MARILYN HORNE SONG COMPETITION WINNERS

Andrew Sun and Kelsey Lauritano at National Sawdust

GUEST REVIEW BY CULLEN GANDY:

The Music Academy of the West held its annual Marilyn Horne Song Competition winners recital tonight in Williamsburg.

MAW is one of the few companies for young opera talents that also heavily nurtures the craft of art song interpretation. Every year, during the glorious summer stint that each of the artists spend in Santa Barbara, the singers and collaborative pianists come together to perform and compete against one another.

The prize? A whirlwind, multi-city recital tour and $5000 toward the future development of the artists. As I can attest, such opportunity for exposure/financial assistance goes a long way for a musician who is transferring from apprenticeships into the world of professional artistry.

The setting at National Sawdust was cozy, but with a modern-art type of sensibility. It was a large enough space to feel more formal than a parlour evening, but intimate enough to have the music feel as though it reached out and touched you individually — But that could have just been the talent we had.

Kelsey Lauritano is a vocal empath. More than that, she is a conduit for the emotion of a song; she makes everyone else empathize with the characters in the music. The young mezzo-soprano has a supple voice, but it isn’t really just the one aspect that makes her performance stand out. It’s the whole package.

Her’s is the level of preparedness and easy technique that makes you forget about the singing. It actualizes and elevates the music and the poetry, and doesn’t boast in its depth and agility (though she has those qualities in spades).

It made me question what I thought I knew about my musical tastes. I never remembered much enjoying Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles before having heard it tonight. During the Ricky Ian Gordon debut Without Music, people were actively sobbing behind me; almost to the point of distraction. This is the kind of effect that Lauritano wove throughout the whole 90 minutes.

A fellow Juilliardie, this level of expression and attention to detail is likely baked into her artistic id. That program is exceptionally devoted to the advancement of art song, and features many singer/pianist duos in liederabend evenings; all throughout the year. The people who study there have access to some of the industry’s foremost authorities on diction and musical coaching. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend going and catching one of those, as they are free to the public.

At the piano, Andrew Sun‘s mastery of technique led me to forget just how difficult some of the music on offer really was. He was as adept at pulling out the lines of a strophic Schubertian melody, in "Du bist die Ruh' ", as he was at piloting the winding, harmonically denser passages of the Ravel and of the Gordon cycle. His playing, too, felt like it transcended showmanship or virtuosity; opting to get to the meat of the core emotion of the works at hand. It was as if he knew how to play the poetry that she was singing.

Another win, for me, was the pace and structure of the recital programming.

The duo initially eased the audience into the night with some more well-known Schubert pieces. This accomplished two things: 1) It gave the audience something pleasing to listen to, and fostered an enjoyable, comfortable beginning to a longer evening of song and 2) it introduced the animation of the presence and voice of the interpreters; reassuring the audience that they would be engaged through some of the more complex music.

Because of the acting, and its connection to the voice, I forgot to be critical. I became just a witness, wondering what would happen next.

There will be two more shows featuring the pair; one in Chicago (May 22nd) and another in Santa Barbara (May 24th). I definitely implore you guys, if you’re on-hand in the area, check this one out. You won’t regret it.

This review was done in cooperation with Voce di Meche.

PERFECT POLISH PARTNERSHIP

Michal Biel and Jakub Józef Orliński

We constantly attend enjoyable recitals; occasionally we hear outstanding ones; rarely, we hear one that grabs us in the heart--and that's what we experienced last night at the fine venue National Sawdust.  It made crossing the East River to Brooklyn seem like a walk across the street; on the way home we wanted to dance across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński and maître de chant Michal Biel both hail from Poland, have been honored and awarded multiple times, and can be appreciated as two very bright stars in the operatic firmament. We have reviewed them separately and together on multiple occasions. They always astonish us with their artistry but last night's recital was super special.

We are grateful to the Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and the financial support of HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) for offering this event.  The Académie has a 20-year history of supporting young artists; in 2017 they wisely chose Mr. Orliński as their HSBC Laureate.

Mr. Orliński has been blessed with a highly distinctive instrument that produces caressing tones which wrap around the heart. His overtones set the molecules of air in the room to dancing and the bones of the head to vibrating in a most agreeable manner. There is no straining at the bottom of the register, which allows him to tackle songs that would tax most of our fine countertenors.

The first set of songs (interrupted by applause after each and every one) comprised works by Henry Purcell, titan of 17th c. British opera. This was no dry harpsichordal performance! Our two artists arranged the songs with juicy Polish soul!

