lord Byron (1788 – 1824), Bolcom created a work that allegorically likens the perpetual renewal of Prometheus for the sole purpose of his unending torment to the cycles of catastrophe and recovery and the cult of violence in modern society. Playing with virtuosic technique and expansive phrasing, the aptly Byronic pianist Jeffrey Biegel soulfully takes the part of Prometheus himself, his emotive traversals of Bolcom’s music engendering a very personal progression of thoughts upon which the chorus and orchestra seem to intrude. Prepared by Artistic Director John Alexander, the Pacific Chorale singers impress almost as much with their parlando delivery of the first section of Byron’s text as with their bold, well-integrated singing of the sections that follow. As in Canciones de Lorca, St. Clair manages the musical personnel under his direction with intelligence and insightfulness that produce a potent performance of Prometheus. The Pacific Symphony musicians throw themselves into their parts, firing volleys of barbed sound that symbolically pierce the tortured body of Prometheus. Biegel’s pianism personifies a metaphorical Prometheus of rugged physicality but a discernibly vulnerable psyche, undone by suffering but expressed with incredible immediacy by the pianist’s handling of Bolcom’s agitated, virulent music. The nuances of Byron’s text, elucidated by the choristers’ pointed singing, find a litany of cleverly-crafted parallels in Bolcom’s score. There are passages, especially in the piece’s final minutes, in which the performers seem to work a bit too hard at emphasizing the message of hope amidst despair that is central to Prometheus, but their involvement is indicative of an encouraging dedication to putting their fingers, instruments, and vocal cords wholly at the service of the composer. There are no adequate compensations or memorials amongst the words and works of men for the lives stolen on 11 September 2001, but Prometheus gives the futile anger, grief, and desperate quest for meaning a purpose beyond acceptance and vengeance. In music like Bolcom’s and in performances like this one, restoring faith in humanity can be accomplished, at least in part, by raising voices in song.

In the fourteen years since the world watched in horror as edifices emblematic of the city that housed them and of human endeavor in the age of glass and steel crumbled beneath the weight of misunderstanding and misplaced zealotry, the definition of community has changed drastically—and perhaps permanently. It is in such times that communities most need great art and great artists, not as distractions but as beacons to light the way to renewed cooperation and coexistence. The awful discord of strife reverberates through Canciones de Lorca and Prometheus, but, like the din of war that penetrates the serene surface of the ‘Agnus Dei’ in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, it is so that the harmonies of peace might sound all the sweeter. This disc was not needed to prove that William Bolcom is a significant composer, but it is a much-deserved tribute to an artist whose work enshrines the guarded optimism not of one man but of mankind.

[1] AMILCARE PONCHIELLI (1834 – 1886): La Gioconda—Lucille Udovich (La Gioconda), Flaviano Labò (Enzo Grimaldo), Mignon Dunn (Laura Adorno), Aldo Protti (Barnaba), Norman Scott (Alvise Badoero), Luisa Bartoletti (La Cieca), Tulio Gagliardo (Zuàne), Italo Pasini (Isèpo), Guerrino Boschetti (Un cantore); Coro y Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón; Carlo Felice Cillario, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 28 July 1970; Walhall Eternity Series WLCD 0337; 3 CDs, 200:28 (including Act One from a 1958 performance of Madama Butterfly); Available from Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): La fanciulla del West—Renata Tebaldi (Minnie), Daniele Barioni (Dick Johnson), Giangiacomo Guelfi (Jack Rance), Piero de Palma (Nick), Carlo Cava (Ashby), Mario Borriello (Sonora), Athos Cesarini (Trin), Attilio Barbesi (Sid), John Ciavola (Bello), Angelo Mercuriali (Harry, Un postiglione), Virginio Assandri (Joe), Egidio Casolari (Happy), Giuseppe Morresi (Jim Larkens), Giorgio Onesti (Billy Jackrabbit), Lola Pedretti (Wowkle), Silvio Maionica (Jake Wallace), Bruno Cioni (José Castro); Coro ed Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma della RAI; Arturo Basile, conductor [Recorded ‘live,’ RAI Roma, 28 June 1961; Walhall Eternity Series WLCD 0355; 2 CDs, 130:29; Available from Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

