ARTS IN ACTION: from Burlington to bel canto: North Carolina-born tenor DAVID BLALOCK to sing his first Nemorino in Piedmont Opera’s production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore

Hometown bel canto hero: tenor David Blalock, Nemorino in Piedmont Opera’s March 2019 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore
[Photograph © by Pavel Antonov]

The short-lived novelist Thomas Wolfe, born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1900, wrote words to which almost any artist can relate, eventually published posthumously in the aptly-titled work You Can’t Go Home Again.

You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame.

It must be hoped that Wolfe’s assessment of the viability of returning to the safety and comfort of one’s own family is excessively pessimistic, but it cannot be denied that there is some degree of truth in his appraisal of the perils of returning to the surroundings that fostered youthful ambitions—ambitions that, revisited in hindsight, can incite bitterness, resentment, and cruel disappointment. The ‘young man’s dreams of glory and of fame’ are too often the older man’s reminders of inadequacies, missed opportunities, and failures. Colloquially, it is said that home is where the heart is: Wolfe might have argued that, for the artist, it can also be where the heart most fears to be.

Though his richly-hued voice has been heard in many venues within relative proximity of his hometown, including in acclaimed performances with North Carolina Opera and Virginia Opera, Chapel Hill-born tenor David Blalock’s portrayal of Nemorino in Piedmont Opera’s March 2019 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore is a much-anticipated homecoming for this intelligent, insightful artist. An alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Maryland Opera Studio who resided in his youth in Alamance County, he has emerged as one of America’s most promising lyric tenors, garnering critical praise and audience appreciation for performances of music in a broad array of styles ranging from Georg Friedrich Händel’s Messiah to Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Stylistic versatility is now more than ever before an indispensable component of a successful young singer’s artistry, but few singers of any age rival the consistent imagination and vocal velvet with which this young artist brings music of any era to life.

Despite the vast differences between their musical languages, Blalock’s depictions of Don Ottavio in North Carolina Opera’s 2015 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni [reviewed here] and the Steuermann in Virginia Opera’s 2016 production of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer [reviewed here] shared a common accent, that of the singer’s carefully-honed bel canto technique. Too often misinterpreted as a focus on complex fiorature and high notes, the core of true bel canto technique is emphasis on proper use of the breath to place and project tones, facilitating clarity and evenness throughout the range. As Blalock’s singing reveals, this is especially apparent in a tenor’s passaggio, the bridge between registers to which many singers fail to devote the sturdiness needed to sustain a long career. Blalock is aided by possessing raw materials of exceptional quality, but the technique that he has forged is a model of the sort of bel canto foundation that enabled Carlo Bergonzi and Alfredo Kraus to sing beautifully for decades. In this as meaningfully as in the theater’s nearness to his childhood home, Blalock’s rôle début as Nemorino is a return to his roots.

There is perhaps no bel canto aria for the tenor voice that is more iconic—and more of a measure of a singer’s mastery of bel canto technique—than Nemorino’s ‘Una furtiva lagrima.’ Positioned at a pivotal moment in Act Two of L’elisir d’amore in which, as in many of Händel’s operas, the boisterous action stalls to allow an outpouring raw emotion that alters the course of the drama, the melancholic plangency of the vocal line has endeared the piece to generations of opera lovers. It is a moment that Blalock identifies as a time of special importance in the character’s narrative. ‘“Una furtiva lagrima” stands out because of how big of a contrast it is to the rest of the rôle,’ he recently reflected. ‘It is the first and only moment in the opera [in which] Nemorino is on stage all alone, thus making that moment even more intimate.’

‘Una furtiva lagrima’ constitutes only a few minutes of a rôle in which an extraordinary progression of singers have conveyed virtually every conceivable emotion, however, and Blalock is equally attentive to the cumulative impact of a performance of L’elisir d’amore. ‘Honestly, there is so much beautiful music that I can’t pick a particular passage that stands out above the rest in my mind,’ he confided. ‘There are definitely moments where the action stops and time sort of “stands still” during a few of the big ensembles and finales. The big chorus scenes when everyone is on stage at once tend to be my favorite moments of the opera [because] I enjoy playing and reacting with lots of people on stage. There are so many ups and downs with this character: I just love the whole thing!’ It is the interaction among characters that makes L’elisir d’amore a captivating experience, he suggested. ‘I think, ideally, that if we [singers] are doing our jobs of telling this story well, the audience will be so wrapped up in the drama that they sometimes won’t even notice the music.’

