We entered the Park Avenue Armory windblown and rain soaked, but, like one of the many flowers celebrated in the program, we blossomed by means of the warmth and sunshine projected by superstar soprano Erin Morley and her collaborative pianist Gerald Martin Moore. We rarely review the very famous, and Ms. Morley is deservedly world famous; however, when we have written about singers at the beginning of their careers and followed those careers along, we take great pleasure in bearing witness to their artistic growth. We first wrote about Ms. Morley over a dozen years ago, and we wrote very enthusiastically. She has retained that youthful ingenue glow and now seems even more refined in technique.
At this point one can leave behind observations about the glimmering tonal quality, the ease with fioritura, and the highly engaging audience presence. One can focus on the building of a recital with a valid theme and the choice of material to support it. Given the intimacy of the Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory we were up close and personal with two luminaries of the opera world. We have special names for special stars. For example, Nadine Sierra will always be, for us, The Diva Next Door. Ms. Morley's tag became Le Rossignol after we heard her at The Santa Fe Opera in 2014 as Le Rossignol in the eponymous Stravinsky opera. If you would like to read many more reviews, Dear Reader, you can enter her name in the search bar on the right.
The theme of last night's program focused on the beauties of nature, predominantly flowers, birds, butterflies, and such. There were songs in German, Russian, French, and English, mainly from the 19th century with a commissioned piece by Ricky Ian Gordon representing the 21st century. It was truly a garden of riches.
Every concert, well almost every concert, has one piece that leaves us speechless and in this case it was Camille Saint-Saëns' "Le rossignol et la rose", which was new to us. It amounts to a vocalise in which the singer must represent an earnest nightingale courting a somewhat indifferent rose--at least that was our interpretation. Ms. Morley 's ardent nightingale performed every vocal trick in the bird book, importuning the rose to open, reflecting back to a Bizet song on the program "Ouvre ton coeur" which could be seen as a human counterpart to the vocalise. That just happened to be our second favorite piece on the program. We loved it for its powerful rhythm and melodic strength.
We loved the youthful passion with which Ms. Morley invested Brahms' "Meine Liebe ist grun" and the sweet gentleness of Schumann's "Der Nussbaum". Alexander von Zemlinsky's "Voglein Schwermut" brought in a note of haunting melancholy by means of vocal color and some Oriental arpeggios in the piano. Alban Berg's "Die Nachtigal" always fills us with a sense of mysterious anticipation and is the only Berg song we have ever liked.
There were some lovely songs in Russian as well. Rachmaninoff's "Lilacs" was performed with appropriate delicacy and Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Rose Enslaves the Nightingale" is a sad lament of heartbreak with an interesting Oriental flavor. Now, Dear Reader, if you are thinking that this work influenced our interpretation of the Saint-Saëns vocalise, you are probably right! Since the latter was written about 35 years before the former, it is possible that Rimsky-Korsakov was also influenced by the Saint-Saëns piece.
The evening opened with a few selections from a Ricky Ian Gordon cycle Huit Chansons de Fleurs , a commissioned work that Ms. Morley premiered last year at the Kennedy Center and subsequently recorded. The interesting background of its commissioning, if told before its performance, might have made us appreciate it more.
The second encore of the evening was Olympia's song from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman which can be considered Ms. Morley's signature piece. We never tire of her performance with its stunning fioritura and convincing bodily gestures. No one can equal her facility with coloratura; it is indeed one of the Seven Wonders of the Operatic World.
We might add that Gerald Martin Moore's sensitive partnership added greatly to the success of the evening as did Ms. Morley's warm engaging spirit. We walked out into the same wind and rain but it felt like sunshine.
© meche kroop
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