For every opera lover, there are performances that are like old friends. In the course of a lifetime of listening and opera-going, new acquaintances are made, allegiances change, and relationships are betrayed by disappointments, unmet expectations, and missed opportunities, but those ‘old friends’ are always welcome. Perhaps they only visit occasionally and sometimes turn up in new garbs that alter their appearances, but their hearts and souls remain constant. Neither the 1960 Buenos Aires performance of Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda nor the 1961 RAI Roma broadcast of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West released on the Walhall Eternity Series label is new to collectors, but there are many folks among the ranks of opera aficionados for whom these performances are much-loved old friends. Though not new releases in the strictest sense, these Walhall editions are now more widely available in North America [on CD, at least: digital downloads are unavailable due to the intricacies of copyrights] thanks to distribution by NAXOS, and this is a valuable instance of familiar performances arriving in newly-cut suits of technological clothes that show off their handsome figures as never before.

Many of the extant recordings of performances dating from Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón in the 1960s remind today’s listeners of an era in which Verdi sounded like Verdi, Wagner sounded like Wagner, Puccini sounded like Puccini, and all sounded well-prepared, adequately-rehearsed, and unfailingly professional. The Teatro Colón’s ranks of ‘local’ talent ensured reliably capable singing of secondary rôles, and this Gioconda benefits from strong casting across the board. Tulio Gagliardo, Italo Pasini, and Guerrino Boschetti depict Zuàne, Isèpo, and the nameless Cantore with fervor. As Alvise, American bass Norman Scott (1921 – 1968) sings powerfully, traversing Ponchielli’s music with a voice silenced far too soon by the singer’s early death. Always audible in ensembles in Act One, he seizes his opportunities to excel in Act Three, voicing ‘Sì! morir ella de’! Sul nome mio’ and ‘Là turbini e farnetichi’ resonantly. In Alvise’s scenes with Laura, Gioconda, and the chorus, Scott sings with solid tone and dramatic presence, confirming what a blow the premature loss of his artistry was to the operatic community. Italian mezzo-soprano Luisa Bartoletti is not the most glamorous La Cieca imaginable, but she at least does not wobble, and her account of the famous ‘Voce di donna o d’angelo’ is phrased with feeling and ably vocalized.

Italian baritone Aldo Protti (1920 – 1995) possessed a fine voice of the type that lends credence to the cliché concerning singers who, appreciated but not universally fêted during their careers, would be widely acclaimed were they singing today. Protti was an effective, memorable Rigoletto, and he here proves an idiomatic, steely Barnaba. In his opening scene, the voice exudes menace and bravado. Protti sings ‘O monumento! Regia e bolgia’ with unstinting energy, his upper register secure and thrilling. Sparring with Gioconda throughout the opera, he manages to make Barnaba’s perversion bizarrely sympathetic: one almost wishes that Gioconda would explore the possibility that the uncompromising Barnaba might prove a viable romantic alternative to the inconstant prig Enzo. His character’s animalistic appetite for control, a psychosis that goes beyond mere lust, is viscerally conveyed by Protti’s singing in Act Four. With Gioconda cornered like a frightened viper, Protti depicts a Barnaba who does not fear her strike. Even in a decade during which baritones of the renown of Cornell MacNeil and Giuseppe Taddei appeared in Buenos Aires, Protti was an extremely valuable addition to the Teatro Colón’s roster, and in this performance he is a Barnaba in the grand Italian tradition.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, either in 1928 or 1931 [biographies of the singer are divided on this point, but the later year seems to be more prevalent among credible sources], mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn was throughout a long, diverse career encompassing many of the great German and Italian rôles for her Fach one of America’s most accomplished and dependable singers. Her performance in this Argentine Gioconda is a credit to her considerable talent and ironclad technique. All sweetness and femininity in Act One, this Laura’s titanium core shows through in Act Two, Dunn’s singing in ‘Stella del marinar!’ and the duet and then trio with Enzo and Gioconda formidably secure and throbbing with emotion. Her highest tones often stunning, Dunn sounds as though she might have sung Gioconda as credibly as Laura. In the scene with Alvise in Act Three, the mezzo-soprano’s timbre is arresting, its vein of copper complementing the bronzed patina of Scott’s voice, and the superb trio in Act Four inspires Dunn to unleash a flood of incredible vocalism. Like many of the Teatro Colón performances of this vintage that have circulated on ‘pirated’ recordings, this Gioconda was clearly first and foremost a vocal event. Dunn’s Laura is rarely subtle, but her healthy, hearty singing of this difficult part earns her favorable comparison with Ebe Stignani and Giulietta Simionato.

