THE STARS AT NIGHT ARE BIG AND BRIGHT....

What a lineup at the Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala!    
(photo by Dario Acosta)

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. Sunday night's recital was not just an opportunity to hear some of the greatest voices onstage today; it was also a celebration of the foundation's work in supporting young American opera singers with awards, grants and performance opportunities at every stage of their careers. As if this were not enough to perpetuate the legacy of Richard Tucker, the foundation also offers free performances in New York City and supports music education enrichment programs.

The biggest prize, the Richard Tucker Award, went this year to the glorious and glamorous mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton who gives us goose bumps every time we hear her. The best part is that this glorious instrument belongs to a completely likable and unaffected young woman who exudes Southern charm from every pore.

Anyone interested in acquiring stage presence should observe Ms. Barton as she strides onto the stage knowing that she is her own woman and in full confidence of what she has to offer.  And offer she did!  In fine French she bid farewell to Carthage in Queen Dido's aria "Je vais mourir...Adieu, fière cité" from Berlioz' Les Troyens.  She knew exactly when to give forth and when to pull back, milking the aria for every ounce of pathos. She floated a top note so effectively it seemed to evaporate.

Her delivery of "Acerba voluttà", the Principessa's aria from Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, revealed the luscious texture of her voice when confronted with soaring Italian melody. Phrasing and dynamics lent even more interest.

The other famous aria from this opera belonging to the titular character "Io son l'umile ancella" was given a touching performance by the glorious soprano Renée Fleming whose career was launched by a Richard Tucker grant 25 years ago.  To hear a glamorous star sing of humility in such a convincing fashion was evidence of her incomparable artistry.

She also contributed two lovely duets.  The first had her singing Marguerite to Piotr Beczala's Faust in "Il se fait tard" from the Gounod opera of the same name. Their voices balanced beautifully. We were not so enthusiastic about the second pairing when she sang Mimi to Andrea Bocelli's Rodolfo; she did fine but Mr. Bocelli's slender tenor was no match for her vocally. We could barely hear him. This was an impoverished Bohème leaving us as cold as Mimi's hands.

Perhaps he was invited to participate because he is famous with the general public but it seemed somewhat unfortunate to me that he was put on stage with all these great voices. In his solo, "M'appari tutt' amor" from Friedrich Flotow's Martha, one strained to hear him; this was also the case in his duets with any of the other singers.  No matter!  The audience loved him.

Soprano Nadine Sierra, who has won career and study grants, has been achieving phenomenal success recently and deserves it. Although she did not perform a solo, we greatly enjoyed her duets. She sang Juliette to Stephen Costello's Roméo in Gounod's "Va! Je t'ai pardonée" and the two of them had such incredible chemistry that we forgot it was a recital. We have already lined up tickets to Mr. Costello's performance of this role in Santa Fe next summer!

Mr. Costello's solo "E la storia solita del pastore" from Francesco Cilea's L'Arlesiana revealed a fineness of tone and depth of feeling. The night we went to hear Mr. Costello as Percy in Anna Bolena (we had enjoyed his performance so much a couple years earlier) he was out sick but this performance made up for it. He won his award in 2009, after getting a career grant two years earlier. The foundation really does nurture it's grantees.

Christine Goerke has a soprano that shakes the walls. If there had been a set we could have said that she chewed up the scenery when she sang Princess Eboli's aria "O don fatale" from Verdi's Don Carlo.  It was an electrifying performance, giving different colors to each of the three sections, creating a complex character. Ms. Goerke always knows her characters and brings them to vivid life. Although we love Mozart and bel canto, we are glad that this amazing artist is finally achieving her true purpose onstage. She won the Richard Tucker Award in 2001. Perhaps they saw her potential before anyone else did.

Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard is a star of the first quality who stood out since her days at Juilliard. Her award came in 2013 and we have never seen her give a performance that was less than brilliant. She performed "Nacqui all'affano...Non più mesta" from Rossini's La Cenerentola. With her brilliant bel canto technique and rich flexible instrument, she is the perfect Rossini heroine. The fireworks of her fioritura linger in the memory.

