Vocal and Choral

Puccini – Tosca
Harteros; Antonenko; Tézier; Mastroni; Staatskapelle Dresden; Christian Thielemann
Cmajor 748308 (naxosdirect.com)

In addition to considering voices, now with video versions available, we may, and usually do, evaluate the sets and the general stage business. Sometimes the staging pleases, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it amuses. I remember a video of a CBC black and white production of the second act with Renata Tebaldi and Louis Quilico. It was credible until Tosca snatches an untapered, round-nosed kitchen knife to do the deed. It was patently obvious to all of us that this knife certainly was not made to penetrate anything. That was the part we each remembered.

This new production is different from all the others that I have seen in some significant ways, all without modifying or interfering with the existing texts, spoken or sung. But actions, it seems, speak louder than words! In the second act as the beautifully performed scene closes and Tosca has left the room, we see Scarpia, who should be lying dead, stir and drag himself across the floor. In the third act we see a group of teenage boys awakening and dressing and then, instead of a military firing squad, five of these blue-shirted boys shoot Cavaradossi with revolvers. More stage business and when Tosca would traditionally run and jump, the wounded, lurching Scarpia arrives with his men; Tosca shoots him and he, now dying, shoots her dead.  

The lead singers are perfectly matched. Soprano Anja Harteros is an impressive Tosca with her glorious voice and glowing characterization. She is matched in every respect by Aleksandrs Antonenko as Cavaradossi. Ludovic Tézier is suaver than the usual merciless Scarpia making him even more dangerous. Under Thielemann, the orchestra is right there supporting the singers and heightening the action. The costume and set designers for this 2018 Salzburg Easter Festival performance deserve a lot of credit for putting the cast in the right place. Kudos down the line for the other cast members of this self-recommending performance.

Rossini – Le Comte Ory
Talbot; Fuchs; Arquez; Hubeaux; Les éléments; Orchestre des Champs-Élysées; Louis Langrée
Cmajor 747408 (naxosdirect.com)

Rossini’s two-act Le Comte Ory was inspired by a medieval ballad in which knights end up seducing nuns. In the one-act version offered to Rossini by librettist Eugène Scribe, the knight dresses as a nun to seduce a countess. Rossini is known to have requested that another (first) act be added for which he composed delightful arias, ensembles and choruses, making his last comic opera an immense success.

In this version of the opera, Denis Podalydès’ staging combines period settings with contemporary mise-en-scène. The DVD of the staging, directed by Vincent Massip, captures the ambitious production with great clarity and dramatic effect. The cinematography is highly evocative; in keeping with Rossini’s vaunted arias which are voiced with uncommon mastery by – among others – the tenor Philippe Talbot, playing the rakish Le Comte Ory, soprano Julie Fuchs (as La Comtesse), mezzo-soprano Gaëlle Arquez (as the count’s page Isolier), Jean-Sébastian Bou (as Raimbaud, the count’s friend).

The lead singers generate a strong sense of ensemble with Talbot’s Le Comte and Fuchs’ La Comtesse making the most of their comic opportunities. It is Fuchs who charms with a heady coloratura, more honeyed tones and a dramatic weight, tempered by comic timing. The quality of the singing is matched in every way with the acting. The staging is enormously accomplished and the excellent production values show that nothing was spared in an effort to bring this elaborate production to fruition.

Renmen Laments
Renaissance Men; Eric Christopher Perry
Navona Records nv6210 (navonarecords.com) 

RenMen, short for the Renaissance Men, have teamed with Navona Records to release Renmen Laments, a beautiful reimagining of the music of such composers as Pablo Casals and Darius Milhaud, along with the ensemble’s continued relationship with the great contemporary American choral composer Daniel E. Gawthrop, that easily evokes an otherworldly ethereal beauty in celebration of the adult male voice. Beautifully recorded at the Westminster Presbyterian church in Buffalo, New York the ten-piece vocal group, formed in 2014, offers up another fine collection of music that demonstrates why they are a welcome addition to the already busy choral music scene in Boston, and a satisfying collection of new work for choral music fans worldwide.

On Laments, the group is authentically and expertly able to bring a Renaissance vocal approach and sensibility to the wide swath of music presented here, leaping countries of origin, historical timelines and style. Finding artistic simpatico with American composers Gawthrop and the fellow Massachusetts-based musician Patricia Van Ness, the Renmen have worked, and succeeded, at bringing what some may view as a historically antiquated music into cultural relevance for 21st-century audiences. With this victory, coupled with what I hope is the widespread dissemination power of a new record company and a busy calendar of public concert engagements in 2019, the group holds the promise to help Renaissance music have its own renaissance in the foreseeable future. Laments is a highly recommended recording for enthusiasts of vocal music, choral work and the Renaissance more generally.

Pauline García Viardot – Le Dernier Sorcier
Soloists; Manhattan Girls Chorus; Trudie Styler
Bridge Records 9515 (bridgerecords.com)

The French/Spanish mezzo-soprano, composer, and pedagogue Pauline García Viardot composed Le Dernier Sorcier (The Last Sorcerer) in collaboration with her partner, Russian novelist/librettist Ivan Turgenev. After its 1867 premiere, the original manuscript of this two-act chamber opera, scored for solo voices, treble chorus and piano, was held in a private collection until the Harvard University Houghton Library recently acquired it and allowed this world premiere recording.

The libretto tells the story of Krakamiche, (bass-baritone Eric Owens), a once powerful sorcerer who has fallen on hard times after upsetting the lives of the fairies, (sung brightly by the Manhattan Girls Chorus), who live in the forest. The love story is between his daughter Stella (soprano Camille Zamora) and the lovelorn Prince Lelio (mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala). Other characters round out the story. The great thing is that though sung in French (with liner notes both in French and English translation), actress Trudie Styler as the narrator recites in English between sung moments.