Italian tenor Flaviano Labò (1927 – 1991) portrays Enzo Grimaldo as a golden-throated Romantic hero of the stand-and-deliver variety, and deliver he does. His ringing ‘Assassini! quel crin venerando’ in Act One is followed by singing of Corelli-like brilliance in the duet with Barnaba, ‘O grido di quest’anima.’ Enzo’s well-known aria in Act Two, ‘Cielo e mar,’ is hardly the most distinguished music that Ponchielli gave him, but Labò sings it excitingly, rising without undue effort to top B♭.The tenor’s best singing is done in the edge-of-the-seat duet with Laura and the trios with Laura and Gioconda. Like Dunn’s Laura, Labò’s Enzo is not a nuanced impersonation, but it is an uncommonly capably-voiced, authentically Italianate one.

A native of Denver, Colorado, soprano Lucille Udovich (1930 – 1999) is now little remembered despite having enjoyed an estimable career, especially in Italy, where, among other portrayals, she was particularly admired for a fiery, luminously-sung Turandot in a television film that partnered her with Franco Corelli’s Calàf. Vocally and temperamentally, there are similarities among Udovich’s Gioconda and those of her fellow American expatriate Anna de Cavalieri and Zinka Milanov, whose Croatian heritage she shared. Udovich’s effort at the famous floated top B♭ in Act One is not the sound of rapturous beauty that Milanov’s almost always was, but Udovich reaches Gioconda’s highest notes with considerably less struggle than many sopranos have managed. She easily dominates Act One, as any Gioconda should do but few achieve without coming to grief. In both the duet and trio in Act Two, Udovich sings with raw emotion without wholly sacrificing tonal allure. Her account of ‘O madre mia, nell’isola fatale’ in Act Three is one of the most effective on disc, the directness of the sentiment delivered unaffectedly. Udovich’s performance of Gioconda’s pivotal scene in Act Four, ‘Suicidio! in questi fieri momenti,’ is grand but deeply personal—and sung with sweep and sincerity that recall the Giocondas of Giannina Arangi-Lombardi and Maria Callas. As Udovich sings them, ‘A te questo rosario’ and ‘Ora posso morir’ are as moving as ‘Suicidio.’ The final confrontation with Barnaba is sung with abandon, Udovich matching Protti’s vocal and dramatic largesse. Udovich is the centerpiece of a Gioconda that satisfies as almost none has in recent years, one in which Ponchielli’s music is genuinely, meaningfully sung and efficiently conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario.

Though the recorded sound quality is inferior to that of the Gioconda performance, Act One from a 1958 Teatro Colón performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly offers tantalizing introductions to the Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton of Antonietta Stella and Labò, rôles that they did not record commercially, as well as the Sharpless of Giuseppe Taddei. Though both better-known during her career and more remembered now, Stella was, like Udovich, an underrated singer. Her misfortune was being a very good Cio-Cio San in the era of Callas’s and Renata Scotto’s great interpretations of the part. In the selections provided by Walhall, Stella, Labò, and Taddei sing well and audibly interact with one another not as singers collecting paychecks but as artists bringing characters to life. Most importantly, these are people for whom Puccini’s musical language is a native tongue. How many performances of Madama Butterfly anywhere in the world in the years since 1958 have featured Italians in all three of the lead rôles?