Coming onstage towards the end of the recital was Angela Gheorghiu who impressed with her performance of "In quelle trine morbide" from Puccini's Manon Lescaut and "Ebben! Ne andrò lontano" from Alfredo Catalani's La Wally. She stuck us as an old school diva with great command of the stage, the material, and the audience's attention.

We were happy to hear tenor Piotr Beczala because his communication with the audience was so far superior to that in his Zankel Hall recital two nights earlier. He knew his way around "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot and managed not to imitate anyone else. He exhibited the easy top notes that had sounded strained at the recital. He had some excellent choral assistance from the massive New York Choral Society who had opened the program so effectively with the well-chosen curtain raiser "Ohè! Ohè Presto" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee sang "Terra amica...Cara! deh attendimi" from Rossini's little known opera Zelmira. His voice was exposed by the light orchestration and proved to be pleasantly flexible. However, he tended to push his high notes rather than floating them.

We have saved the best for last.  Christine Goerke and Jamie Barton joined forces for the duet "E un anatèma" from Ponchielli's La gioconda. Two huge voices, perfectly matched, dukeing it out for romantic supremacy=major wow.

The evening closed with excerpts from the "Triumphal Scene" from Verdi's Aida. The New York Choral Society, under the direction of David Hayes, and members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by Maestro Eugene Kohn, were joined by all the singers onstage. Trios of trumpets blared from the second ring of the newly renamed David Geffen Hall, creating a Surround Sound effect that was thrilling, drawing the evening to a sensational close.

(c) meche kroop

BECZALA AND KATZ AT ZANKEL HALL

Piotr Beczala (photo by Johannes Ifkovits)

He dazzled us as Vaudémont in Tchaikovsky's Iolante at the Metropolitan Opera last season and he seemed to dazzle the audience last night at Zankel Hall in his New York recital debut. Sadly, we were not dazzled. There is a great difference between opera and art song. One of the cardinal rules of a song recital is engaging the audience. There are no sets and costumes to help the singer along.

Although this marvelous tenor seemed very much connected to the songs he chose, he failed to connect very well with us and that may be attributed to his use of the music stand for the entire recital, even for the encore. Perhaps he was anxious or too busy to commit the works to memory, but we found the constant glancing down and turning of pages distracting; it left us feeling that we were witnessing a rehearsal, not a performance.

We have lost interest in song recitals held at Stern Auditorium because of the difficulty of achieving intimacy in such a large space; we decided to focus on the vocal series held at Zankel Hall and the even more intimate Weill Recital Hall. At a song recital, we are not at all interested in the fame of the singer; we want to feel what the composer felt when he set the text; we want to feel what the singer feels when he sings it.

That being said, the program was well chosen and we got to hear songs in Polish by a composer with whom we were unfamiliar. Mieczyslaw Karlowicz was a contemporary of Rachmaninoff and his work exhibits the same sort of lush melodic invention. They seemed to us like "popular" music (we mean that in the most positive way) in that they are incredibly accessible. One wants to sing along! But who but a Polish artist could negotiate those mouthfuls of consonants!

The poor composer died young and has yet to achieve great renown abroad. We hope Mr. Beczala's performance will change all that. We want to hear them again.  And yet again. They are romantic in nature and replete with the melancholy so extant in music from Poland, whose history has not been a cheerful one.

Dvorák's Gypsy Songs remain among our favorite song cycles and hearing them in Czech is a special thrill. We recently reviewed such a performance by Jamie Barton whose voice touched our heart and made our feet want to dance. Last night we had no such reaction.  Neither Mr. Beczala nor his collaborative pianist Martin Katz evoked the wild gypsy spirit which can embrace both joyful abandon and deep sorrow.

Sergei Rachmaninoff's songs are always a treat and we got to hear a quartet of them with "Sing not to me, beautiful maiden" (please forgive us for not giving you the Russian!) evoking the deep feeling of estrangement that we identify with "In der fremde" from Schumann's Liederkreis Op. 39. Once, we had this feeling listening to a Bhutanese folksong and inquired about the meaning; yes indeed, it was about a man separated from his family!