Man on course: tenor David Blalock, Nemorino in Piedmont Opera’s March 2019 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, as Der Steuermann in Virginia Opera’s 2016 production of Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer
[Photograph by Lucid Frame Productions, © by Virginia Opera]

The naturalness and assuredness of his stage presence notwithstanding, Blalock’s singing of Nemorino’s music is unlikely to go unnoticed, and he concedes that the opera’s popularity affects his approach to it. ‘I think [that] the greatest challenge of singing Nemorino is the fact that many opera lovers have heard this music sung many times by the world’s greatest singers,’ he shared. ‘Even before they hear me sing, many people have an idea of how “Una furtiva lagrima” should sound because of the way Pavarotti or Domingo sang it.’ Still, he is no stranger to the reality of audience preconceptions. ‘As an opera fan myself, I can understand those ideas,’ he continued. ‘I fell in love with this opera partly because of these great singers.’

Blalock has achieved a level of knowledge of performers and performing traditions of the past that is uncommon amongst singers of his generation. This shapes his understanding of operas’ historical contexts, but, for him, imitation emphatically is not the highest form of flattery. ‘I just try to sing like David Blalock, not to imitate anyone else,’ the tenor insisted. Furthermore, he sees a clear parallel between his own artistic individuality and Nemorino’s struggle to attract and retain Adina’s attention and affection. ‘I have definitely been in that situation before,’ he admitted, thinking of Nemorino’s yearning to feel that his love is reciprocated. In this kind of situation, he again cites self-reliance as the surest means of accomplishing one’s goals. ‘Ultimately, the best thing one can do is be oneself,’ Blalock advised.

Whether of the operatic variety or in one’s life beyond the stage, the cultivation and preservation of love depend upon absolute honesty, this sagacious artist asserts. ‘If you end up together [with the object of one’s affection], then you don’t have to keep pretending to be something you are not,’ he mused. ‘If the person continues to be indifferent, then you have still stayed true to yourself and will ultimately be better off with someone else.’ After pausing to contemplate the confounding complexity of affairs of the heart, he added, ‘It is definitely easier said than done, but I truly believe [that] people end up happier if they stay true to themselves and try not to please others.’

Endeavoring to please others is an unavoidable necessity of a singer’s career, and Blalock is preparing to portray Nemorino for the first time by making a comprehensive study of the part. ‘The greatest challenge of playing the rôle in general is how physically demanding it is,’ he said. ‘Nemorino doesn’t leave the stage for one second in Act One, and most of that time is spent singing!’ Moreover, Blalock indicated, his work does not end with the stamina required by the rôle. ‘Not only is it a lot of singing, but the character requires a special kind of energy: he is young, maybe a little antsy, sometimes a little drunk, excited, lovable, earnest, and many other things—all at the same time. It can be exhausting, but when I am living in the story, I don’t feel the exhaustion until the curtain has come down.’

He has already conquered a number of the world’s eminent stages, but the curtain continues to rise on David Blalock’s career. Blessed with an attractive instrument that he tenaciously refines and an aptitude for learning that he feeds through unabating study, this young singer’s artistic trajectory belies the relevance of Thomas Wolfe’s axioms. The prospect of returning home holds no fear for David Blalock. Place a score before him, anywhere in the world, and he is at home.