Italian singers in their natural habitat is also a prime attraction of the second of these Walhall releases. Conducted with red-blooded Romanticism by its leading lady’s one-time paramour Arturo Basile, the RAI Roma La fanciulla del West is an exhilarating performance that is redolent of the stage despite its made-for-broadcast provenance. With native sons Piero de Palma as Nick, Carlo Cava as Ashby, and Mario Borriello as Sonora [a biography on the NAXOS website states that Borriello was actually born in Vienna, but Italian sources are unanimous in citing Brindisi as his natal city] among the near-ideal supporting cast, there is a robust showing by the RAI ‘home team.’ Especially noteworthy is Silvio Maionica’s galvanizing performance of Jake Wallace’s ‘Che faranno i vecchi miei.’ The action may be set in California, but only in Italy do minstrels sing so beautifully.

Few baritones past or present have brought greater vocal amplitude to the dastardly sheriff Jack Rance’s music than Giangiacomo Guelfi (1924 – 2012). A great bear of a man with a voice to match, Guelfi is wholly in his element as Rance, but his singing in this performance is not all barking and blustering. In Act One, there is a surprising rush of tenderness in his voicing of ‘Ti voglio bene, Minnie,’ and his phrasing of ‘Minnie, dalla mia casa son partito’ exudes feelings deeper than carnal desire. Guelfi’s vocal acting in the life-or-death poker game in Act Two raises the stakes of the whole performance. The bitterness of this Rance’s acceptance of Minnie’s choice of Johnson in Act Three is that of a man who realizes that his only chance at true happiness is exiting his life on the arm of another man. Guelfi is too little represented on recordings, but this performance is a wonderful document of his artistry.

Daniele Barioni’s (born 1930) platinum-bright tenor was, in terms of sheer vocal heft, small for Johnson, but he sings the rôle so well that, particularly in the context of a broadcast performance, this is insignificant. In Act One, the open-hearted—and open-throated—immediacy with which Barioni sings ‘Chi c’è per farmi i ricci?’ and ‘Vi ricordate di me?’ is engaging, but the ardor that emanates from his accounts of ‘Amai la vita, e l’amo’ and ‘Oh, non temete, nessuno ardirà!’ is profoundly touching. Barioni soars to the heights of ‘Un bacio, un bacio almeno!’ and ‘Or son sei mesi’ in Act Two with spirit befitting a bandito in love, and he pours his soul into ‘Non chiudete la porta.’ Johnson’s Act Three aria ‘Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano’ is one of Puccini’s finest inspirations, and Barioni sings it splendidly, focusing on the lyricism that courses through the music rather than brute strength. Barioni is a Johnson whose reform seems complete, and his portrayal is so free from artifice that it is possible to believe that, for the duration of this performance, it is Johnson’s heart that beats in Barioni’s chest.

Minnie is a rôle in which the inimitable Renata Tebaldi (1922 – 2004) shone. After Mimì’s delicate embroidered flowers and Cio-Cio San’s shimmering silks were no longer good fits for her, Tebaldi remained relatively comfortable with Minnie’s Bible and six-shooter. The challenges of Act One are here met with charm and sass, this Minnie’s ‘Dove eravamo? ... Ruth...Ezechiel‘ being more than just a Sunday School reading lesson. Tebaldi phrases ‘Laggiù nel Soledad, ero piccina’ with the spirit of a true verista, and she rises fearlessly to the top C: the note does not come easily, but it comes, and the soprano’s connection with the character is compelling. She articulates ‘Oh, Mister Johnson, siete rimasto’ with the winsome innocence of the first pangs of love. The simplicity with which she voices ‘Io non son che una povera fanciulla’ in the love duet conveys a panoply of feelings, the most gripping of which is burgeoning love that seems to frighten and gladden Minnie in equal measures. Tebaldi infiltrates the core of her character’s apprehension in Act Two, her voice gleaming in ‘Buona sera!’ and drenched with uncertainty in ‘Oh, se sapeste.’ Any listener who doubts the psychological depth of Tebaldi’s artistry should carefully study her singing of ‘Che c’è di nuovo, Jack?’ and ‘Siete pronto?’ in this performance: here, in the context of an unstaged broadcast performance, is as sagacious a portrait of the steadfast Minnie as has ever been recorded. In Act Three, Tebaldi sings with an imperturbable sense of purpose, uniting dramatic sensitivity with vocal opulence in her voicing of ‘E anche tu lo vorrai.’ From start to finish, this is a delightfully authentic Fanciulla del West, rough around the edges as its subject allows it to be, but at its center is a magnificent wild rose of the Sierra Madres in the person of Renata Tebaldi’s Minnie.

