NEW BEGINNINGS FOR MR. LIZ

Mr. Liz Bouk at Dixon Place

What an astonishing performer! Mr. Liz is on a courageous journey and his performances invite the audience to share in his journey. Yes, this beautiful person has chosen the label "transgendered" and has come out as a man, a very beautiful man, but a man just the same, preferring masculine pronouns, a request which we honor. We ourself do not like labels and prefer to experience him as a unique being with a striking mezzo-soprano voice and the ability to portray "breeches roles" with preternatural artistry.

To begin at the "old" beginning, Mr. Liz first came to our attention five years ago as Elizabeth Bouk, and we have reviewed him at least a half dozen times or more since then with Utopia Opera, dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, and Gramercy Opera. He has brought life to the brutally raped Lucretia, the abandoned Augusta Tabor, a witch in Macbeth, Count Almaviva's latest conquest, and Strauss' Komponist. If you put "Elizabeth Bouk" in the search bar, you can read these archived reviews. Some of those roles were revived last night in his new show, but we are getting ahead of ourself.

Having come out as a man, our first hearing of Mr. Liz was two months ago in a show you can read about if you insert "Liz Bouk" in the search bar. That will detail his life story in detail. Last night he was very open about the decision to avoid hormonal or surgical intervention. Preservation of his voice is the most important issue and with that we can heartily agree.

Still, what is more important than the vocal quality is the ability to connect with the audience and to convey the important message that we are each entitled to express ourselves in a way that is authentic and honest. Our culture fortunately allows us this freedom and we have the choice to take advantage of this freedom.

Mr. Liz' expressiveness is so colorful and varied that we have had the very devil of a time paring down a hundred photos we took to the ten we can post on Facebook. We refer you to our FB page Voce di Meche to see the ten we ultimately selected.

Curating songs for the show must have been a great deal of fun. Mr. Liz was able to revisit many of the arias we enjoyed before. The show opened with a clever and funny song by Zina Goldrich called "The Alto's Lament" in which a mezzo-soprano expresses her boredom with the line she is given to sing.

Then we heard the aria from Douglas Moore's Ballad of Baby Doe in which Augusta Tabor receives a loving letter and a pair of gloves from her husband Horace--and learns that they were meant for his mistress.

Later, he sang "Warm as the Autumn Light", Horace's baritone aria from the same opera. Who else beside Mr. Liz could have performed both roles with beauty and meaning and with not a hint of irony!

As Octavian, he sang "Wie du wärst" from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, a role in which we had not heard him. Any opera company would do well to snap him up, for the beautiful tone and the convincing presentation.

From Felix Jarrar's Tabula Rasa, we heard Bea Goodwin's smartly written aria about Dada for the character Tristan Tzara and Hannah's aria "Three Words" from As One, written by Laura Kaminsky, libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. That opera is about the converse conversion--a male to female transgendered person trying to find her identity.

"Somewhere" from Bernstein's West Side Story is a plea for finding a place where one feels safe and fulfilled. We venture to offer that Mr. Liz is well on his way to such a place.

The closing number was upbeat and fun--"I'm a Stranger Here Myself" from Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus. Can we find ourselves strangers in strange places and yet find that "somewhere". We think so!

Excellent piano accompaniment was provided by Kathryn Olander who played for the last show as well.  A fine team they are!

(c) meche kroop

A POLISHED PERFORMANCE

Julia Bullock (photo by Christian Steiner)

What a pleasure to see a lovely young woman step onstage and hold the audience fast for two hours.  Soprano Julia Bullock was a budding star the first time we heard her and now she has blossomed into an artist of great stage presence and in full command of her prodigious assets.  With communication this involving, we do not even notice the flawless technique, just the connection with the material and with the audience.  Young Concert Artists could not have chosen better.  Collaborative pianist Renate Rohlfing was also a fine choice, switching styles as readily as Ms. Bullock.

Let us begin at the end when Ms. Bullock brought the audience to their collective feet with her well chosen encore, "Somewhere" from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim).  The moving but non-histrionic delivery confirmed our impression that the work is truly an opera.  There was not a hint of distasteful cross-over compromises.

The entire second half of the program put Ms. Bullock's interpretive gifts to use.  Her hommage to Josephine Baker was charming, sassy and life-affirming.  The two women both originated in St. Louis; one couldn't help thinking how times have changed in our lifetime.  Ms. Baker had fled American prejudice to find fame and adulation in Paris whereas Ms. Bullock can enjoy fame and adulation right here in New York.

The songs were arranged by Jeremy Siskind.  We especially enjoyed the sensual "Madiana" by Mairiotte Almaby, Vincent Scotto's gorgeous melodic line in "J'ai deux amours" and the funny/sad lyrics of Léo Lelièvre's "Si j'étais blanche".  Mr. Siskind also arranged three further songs.  Oscar Brown, Jr.'s "Brown Baby", Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Feels to be Free" and Harry T. Burleigh's "Little David".  All were delivered with deep feeling and appropriate simplicity.

Three selections from Xavier Montsalvatge's Cinco canciones negras served to make us want to hear the other two!  The menace present in "Chévere" was well limned as was the underlying pain in the tender lullaby "Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito", with the rumbling bass of Renate Rohlfing's piano conveying the troubled emotions of the mother.

We wish we had had the same pleasure from the first half of the program.  Ms. Bullock was courageous in choosing some very difficult and grim material which she sang with deep conviction; it was just not our taste.  To begin the evening, three songs by Luciano Berio were sung, interleaved with two very brief songs by Rossini from his post-opera writing period.  There must have been a point to this alternation which we did not grasp; we only knew we preferred the Rossini by a long shot.

Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence David Hertzberg, inspired by Ms. Bullock, wrote a piece which was premiered last night entitled Ablutions of Oblivion.  Ms. Bullock negotiated the wide leaps of register with ease and showed admirable word coloring in the plentiful descriptions of wind and leaves and bare places in Wallace Stevens' poetry.  The text was supposed to "express dichotomous states of sensory oblivion".  What???  Were it not for Ms. Bullock's fine delivery we would have longed for some sensory oblivion for ourselves.

We could not find anything to like about selections from Olivier Messiaen's works and would be happy never to hear them again.  That being said, there was nothing disappointing about Ms. Bullock's impassioned performance and fine French.  She clearly connected with every song on the program and we were only sorry that we lacked appreciation.  She could sing the phone book and hold our attention.  We kept thinking "Loved the singer, hated the song".

© meche kroop