 

Piedmont Opera’s production of L’elisir d’amore opens at UNCSA’s Stevens Center in Winston-Salem on Friday, 15 March, with additional performances on 17 and 19 March. In addition to David Blalock’s Nemorino, the production’s cast includes Jodi Burns as Adina, Gregory Gerbrandt as Belcore, Brian Banion as Dulcamara, and Eliza Mandzik as Giannetta. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit Piedmont Opera’s website.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Soprano LEAH CROCETTO in recital with pianist MARK MARKHAM (North Carolina Opera, 3 March 2019)

HAROLD ARLEN (1905 – 1986), SAMMY FAIN (1902 – 1989), GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898 – 1937), GREGORY PEEBLES (born 1977), FRANCIS POULENC (1899 – 1963), OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879 – 1936), and RICHARD RODGERS (1902 – 1979): Soprano Leah Crocetto in recital with pianist Mark Markham [North Carolina Opera, Fletcher Opera Theater, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Sunday, 3 March 2019]

Discussions of which qualities contribute to the evaluation of a singer’s significance rightly begin and end with the voice, but there is another integral component that answers to many names. Call it charisma, stage presence, or artistic vision: without it, even singing of the most astounding beauty can fail to make a lasting impression on listeners. Casting semantics aside, this thing that can be cultivated, refined, and reinvented but cannot be borrowed, duplicated, or taught is the essence of a singer’s artistry.

Stage presence is not always a guest at Art Song recitals, but soprano Leah Crocetto owned the stage of Fletcher Opera Theater in her North Carolina Opera recital with pianist Mark Markham as though Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts deeded it to her. Returning to Raleigh, where she has previously sung Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore and her rôle début as Bellini’s Norma, with an adventurous programme that provided as complete a survey of her artistic temperament as two hours of music could ever hope to do, this dauntless artist sang with the kind of candor that frightens some singers. Without the orchestra, costumes, and action of staged opera in which to bury insecurities, recitals furnish nowhere for a singer’s vulnerabilities to hide, sometimes prompting singers to choose the safety of music that challenges neither performers nor listeners. Crocetto might have garnered the admiration of her Raleigh audience with songs far less demanding than those by Respighi, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff, and Peebles that she selected as the cornerstones of this recital, but her objective was not to seek applause with vocal display. The voice was spectacularly displayed, but it was Crocetto’s daring, disarmingly intimate baring of her soul that made this recital unforgettable.

Now lauded more for his frequently-played tone poems and orchestral pieces than for his operas and other vocal works, Ottorino Respighi possessed a gift for melody that qualified him as a worthy exponent of the too-little-appreciated Italian song tradition furthered by Verdi, Puccini, and Toscanini. Markham’s passionate realizations of Respighi’s writing for the piano in the songs presented in this recital accentuated the Italianate slancio of the music and divulged that the composer’s vivid orchestral language translated easily into the piano’s dialect. The vocal control that Crocetto exhibited in her singing of ‘Stornellatrice,’ embodied by her perfectly-placed top A♭s, was a testament to her unflappable preparedness.

In ‘Nebbie,’ the singer’s lucid articulation of Ada Negri’s text culminated in a declamation of the lines ‘E mi ripete: Vieni, è buia la vallata’ that echoed the deep feeling exuded by her fortissimo G♯s. Dating from 1896, ‘Notturno’ is one of Respighi’s loveliest inventions in song form, comparable in quality to the finest of Richard Strauss’s Lieder of the same period. Markham’s playing yielded a broodingly dark soundscape in which Crocetto’s voice shimmered, her intonation formidably certain. The emotional intensity of ‘Mattinata’ unleashed subtle reminiscences of the soprano’s Aida. As confident in adversity as in triumph, the poet’s and composer’s voices took flight in Crocetto’s singing.

In reality, this recital introduced the Raleigh audience to several magnificent voices. The imposing but unaffected Tebaldi-esque Italian diva who voiced the Respighi songs was succeeded in the Poulenc selections that followed by a chanteuse after the fashion of Eartha Kitt. A singer of Crocetto’s abilities is expected to excel in performances of music as sumptuously written for the voice as Poulenc’s, but, supported by pianism that resounded with the hypnotic tumult of Paris, she sang these pieces with an ideal combination of sultriness and sophistication. The first three of the Poulenc songs chosen by Crocetto are settings of texts by Louise de Vilmorin, two of which were drawn from the composer’s 1939 work Fiançailles pour rire. Soprano and pianist phrased ‘Violon’ with a nonchalant elegance of which Catherine Deneuve would have been proud. Their performance of ‘Fleurs’ should have been chased with a glass of cognac, so chic was their handling of Poulenc’s sensual melodic writing.