How nice to hear you both again, old friends; and sounding so well!

RICCARDO ZANDONAI (1883 – 1944): Francesca da Rimini, Opus 4—Christina Vasileva (Francesca), Martin Mühle (Paolo il bello), Juan Orozco (Gianciotto), Adriano Graziani (Malatestino), Kim-Lillian Strebel (Garsenda), Bénédicte Tauran (Biancofiore), Sally Watson (Adonella), Marija Joković (Altichiara), Viktória Mester (Samaritana, Smaragdi), Levente Molnár (Torrigiano, Ostasio), Aaron Judisch (Ser Toldo), Alejandro Lárraga Schleske (Fahrender Sänger), Se Hun Jin (Schütze, Gefangener); Freiburger Kammerchor, Opern- und Extrachor des Theater Freiburg, Vokalensemble der Hochschule für Musik Freiburg; Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg; Fabrice Bollon [Recorded in conjunction with concert performances in Rolf Böhme Saal, Konzerthaus Freiburg, Germany, 18 – 23 July 2013; cpo 777 960-2; 2 CDs, 133:26; Available from ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

It may come as a surprise to many listeners in the Twenty-First Century that, when Giacomo Puccini died in 1924 without finishing his epic swansong Turandot, the composer’s son Antonio ultimately ignored his wish, seconded by Arturo Toscanini, that completion of the score be entrusted to Riccardo Zandonai, perhaps because it was feared that Zandonai’s fame imperiled full appreciation of the genius of the score as Puccini left it. Since the 1911 première of his Conchita with his eventual wife, soprano Tarquinia Tarquini, in the title rôle, Zandonai had been esteemed as one of Italy’s finest composers of opera. As trends in European music in the years between and after the World Wars migrated away from the nutrient-rich feeding grounds of late-Romantic tonalism of the kind espoused by Zandonai, however, the composer’s fame quickly faded, especially after his death following gallstone surgery in 1944. When the Dante-inspired Francesca da Rimini was first brought to life on the stage of the Teatro Regio di Torino in 1914, though, Zandonai’s talent shone brightly in the Italian firmament. Recorded in Rolf Böhme Saal of Konzerthaus Freiburg in 2013, cpo’s new recording of Francesca da Rimini unapologetically luxuriates in the white-hot melodrama of Zandonai’s chameleonic score—a bit too much so, in fact, resulting in the sound becoming muddied in passages of greatest cacophony. As in cpo’s excellent recording of Cilèa’s L’arlesiana [reviewed here], conductor Fabrice Bollon and Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg evince an entrancingly sympathetic absorption of Zandonai’s unique style. Bollon conducts Francesca da Rimini as idiomatically as Toscanini or Serafin might have done, ignoring none of the score’s violence in favor of lyrical effusions: his galvaning leadership of the opera’s bellicose second act would distinguish a performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra. Respectively trained by Lukas Grimm and Bernhard Moncado, the Freiburger Kammerchor and Opern- und Extrachor des Theater Freiburg are joined by the young singers of Vokalensemble der Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and all of the choristers respond to Bollon’s sword’s-edge guidance of the performance by offering commendably euphonious, dramatically exciting singing whether representing ladies of the Polentani court or much-harangued crossbowmen in the service of the Malatesti. [An added pleasure of this recording of Francesca da Rimini is confirmation in the accompanying booklet that Bollon and the Freiburgers will be heard again on cpo in Spring 2016 in a recording of Karl Goldmark's seldom-performed 1875 opera Die Königin von Saba.] Mastery of Zandonai's music is no small accomplishment, and there indeed is nothing ‘small’ about the level of accomplishment on this very welcome recording of Francesca da Rimini. How a Zandonai ending for Turandot might have sounded must remain a mystery, but how bewitching his mysterious, ferociously amorous Francesca sounds!