The first half of the program was the performance of Schumann's Dichterliebe, Op. 48, a loose chronicle of a love affair gone wrong, for unknown reasons. The songs have great variety of rhythm and dynamics and offer the singer an opportunity to express a variety of moods.

There is a beautiful moment of suspension between the tender opening song "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" and the following "Aus meinen Tränen spriessen". Mr. Beczala captured the rapturous excitement of "Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne" in which the words tumble out right on top of each other.

In terms of vocal production, Mr. Beczala sounded secure in the middle and lower registers but sounded strained in the upper register. His German diction was good enough to be understood but fell short of perfection.

We would like to share our observations about his collaborative pianist Martin Katz. Because we were feeling less than totally involved with the voice, we paid more attention to the piano. We have often experienced Mr. Katz as being heavy handed, having nearly drowned out baritone Jesse Blumberg when they performed Schubert's Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin.

Last night his touch was a bit lighter and we could appreciate just how fine a pianist he is. In the ponderous "Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome" he played the Bach-like chorale in a manner that evoked the cathedral in Köln. In "Und wüsten's die Blumen, die kleinen", his piano sang of the poet's agitation while Mr. Beczala sang the descending scale passages.

Similarly, he produced a haunting hurdy-gurdy sound in "Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen". In "Hör ich das Liedchen Klangen", the quiet song grew into grand grief. In "Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen", the piano goes for a false jolly sound while the vocal line expresses suffering. We also enjoyed the harplike arpeggios of "Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen" and "Die alten, bösen Lieder".

As encore, Mr. Beczala made an effort to connect with his American audience by singing the oft recorded "Bless This House", written in 1927 by May Brahe with lyrics by Helen Taylor. It seemed to us a strange choice but the audience seemed to appreciate it.

(c) meche kroop

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACKIE

Curtain call at Marilyn Horne's 80th Birthday Celebration

Whose birthday would we rather celebrate than Marilyn Horne's?  One of the dearest ladies to take the operatic stage, Ms. Horne celebrated her unbelievable 80th birthday onstage at Zankel Hall in a celebration anyone would envy.  Surrounded by adoring friends who contributed their voices to the evening's celebration onstage and witnessed by worshipful fans, she should have been installed in a royal box.  We felt thrilled to be in her presence and a bit sorry for the throngs outside begging for extra tickets.

The program for the evening was devised by Matthew Epstein, Martin Katz and Jeremy Geffen; it comprised songs and arias that Ms. Horne made famous, and some that she loves to hear--Baroque, Broadway and in between.  Carnegie Hall has been home to Ms. Horne's presence for over half a century and plays host to The Marilyn Horne Legacy.  Hosts for the evening were the delightful mezzo Frederica von Stade and "silver fox" bass-baritone Samuel Ramey who took turns reading from a script that attempted to summarize Ms. Horne's glorious life.  Collaborative pianists for the evening were the esteemed Warren Jones and Martin Katz.

Mezzo Jamie Barton impressed with her musicianship, her vocal colors and unique chocolate sound--rich and creamy in Mahler's "Urlicht" from Des Knabens Wunderhorn; later she melded her marvelous sound with that of countertenor David Daniels in "Son nata a lagrimar" from Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto.  Mr. Daniels also sang one of our very favorite baroque arias "O del mio dolce ardor" from Paride ed Elena.  He also sang one of Ms. Horne's favorite songs "Blackberry Winter" by Alec Wilder, demonstrating that popular songs can achieve the same status as operatic arias when sung beautifully and without straining for special effects.

Mezzo Isabel Leonard contributed the tender Montsalvatge lullaby "Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito" from Canciones Negras.  We always love to hear Ms. Leonard sing in Spanish; it always just sounds "right"!  That being said, we were delighted to hear her aria from Rossini's La Cenerentola, "Nacqui al'affanno--Non più mesta".  She fearlessly attacked the lavish fioritura  with pinpoint accuracy and consummate phrasing.  But, of course, we expected nothing less of her.

Two sopranos also made a fine showing--the lovely Brenda Rae whom we haven't heard since enjoying her Violetta in Santa Fe last summer and Renée Fleming who tore herself away from a rehearsal and performance at The Metropolitan Opera.  Ms. Rae sang the charming "Lied der Delphine" by Schubert with its riveting climax and later wowed the audience with "O beau pays de la Touraine" from Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.  Undaunted by the runs and skips and trills, it was a goosebump-making performance.