Crocetto brought the communicative immediacy of her singing of Elisabetta’s ‘Tu che la vanità’ in Verdi’s Don Carlo to her account of ‘Aux officiers de la garde blanche,’ finding in the song a close kinship with Poulenc’s and Cocteau’s Voix humaine. The words of ‘Les chemins de l’amour’ were penned by Jean Anouilh, one of France’s greatest Twentieth-Century writers, and if composer and playwright could have heard this performance of the song they would have immediately initiated a collaboration on an operatic adaptation of Anouilh’s Antigone as a vehicle for Crocetto. It is not without justification that Denise Duval’s interpretations remain the benchmarks to which performances of Poulenc’s vocal music are compared, and Crocetto earned a place alongside Catherine Dubosc and Mireille Delunsch as one of the few singers who share Duval’s thorough comprehension of Poulenc’s singular style.

Resplendent Raleigh recitalist: soprano Leah Crocetto (left) as the titular heroine in San Francisco Opera’s 2015 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller, with tenor Michael Fabiano as Rodolfo
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Despite the increased focus on linguistic diversity that has broadened singers’ and opera companies’ repertoires in recent years, it remains unusual for non-Slavic artists to include Russian songs sung in their original language in recital programmes. Still more uncommon are performances by singers whose mother tongue is not Russian who enunciate the language as idiomatically as Crocetto did in her singing of four pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Her singing of this music recalled the sensitivity of Elisabeth Söderström, the sincerity of Galina Vishnevskaya, and the vocal power of Elena Obraztsova.

In the first of her Rachmaninoff excursions, ‘Не пой, красавица’ (Opus 4, No. 4), Crocetto immersed herself in the recesses of the uniquely Russian mood of the music, its brooding and fiercely Romantic strains climaxing on a fiery fortissimo top A. The yearning, slightly enigmatic atmosphere of ‘Отрывок из А. Мюссе’ (Opus 21, No. 6) was heightened by the almost preternatural tranquility of Markham’s management of the song’s rhythmic figurations. Here and in ‘Здесь хорошо’ (Opus 21, No. 7), in which Crocetto rose fearlessly to the pianissimo top B, voice and piano disclosed an uncommon synchronicity between words and music, the pianist conveying the shifting colors of the text as meaningfully as the singing echoed the cadences of the accompaniment. The virtuosity of Rachmaninoff’s writing for the piano, particularly in ‘Какое счастье’ (Opus 34, No. 2), is predictably demanding, but Markham executed the most ferocious passages with imperturbable assurance. It was in this music that it was most noticeable and bothersome that the piano’s lowest octave sounded marginally out of tune. Crocetto’s top B♭ was on point, however, emerging like a thunderbolt from the surging vocal line.

Gregory Peebles is the rare contemporary composer who has experienced song as both a creator and a performer. His tenure with Chanticleer exposed him to music of virtually all eras, and that experience is audible in every bar of his 2013 song cycle Eternal Recurrence, given its first performance in North Carolina by Crocetto and Markham. More of a stream-of-consciousness meditation in several movements than a song cycle in the tradition of Schubert and Schumann, Eternal Recurrence employs texts from an array of sources including Gaius Petronius’s Satyricon. Beginning and ending with episodes entitled ‘The Void,’ comprised of an isolated note on the piano, Peebles’s music progresses into a contrapuntal labyrinth that briefly pays homage to Johann Sebastian Bach.

With Crocetto’s entrance in the ‘Vivace, Naïve’ section, the music’s psychological potency began to take shape with gripping profundity. The probity with which the soprano sang ‘The curvature of light beckons toward ancient horizon’ prepared the listener for the riveting honesty of her delivery of ‘The one I’m not, I’d rather be doing’ in ‘By Chance.’ Peebles’s penchant for taking the voice to extremes found an expert champion in Crocetto, whose vocal solidity encompassed all of the music’s complexities. The sonorous proclamation of Pyrrhic victory of ‘I reconquered my mattress continent and found its sheet-fields lonely’ in ‘Hollow’ was answered by the wrenching resignation of ‘Call me what you will.’ Singer and pianist made the composer’s instructions in ‘Liquide, molto rubato’ palpable, siphoning the listener into the cascading swell of the music.