It is a testament to the fact that Freiburg is still home to one of the world's few genuine companies of singers that this recording of Francesca da Rimini can boast of an ensemble of singers eminently capable of singing their rôles. As Biancofiore, Adonella, and Altichiara, Francesca's companions, soprano Bénédicte Tauran and mezzo-sopranos Sally Wilson and Marija Joković are uniformly impressive, combining keen dramatic instincts with fresh, accurately-pitched vocalism. Tenor Se Hun Jin excels as both the Balestriere and as the voice of Montagna, the prisoner tortured and executed by the bloodthirsty Malatesti in Act Four.

Born in Transylvania and raised in Hungary, baritone Levente Molnár is a product of the combined traditions that produced great baritones like Nicolae Herlea and György Melis. Singing Ostasio in Act One, Molnár reveals a voice with the potential to fulfill the promise of the legacies of his lauded predecessors. He voices ‘Che fai qui, manigoldo?’ with youthful exuberance, and the firm core of the voice is exceptionally valuable in his singing of ‘Questi giullari et uomini di corte.’ Molnár is no less effective as the Torrigiano in Act Two, his interactions with Francesca sung with easy command of the range and laudable attention to detail. Young tenor Aaron Judisch, an Iowan with studies with Mignon Dunn, Sherrill Milnes, and William Warfield to his credit, is similarly convincing as Ser Toldo, delivering ‘Voi dovete pur sapere’ in Act One with bright tone and leading-man flair. Swiss-reared soprano Kim-Lillian Strebel matches her colleagues’ achievements with her depiction of Garsenda, particularly in her urgent voicing of ‘Viene! Viene! Madonna Francesca, ecco che viene dalla parte del giardine’ in Act One.

A native of Veracruz, Mexico, baritone Alejandro Lárraga Schleske sings splendidly as il Giullare, the traveling minstrel who regales the Polentani household with tales of legendary lovers. The singer’s voice rings with boyish wonder in ‘So le storie di tutti i cavalieri,’ his delight in telling his stories as great as the assembled ladies’ joy in hearing them. Who would not relish such comely, clarion sounds emanating from his own throat? Lárraga Schleske phrases ‘Come Morgana manda al re Artù’ with the enthusiasm of the consummate storyteller, eager to hear the next development in his scenario. Those who hear Lárraga Schleske’s stories within the context of the opera clearly hang on his every word; so do ears that hear them flowing from the recording.

From a post-Freudian perspective, the decadent language of Tito Ricordi’s libretto introduces a suggestion that Samaritana’s attachment to her sister Francesca is unnaturally close. Theirs is the language of lovers, not sisters, and when Samaritana’s music is sung as passionately as Hungarian mezzo-soprano Viktória Mester sings it in this performance there is an unnerving eroticism in the sisters’ encounters. Typified by her dramatically panicked but vocally poised ‘Francesca, dove andrai?’ in Act One, Mester is a Samaritana of unshakable devotion, the tessitura managed with panache except in a few passages that take the singer beyond the parameters of her vocal comfort zone. Even when under stress, the tone remains ingratiating, however. A further psychological dimension is injected into the performance by having Mester also sing the rôle of the Schiava in Act Three—an emotional slave to her sister before Francesca's marriage and later a physical manifestation of that self-imposed servitude, perhaps. The Schiava’s music is not as demanding as Samaritana’s, and Mester sings it with absolute assurance.