"Music for a While" was the perfect introduction.  "Shall all your cares beguile" is the perfect phrase to describe the subsequent performance. Purcell offers many opportunities for melismatic singing that took on the character of a vocalise. In "If music be the food of love" the word "music" was given some stunning embellishments and the word "love" achieved an intense and heartfelt coloration.

Mr. Biel was completely aligned with Mr. Orliński's intent and the staccato chords of "What power art thou" (from King Arthur) were mimicked by the voice. The music built in intensity and unease, achieving a feeling near horror.  "Strike the viol" was lively. The English was perfectly comprehended thanks to some excellent diction which is rarely heard from native American singers.

Reynaldo Hahn's music was composed around the turn of the 20th c. and thereafter but seems to look back toward earlier periods. Every one of his songs is a gem. "A Chloris" has a Baroque feel but "Mai" has a rather Romantic color. We loved the lavish piano figures in "Paysage".

"Fêtes galantes" is a frisky song with dramatic upward swoops, no challenge for Mr. Orliński. Rather, he sailed right through them and used the song to share his skill with dynamic control and his dynamic personality. Do we need to tell you that the Gallic requirements were more than met with superb diction?

We had expected to hear some Schubert but were mollified by the three sets of Polish songs. We rarely get to hear Polish songs except recently at a recital at the Kosciuszko Foundation; we were well compensated for the lack last night when we got to hear songs from three different periods.

We know Karol Szymanowski (early 20th c.) from his opera King Roger which we heard in Santa Fe.  Our pair of artists performed four of his songs which were written for soprano and transposed. There were no translations offered but Mr. Orliński gave us a brief précis of each song. This offered us the opportunity to focus our entire attention on the sounds and how well they fit the vocal line.

One song was about a lost love, another about a bird hiding from a storm, the third a lament by a girl relating her (badly) arranged marriage, and the final one about a girl collecting berries beset by an importunate man. These are all familiar themes and we might have guessed the mood without the details if Mr. Orliński had not introduced the songs. It was impressive how his vocal coloration, amplified by the harmonies written by Szymanowski as played by Mr. Biel, served to establish the different moods.

Tadeusz Baird wrote in the mid 20th c. and we heard Four Love Sonnets that were so much friendlier to the ear than American songs of that period. The second one began as a scherzo in the piano but evolved into a more serious mood. The third was tender and our guess is that the poet was extolling the beauty of his beloved. The fourth began with a ponderous piano that become solemn and then anguished.

The final song was composed by a living composer Paweł Lukaszewski.  "Jesień" went a long way toward overcoming our distaste for contemporary music. It was actually quite lovely and involved some improvisational piano. There was a searching melody sustained by the pedal and sounds came from Mr. Biel's piano that astonished us. Maybe it was "Michal Magic" but it sounded a bit like the cimbalom! The vocal line was jagged and involved some humming.

To cap the evening, our pair of artists performed a glorious work we have been listening to online quite a bit this week--"Vedró con mio diletto" by Vivaldi. The ritornello was particularly effective with sounds bouncing around the room like a ball in a squash court. We take it that this will now be Mr. Orliński's signature piece. What an incredible experience!

(c) meche kroop

LOVE TRIANGLE AT THE SAWDUST

Davone Tines, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Ambur Braid

We are accustomed to gender bending at National Sawdust (Heartbeat Opera's Mozart in Space) but we confess to being rather confused by this production.  Let's see if we can get this straight. The role of Aci (a man in the ancient myth which inspired the story in Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses), was sung by soprano Ambur Braid. The role of the (female) sea nymph Galatea was sung by counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. No wonder we were confused. There was no confusion about bass-baritone Davone Tines in the role of the monster Polifemo.

If Director Christopher Alden wanted to make a point about gender stereotypes, he did not succeed. The result in our case was to stop trying to figure out who was whom and to just relish the gorgeous Handelian melodies so well played by the Ruckus Ensemble and so well sung by the three artists.

Handel composed this one-act work in impressive Italianate style when he was but 23 years old in 1708. He would go on to compose another more famous version ten years later with an English language libretto. We are glad to have heard the Italian version in which the music and lyrics are as beautifully committed to one another as Galatea was to Aci.

The devotion was so strong that when the jealous Polifemo kills Aci,  Galatea transforms him (her?) into a stream. The musicians, including two theorbos (theorbi?), not only played music but created the most dazzling sound effects. We were not close enough to them to witness the method but the results astonished us. Or perhaps it was the sound design of Mark Grey.