Peebles’s directions in ‘Largo, proud’ were also followed with great fidelity, with Crocetto’s statement of ‘If my heart had a flag, its noble crest would be a passport the color of new jeans’ suggesting a Kafka-like juxtaposition of the everyday and the metaphysical. The Latin and Greek words of the text attributed to Petronius lend the ‘Verklärt’ movement an element of archaic authority, inspiring Crocetto to intone them in this performance with the prophetic mystery of an oracle. The ‘Playful, leggiero’ designation of the final vocal sequence is at odds with the sentiment of ‘Every language is the hardest,’ sparking a debate between music and words that was resolved by the unity of purpose that allied Crocetto’s singing with Markham’s playing. The finest music responds to the stimuli of different artists with new dimensions of emotional connectivity, but it is difficult to imagine a more viscerally moving performance of Eternal Recurrence than it received from Crocetto and Markham in Raleigh.

The singer introduced the American standards with which she closed the recital as favorite souvenirs from a time before the ‘Leah Crocetto, soprano’ phase of her career. There was no doubt that these songs were old friends, but these performances were not remembrances of things past: these were spontaneous experiences of genuine, raw feeling that eliminated any spiritual distance between performers and audience. Written for the 1924 revue Lady, Be Good, George and Ira Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ was sung by Crocetto with a directness that metamorphosed the euphoric ache of love into a tangible thing that could be felt with each note that caressed the ear. Harold Arlen’s and Ira Gershwin’s ‘The Man That Got Away’ started its life in the 1954 film A Star Is Born, and this star singer shone in her quietly wrenching performance of it.

The collaboration between Crocetto and Markham achieved its apex in their exquisitely personal account of ‘Falling in Love with Love’ from Richard Rodgers’s and Lorenz Hart’s musical The Boys from Syracuse. The trust between them was manifested in musical expressivity that seemed to stop time, everything else in the world swept aside by these few minutes of bittersweet regret. Crocetto opined that Sammy Fain’s and Irving Kahal’s 1938 song ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ needed no introduction. This is also true of singing of the quality with which she gifted the piece to the audience. Singing such as this cannot be found in all the old familiar places, but the fortunate listeners in Raleigh will surely always remember this singer that way.

For their encore, Crocetto and Markham gave a performance of ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’ from Jerome Kern’s and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Showboat in which every smile and sigh in Edna Ferber’s novel suffused the song. As in all of the music included in this recital, they forged their own path to the heart of the piece, finding sass, humor, refreshingly original wit, and incredible insight in its refrain.

There is no instrument that is more versatile than the human voice. With a finite range of tones, it can rage, revel, comfort, and cajole. With the simplest of tunes, it can change minds and win hearts. The best vocal recitals are those in which the listener feels that music was not merely performed but lived. Leah Crocetto’s and Mark Markham’s North Carolina Opera recital was an event in which music was a medium, not an outcome. It was The Judds who sang that ‘love can build a bridge,’ but Leah Crocetto and Mark Markham encircled Fletcher Opera Theater with musical orange barrels and launched a construction project of their own.

Poet of the piano: pianist Mark Markham, fellow traveler in soprano Leah Crocetto’s recital journey with North Carolina Opera, 3 March 2019
[Photograph by Jean-Luc Fievet, © by Mark Markham]

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Engelbert Humperdinck — HÄNSEL UND GRETEL (S. Foley Davis, J. Martinson Davis, S. MacLeod, L. Swann, G. Krupp, J. Winslow, A. R. Romero; Greensboro Opera, 2 March 2019)

ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK (1854 – 1921): Hänsel und Gretel (sung in an English translation by Carol Palca Kelly) — Stephanie Foley Davis (Hänsel), Joann Martinson Davis (Gretel), Scott MacLeod (Peter), Lyndsey Swann (Gertrud), Gretchen Krupp (Die Knusperhexe), Jordan Winslow (Sandmännchen), Amber Rose Romero (Taumännchen); Members of Greensboro Youth Chorus; Greensboro Opera Orchestra; Garrett Saake, conductor [David Holley, Producer and Stage Director; Jeff Neubauer, Technical Director and Lighting Designer; Brad Lambert, Scenic Projections Designer; Greensboro Opera, Pauline Theater, Hayworth Fine Arts Center, High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, USA; Saturday, 2 March 2019]