Italian tenor Adriano Graziani deploys a lean, pointed timbre in Zandonai’s difficult music for the duplicitous Malatestino. It is a credit to the singer’s portrayal of the character that one quickly wishes that Francesca had been right when she thought that his battle wounds were fatal. The character’s reptilian creepiness oozes from Graziani's singing of ‘Fuggirà, fuggirà’ in Act Two, but it is in Act Four that Malatestino fully reveals his loathsome agenda. The insinuation of the tenor’s voicing of ‘Tu m’aizzi. Il pensiero di te m’aizzi l’animo, continuamente’ is appropriately repulsive, all the more so because the actual vocalism is appealing. The despicable conniver Graziani creates explodes with fury in ‘Tradimento! Io credea, mia cognata, che tal parola ardesse le vostre labbra,’ leaving no doubt that there are no depths of evil to which he will not descend in order to satiate his carnal appetite. ‘È se il fratello vede che taluno’ is intoned with venomous arrogance, crowning a performance in which Graziani displays his fluency in the language of operatic villains. After all, those miscreants who are most dangerous—Tancredi Pasero’s Ramfis, Giuseppe Taddei’s Scarpia, José van Dam’s Golaud, and now Adriano Graziani’s Malatestino—are those who wreak havoc most mellifluously.

The treacherous Gianciotto is a figure whose character, like that of Verdi’s Rigoletto, is shaped by psychological manifestations of physiological deformities. Were the man conjured by Ricordi and Zandonai not so sickeningly smug in his malfeasance, it might be possible to pity a man compelled to resort to fraud in order to win the love of his betrothed. Hailing from Hidalgo, Mexico, baritone Juan Orozco lends Gianciotto a suggestion of rough-hewn dignity, but the growling menace of his performance—a faithful reading of the part, that is—annihilates any redeeming qualities. From his first appearance in Act Two, Orozco is a snarling but musical force in the drama. His singing of ‘Per Dio, gente poltrona, razzaccia sgherra’ exudes enmity, but the actual vocalism is not as solid as the baritone’s acting. Gianciotto’s emphatic music demands of Orozco a level of intensity that undermines the voice’s focus. Still, Orozco’s tonal unsteadiness neither effects his intonation nor detracts from the startling potency of his characterization. The pinnacle of his performance is his virulent ‘Mia cara donna, voi m‘attendevate?’ in Act Four. The slight problems with his singing in this performance notwithstanding, Orozco’s is a voice of excellent quality, and he is a Gianciotto whose savagery seems as intrinsic as his malformed physique.

Here singing Paolo with unrelenting energy and an attractive if not conventionally beautiful voice, consistent in support and projection throughout the range, tenor Martin Mühle would be a wonderful asset in performances of many operas of vintages similar to Francesca da Rimini. His timbre as recorded is sometimes reminiscent of that of the under-appreciated Gianfranco Cecchele, and though he is a product of Brazil and Germany Mühle’s singing is convincingly Italianate. Throughout Act Two, the tenor’s singing is a marvel of power and security, his intonation sure to the top of his range. Top notes ring out thrillingly, and Mühle emotes unabashedly in his fervently-sung ‘Onta et orrore sopra di me!’ In Act Three, his singing of ‘Inghirlandata di violette m’appariste ieri’ and ‘Nemica ebbi la luce’ generates sparks that ignite the smoldering ardor between him and Francesca, culminating in their fateful kiss. Mühle completes his searing portrait of a tragic hero in Act Four with performances of ‘O mia vita, non fu mai tanto folle’ and ‘Ti trarrò, ti trarrò dov’ è l’obblio’ that radiate sensuality and sybaritic tension. Mühle’s phrasing is occasionally slightly pedestrian, but his singing is never routine. Like Mario del Monaco and Plácido Domingo in celebrated performances from the past, Mühle is a Paolo whose magnetism would attract any Francesca.