This entertaining, funny, toe-tapping, quasi-cliché opera merits dancing and singing along. The music is so very in the style of the operas of the day, with such classic sounds as alternating loud and soft volumes, piano accompaniment marching, waltz and lyrical lines, vocals soaring high and low. Pianist Myra Huang supports all the superb singers with clear playing.

Totally unexpected fun makes this a recording to lift one’s spirits!

George Benjamin – Lessons in Love and Violence
Stéphane Degout; Barbara Hannigan; Gyula Orendt; Peter Hoare; Samuel Boden; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; George Benjamin
Opus Arte OA 1221 D (naxosdirect.com)

It’s been four years since the Toronto Symphony gave an unforgettable concert performance of British composer George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin. It featured the dynamic Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, who subsequently premiered Benjamin’s gripping new opera, Lessons in Love and Violence in this production from the Royal Opera House two years ago.

Playwright Martin Crimp uses Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan play Edward II, along with historic records, to recount the messy downfall of the 14th-century British King, who ruled neither wisely nor well. Director Katie Mitchell pulls off some innovative moves to shape an exciting drama from Benjamin’s gorgeous, evocative music, Crimp’s poetic text and Vicki Mortimer’s stylish modern sets and costumes. The resourceful but unobtrusive camerawork from video director Margaret Williams ensures a sense of immediacy, especially in the use of imaginative overhead shots, soft focus, and close-ups.

As riveting an actor as singer, Hannigan provides the opera’s most chilling moments as Isabel, the alluring, raging Queen. There are vivid performances from Peter Hoare as Mortimer, Isabel’s lover and the King’s nemesis, Samuel Boden as the son, Ocean Barrington-Cook as the daughter (extraordinary in a non-singing role), and Canadian mezzo Krisztina Szabó, who also sang in that TSO performance, as a courtier. But the most moving passages belong to the two splendid baritones, Stéphane Degout as the King and Gyula Orendt as his lover Gaveston, especially in their impassioned duets.

This is a timely work – and all the more eloquently rich for that. While it’s the King’s blind infatuation that brings him down, the problem isn’t that he is gay. It isn’t even that he is having an affair. The problem is that he has abused his power by neglecting his family and his people, lavishing all his attention and resources on Gaveston. Yet it’s only after the King rejects Isabel that she turns on him. By the time their children, who have been forced to witness the violent power plays that ensue, manage to seize the power for themselves, they are able to show that they have learned their lessons only too well.

Richard Thompson – The Mask in the Mirror, A Chamber Opera
SANAA Opera Project; Stephen Tucker
Navona Records nv6209 (navonarecords.com) 

Richard Thompson’s haunting opera in three acts The Mask in the Mirror tells the story of the ill-fated marriage between the African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar and the lighter-skinned Alice Ruth Moore. Thompson tells the story of the lovers with minute and tragic detail, allowing his singers plenty of space to explore the tension of this extraordinary relationship, which unfolds in the context of racism in 19th-century America as well as in terms of the psychological drama surrounding two lovers ill-equipped to distinguish between sexual desire and the loftier ideals of their fraught relationship.

Cameo Humes’ Dunbar is truly inspired and the character unfolds through his sonorous tenor which is wielded with enormous power to unlock the vivid metaphor of the mask in the mirror. Angela Owens’ Moore is equally spectacular. She describes Moore’s less successful but nevertheless equally strong character with dramatic thrust. Together with other incidental characters – all exceptionally developed by Thompson – and the superbly moody orchestral performance, The Mask in the Mirror is powerful and heady, as well as appropriately literary.

The score remains relatively spare throughout yet provides enough detail to tell the complex story. Thompson demonstrates a masterly control of dramatic pace, ratcheting up tension slowly but surely so that the final dénouement reaches a devastating climax, aided by performances – led by the dark-hued timbre of Humes’ Dunbar – which vividly project the complicated nature of the drama.

Perpetual Twilight
Choral Scholars of University College Dublin; Desmond Earley
Signum Classics SIGCD558 (signumrecords.com) 

While Ireland has long been renowned for its outstanding literary tradition, it is perhaps less well known for its contributions to choral music. Nevertheless, if this CD Perpetual Twilight, featuring the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin under the direction of Desmond Earley, is any indication, it would appear that the current Irish choral scene is a very vibrant one indeed.

The 28-member chamber choir was founded by Earley in 1999, and since then, numerous tours to various parts of Europe and the United States have earned the ensemble international acclaim. From the opening track Dúlamán, a lively traditional working song from Northern Ireland, it’s evident that the disc is infused with a strong Irish flavour – and what a warm and mellow sound the ensemble produces! Tenors – rares aves in many vocal ensembles – appear to be a major component of the Choral Scholars, resulting in a well-balanced blend of vocal ranges.

The thoughtfully chosen program – an attractive mix of traditional folk songs with newly commissioned pieces – includes the well-known My Love is like a Red Red Rose and Danny Boy in addition to the less familiar Maid of Culmore and Bó na Leathadhairce, the latter arranged by the conductor. Earley is also a composer, and works such as the uplifting Body of the Moon and Strings in the Earth and Air, are testament to his creative talents.

Throughout, the 13-member instrumental ensemble – including a bodhrán, a tin whistle and a harp – provide a solid and sensitive accompaniment. For lovers of the Irish folk tradition, Perpetual Twilight is a delight – joyful singing from the land of Joyce and Beckett – comhghairdeas!