Would any true operaphile question the judgement of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf? In the 126 years since its world première in 1893, Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel has often been dismissed as a confection best suited to the tastes of children and unsophisticated audiences. A setting of the composer’s sister Adelheid Wette’s adaptation of one of the Brüder Grimm’s most popular tales, Hänsel und Gretel aspired to a première in Munich but was ultimately first staged in Weimar’s Hoftheater, where it was conducted with admiration by Richard Strauss. When the opera reached Hamburg a year later, Gustav Mahler wielded the baton with similar approbation. The opera’s first performance at the Wiener Hofoper—today’s Wiener Staatsoper—in 1894 was attended by Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf, both of whom reportedly expressed appreciation for the music. Not one of these illustrious artists who experienced Hänsel und Gretel in its first decade of life was a child, and few observers would belittle their musical sophistication. What did Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, and Wolf hear in Hänsel und Gretel that has eluded subsequent listeners’ ears?

As is true of virtually all operatic queries, the best answers to questions about the evolution of perceptions of Hänsel und Gretel’s musical merits are found in the music. That Humperdinck was an ardent disciple of Richard Wagner is widely known, his work with the older composer including painstakingly copying the autograph score of Parsifal in preparation for that opera’s 1882 première. A dozen years after seeing Hänsel and Gretel come to life in Weimar, Humperdinck visited New York in order to attend the Metropolitan Opera première of the opera on 25 November 1905. That performance was conducted by Alfred Hertz, whose expansive command of Wagner repertory at the MET encompassed the American première of Parsifal. The influence of Wagner on Humperdinck’s musical constitution is abundantly apparent in Hänsel und Gretel, in which there are moments that vividly recall Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Many are the pages in Humperdinck’s score that look to the future, however. Strauss’s Salome and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Mahler’s symphonies, and Arnold Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder are all indebted to Hänsel und Gretel, engendering a legacy that is at odds with modern trends of regarding the opera as a treacly trifle served as holiday fare and otherwise ignored.

Hänsel und Gretel was indeed conceived primarily as a Christmastide entertainment for children, but are its family-friendly narrative and relative brevity the sole motivations for both London’s Royal Opera House and the MET selecting the opera for their inaugural radio broadcasts of full-length performances in 1923 and 1931? The fusion of ambitious Wagnerian aesthetics with more accessible Germanic folklore and simple tunes that captivated audiences in the final two decades of the Nineteenth Century enabled listeners in the war-ravaged Twentieth Century to figuratively revisit a time before foxholes and takes, a time when predictable dangers lurked in finite settings in which they could be confronted and conquered. Sensitive to the interplay of innocence and menace that permeates Humperdinck’s score, perhaps what Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, and Wolf recognized in the context of Hänsel und Gretel was that being intended to be performed for children does not inevitably beget childishness.

Into the woods: (from left to right) soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel, and soprano Jordan Winslow as Der Sandmännchen in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

Staged in the elegant Pauline Theater in High Point University’s Hayworth Fine Arts Center, Greensboro Opera’s production of Hänsel und Gretel is a celebration of cooperation amongst Arts institutions in and beyond the Triad. Sung in an English translation by Carol Palca Kelly that was first employed by Minnesota Opera, the performance was the culmination of an initiative to not only expand the reach of Greensboro Opera’s endeavors but also to foster broader community involvement. High Point University faculty member Brad Lambert designed projections that playfully but credibly—credible except when Mutter despaired of shattering the family’s only jug whilst a lovely, seemingly intact pitcher was clearly visible on the mantle behind her—conjured the atmosphere of each scene. His image of dawn breaking in the forest with a burst of pastel colors was particularly striking. Technical director Jeff Neubauer’s lighting designs occasionally muddled the production’s focus, compromising the virtues of its simplicity by complicating the audience’s task of following the opera’s action.