Bulgarian soprano Christina Vasileva is in some ways a frustrating Francesca. There are sufficient beauty and natural quality in the voice to elevate expectations for her portrayal of the ill-fated heroine to great heights, and she meets these expectations to an extent that makes shortcomings more disturbing than they would seem in the context of the work of a less-qualified singer. It was Frances Alda who introduced Metropolitan Opera audiences to Francesca in the opera’s United States première in 1916, and the forty-three performances staged in the years between 1916 and 2013, when Francesca da Rimini was last heard at the MET, have featured singing actresses of the caliber of Renata Scotto and Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title rôle. On disc, Vasileva’s foremost rivals are Maria Caniglia, Leyla Gencer, Magda Olivero, and Raina Kabaivanska. The soprano comes so near to reaching these ladies’ plane of achievement in the part that it is easy to focus on her few weaknesses rather than her many strengths. In Act One, Vasileva phrases ‘Pace, amica cara, piccola colomba’ with affection that seems almost incestuous, and she credibly depicts a bashful young girl awakening to love throughout the act. The increased maturity that she conveys in Act Two is vital to the drama, her guardedly inquisitive ‘Ah! dove siamo noi?’ evocative of the inner torment that she strives to conceal. Vasileva’s resolute proclamation of ‘Questo cimento è il guidizio di Dio per la saetta’ contrasts cogently with her volcanic utterance of ‘Paolo! Paolo! Che mai è questo, o Dio?’ The air of alarm that she raises in ‘Sciagura! Non vedete? Non vedete Malatestino’ hints at a benevolent nature that has not been entirely corrupted by the mistreatment to which she has been subjected. Vasileva’s reading of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere in the extended duet with Paolo in Act Three surges with innuendo, her voicing of ‘E Galeotto dice: „Dama, abbiatene Pieta”’ simmering with personal implications. The exhaustion of a woman who has resisted her own heart’s desires for far too long resounds in her exclamation of ‘Paolo, datemi pace!’ Francesca’s histrionic journey reaches its tragic terminus in Act Four, the inexorable course of her love for the man she erroneously believed to be her husband leading to Gianciotto’s brutal vengeance for the betrayal begotten by his own deception. Vasileva sings ‘Perchè tanto sei strano?’ with keen sensitivity, seeming to sense like Verdi’s Desdemona that her path leads only to death. The ambiguities of her accounts of ‘Via, perchè pensate a quel che dissi leggermente?’ and ‘O Biancofiore, piccola tu sei!’ are evidence of a mind already preoccupied with inevitable destiny, but Vasileva detonates a ‘Perdonami, perdonami!’ that is like a slap to the face of her husband. Whatever awaits her in the pages of Dante’s Inferno, death is for this Francesca a kind of freedom, a release from the oppression of convention that enables her to be united with her true love, even if only in hell. It is at least a hell different from that in which she has languished in life. Vasileva’s upper register is strange. The lower reaches of the voice are voluptuous and smoothly-produced, but the highest notes are often wiry though true of pitch. The vibrato on high is markedly different, too: it sometimes seems as though the top notes are being produced by an altogether different voice. Even so, it is difficult to imagine a more involved and expressive Francesca among the handful of today’s singers with the appropriate voix du rôle.

Seventy-one years after the composer’s death, the operas of Riccardo Zandonai still sit on the sidelines, waiting to be recalled to the field to demonstrate their ability to make big plays, but the obstacles that now prevent a score like Francesca da Rimini from reaching the end zone are failures of personnel, not musical deficiencies. When opportunities to perform Zandonai’s music are limited at best, which of today’s conscientious Toscas and Cavaradossis would subject their throats to the demands of Francesca and Paolo? This recording confirms that, when taken judiciously, the risks of performing Francesca da Rimini pay off. Fabrice Bollon, Christina Vasileva, and Martin Mühle are the Most Valuable Players of a team of musicians who score more than enough points to legitimize Zandonadi’s participation in the game.