Ms. Fleming sang "Träume" from Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with its foreshadowing of his opera Tristan und Isolde.  Later she sang the charming duet "Lippen schweigen" from Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe with tenor Piotr Beczala as her romantic interest.  Mr. Beczala also sang Beethoven's passionate song "Adelaide" and made it plain why he is in such great demand onstage these days.

Baritone Lester Lynch sang the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" and "Zion's Walls" and also the wonderful and very sad Verdi aria "Eri tu" from Un ballo in maschera.

There were two unexpected treats on the program: Ms. von Stade and Mr. Ramey performed Lerner and Loewe's "I Remember It Well" from Gigi.  These two veterans injected new life into the delightful duet.  To bring the evening to a rousing conclusion, the famed vocalist Barbara Cook ascended the stage with her accompanist Lee Musiker and sang Arthur Butler's "Here's to Life"; a more fitting tribute to the Birthday Girl could not be imagined.

The curtain call was a real love-fest with Ms. Horne embracing every single artist in turn.  To Ms. Horne we would like to say "Cent'anni"...can one imagine THAT celebration!!!!

©meche kroop

MARILYN HORNE SONG CELEBRATION

Marilyn Horne

Piotr Beczala

The week of song has drawn to a close and we are left with some pretty fabulous aural memories.  The final program, Marilyn Horne Song Celebration, gave us the opportunity to hear one wonderful singer from each fach, with the closing set provided by star tenor Piotr Beczala.

Tenor Timothy Fallon opened with Carol Wong as piano partner.  Mr. Fallon's sweet tenor opens up to passionate intensity at the drop of a crescendo.  We particularly enjoyed his ability to spin out some long phrases in the set of early songs by Richard Strauss. He certainly knows how to build a song as noted in his performance of Three Browning Songs by Amy Beach, a contemporary of Strauss.    Mr. Fallon has a relaxed and unfussy manner on stage and joked with the audience.   If only he could be persuaded to abandon his grip on the piano which limits his ability to relate to the audience.

Baritone Kelly Markgraf sang Five Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano by Charles Martin Loeffler, another contemporary of Strauss.  Mr. Markgraf's performance stood out because of his perfect French, to which his creamy tone lends itself well.  He was partnered by Keun-A Lee at the piano and Paul Neubauer on viola.  This unusual combination delighted the ear.  We loved the thirds on the viola in "Rêverie en sourdine" and the lovely triplets in the piano in "Harmonie du soir".

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, partnered by Christopher Cano, made an impression with her powerful voice and beautiful tone in Franz Liszt's deeply felt "Pace non trovo".  Mr. Cano held the final cord just long enough in an exquisite diminuendo.  We also enjoyed the gentle eroticism of "Oh! quand je dors".

Soprano Simone Osborne, resplendent in white satin, used her brilliant instrument and used it with great variety as she essayed three very different Verdi songs--the tragic "La seduzione", the humorous "Stornello" and the suffering "Deh, pietoso".  We are always thrilled to see Warren Jones at the piano; his accompaniment well illustrated the connection between Verdi's songs and those of Rossini, when Ms. Osborne sang the latter's "L'esule".  Like Mr. Fallon, Ms. Osborne spends too much time hanging onto the piano but when she lets go and steps forward, her connection with the audience expands.

Mr. Beczala dazzled the audience with Strauss' "Zueignung", followed by Carl Bohm's "Still wie di nacht" and a number of Polish songs.  We were astonished by how beautifully the language "sings" in spite of the plethora of consonants.  Mr. Beczala manages to articulate the consonants while never cheating a vowel, something we attribute to his amazing embouchure.  What a delight to listen to him!  His piano partner Carrie Ann Matheson is always a pleasure to hear.

It is with a feeling of gratitude to all the artists who contributed to this splendid week of recitals and master classes that we finish this final column.  We thank Marilyn Horne for initiating this special week of song and we thank Carnegie Hall for providing the right home.

(c) meche kroop