The singing was sensational all around. We first heard Mr. Costanzo about 9 years ago at Manhattan School of Music, before we began writing about opera. He starred as the eponymous Griffelkin and we were totally taken with his startlingly beautiful instrument, the way he employed it, and his stage presence. We have written about him several times since then and his gifts have grown. The unique timbre of his voice ignites all kind of molecular vibrations in our head.

Soprano Ambur Braid is new to our ears but a welcome onstage presence with equivalent facility in her fach. We would be happy to hear her sing again. The timbre of her voice is brilliant and crystalline with great flexibility in the ornamentation.

Bass-baritone Davone Tines, on the other hand, is well known to us from Juilliard where we enjoyed his sturdy voice in numerous productions and particularly appreciated his operetta and zarzuela singing with Stephen Blier's New York Festival of Song. We recall that he also played the violin! What is impressive about his voice, beside the coloration, is the range. At the bottom of the register, the bass is rich and full but there is no shrinking when the tessitura is high.

All three singers provided variety to Handel's music by keen control of dynamics. There were times when the vocal line was spun out like a fine silken thread, causing us to hold our breath. So we would have to declare the evening 100% successful in its musical values.

As far as the production goes, we had difficulty relating to it. As it opened, Aci and Galatea were two janitors wearing what appeared to be surgical scrub suits. Costuming was by Terese Wadden. They were pushing brooms and polishing the back wall of the set (design by Paul Tate dePoo III) which was a projection of tiny squares with designs related to the sea--boats, fish, etc.  There was nothing else onstage but a large bathtub. Mark Grey is credited as sound and video designer.

If we failed to appreciate the perplexing concept of Mr. Alden, it did not spoil our pleasure in hearing three magnificent voices filling our ears with music.

(c) meche kroop

OUR HEART BEATS FOR HEARTBEAT OPERA

The cast of Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space

Our customary Halloween Party lost out to Heartbeat Opera; when Co-Artistic Directors Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske plan an event, it takes precedence over anything else we might be doing. We know of no other organization in NYC that has its finger on the pulse of opera-curious young people. It gives us great pleasure to hear a sell-out crowd of 20-somethings hootin' and hollerin' for opera.

How does Heartbeat Opera do this?  Somehow, without diluting the art form, they manage to expand it to include elements that appeal to the young. They choose casual venues (this time the wonderful performance space National Sawdust in trendy Billyburg).

They cast excellent young performers (sopranos Jamilyn Manning-White and Marie Marquis, mezzo-soprano Kristin Gornstein, tenor Jordan Weatherston Pitts, and baritone John Taylor Ward). They have a crew of talented designers (Jon Carter, Miodrag Guberinic, Reid Thompson, Oliver Wason, and Joey Moro). They have excellent Co-Music Directors (Jacob Ashworth and Daniel Schlosberg.

The singing is topnotch and Mozart's music was arranged for string quartet plus bass and keyboard-- which worked well in the wide shallow space with a wide shallow stage. The musicians were clustered at one side of the stage with the rest of the stage available for all manner of fun stagecraft. 

The concept was something about aliens in space with the robot being portrayed by the petite dancer/choreographer Emma Jaster. There was liberal use made of the language of space travel in the script--re-entry and lift-off, control panels and pods, aliens and robots. Costuming and make-up (by MAC) was extravagant and candy-colored wigs completed the colorful imagery. There was unlimited imagination and creativity in evidence.

We got fresh takes on many Mozart standards. If the genius were alive today we think he would have gotten a kick out of Papagena and Papageno discovering sex through touching elbows. He would have laughed out loud seeing Tamino in a dress and wig. He would have thrilled to the fantabulous costume of the dragon, portrayed by Taurean Everett.

But what would he have made of the dragon lip-syncing to Aretha Franklin's version of "Nessun dorma"? We were giggling inside imagining him saying something racy about "that Puccini fella".

Well, everything else was Mozart and if the Puccini got a huge hand, Ms. Manning-White's Queen of the Night garnered an even larger one. 

The event was a benefit and even the fund-raising effort was memorable. We watched a captivating performance that raised $2000 in less than 10 minutes! This young company (just over 2 years old) deserves our support. The future of opera lies with young people and they are drawn in by adventure, creativity, color, imagination, and vitality.  Heartbeat Opera has it all.

Bizet's Carmen and Puccini's Madama Butterfly will be re-invented by Heartbeat in May.  We will be there!  See you there!

(c) meche kroop