Originally devised for Utah Opera and Symphony, Susan Memmott Allred’s costume designs were both whimsical and practical, emphasizing that Hänsel, Gretel, and their parents are troubled but not defeated by privation. Christian Blackburn’s stage management and Greensboro Opera General and Artistic Director David Holley’s direction were unmistakably influenced by their own work as singers: when the production’s antics were at their busiest, the principals’ vocalism was never impeded. There is more darkness in Hänsel und Gretel than Holley’s staging explored, but the delighted reactions by the many youngsters in the near-capacity audience confirmed the production’s effectiveness.

In loco parentis: soprano Lyndsey Swann as Gertrud (left) and baritone Scott MacLeod as Peter (right) in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

The theater’s orchestra pit could not accommodate the number of musicians that Humperdinck’s orchestrations require, necessitating a reduction in musical forces. The ensemble assembled for this production—pianist Emily Russ, flautist Janet Phillips, oboist Thomas Turanchik, clarinetist Darkson Magrinelli, trumpeter Johammee Romero, and percussionist Erik Schmidt—approached the difficult score with commendable concentration. Their playing of the opera’s Vorspiel was enjoyable despite fleeting problems with intonation and ensemble, and the Hexenritt, enjoyment of which was marred by the audience taking advantage of the scene change to catch up on their conversations, was aptly exhilarating. The cuckoo in the wood sang out beguilingly.

The climactic statement of the Abendsegen theme in the Traumpantomime should rattle the rafters in the manner of Wagner’s orchestral showpieces in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung and ‘Walk to the Paradise Garden’ in Frederick Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet and of course could not do that in this performance, but the music’s impact was enhanced by Michael Job’s choreography of the balletic representation of the fourteen angels’ vigil, which was gracefully performed. The quality of the dancers’ work was complemented by the fine singing of the High Point University students and members of Greensboro Youth Chorus who touchingly and euphoniously portrayed the Kuchenkinder.

Conductor Garrett Saake’s pacing of the performance was characterized by an impressive amalgamation of respect for the score and complete cognizance of the abilities and needs of the personnel at hand. Some conductors either rush through Humperdinck’s score, reducing the piece to a pretentious operetta, or over-accentuate the opera’s Wagnerian passages. Saake avoided both extremes, maintaining dramatic momentum but also allowing the music and the singers to exert their magic without battling illogical tempi. The performance was acculturated to the dimensions of the orchestra and venue but, owing to the conductor’s intelligent leadership, never seemed ‘small.’ It was not as powerful or vibrant as in larger-scaled performances, but Humperdinck’s voice sang uninhibitedly via Saake’s clear-sighted guidance of this Hänsel und Gretel.

At the end of his tether: (from left to right) soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

The courage of this production’s Hänsel and Gretel was tested by a Sandmännchen whose appearance was strangely nightmarish. Her visage disguised by a ghoulish mask, soprano Jordan Winslow’s voice emerged with serene security, floating the music on a stream of silvery tones. Dressed to the nines in a glistening gown and sparkling diadem, the Taumännchen resembled a glamorous storybook princess more than an industrious sprite, but this suited the effervescent singing of soprano Amber Rose Romero. Dispersing her dew in the form of bubbles, a clever device that enchanted the youngest members of the audience, Romero projected her voice with similar iridescence except at the lower end of the compass, where the music moved out of her vocal comfort zone.

It was evident from her introductory utterance that the titular tykes’ mother Gertrud was a woman to be obeyed. Too frequently portrayed as a raving shrew, an interpretation with no real basis in the score or the libretto, this conflicted woman faces the crippling guilt of feeling that she has failed her children. The performance of the rôle by soprano Lyndsey Swann, a heart-wrenching Madame Lidoine in UNCG Opera Theatre’s bold 2016 production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, was a reminder of why mammoth-voiced singers like Rita Hunter and Dame Gwyneth Jones were attracted to the part. Gertrud is the opera’s most overtly Wagnerian character, and Swann supplied the evening’s most heroic singing. Her interactions with Hänsel and Gretel limned the overwhelmed but loving mother’s frustration, expressed in music spanning wide intervals that the soprano navigated intrepidly. Her diction was a casualty of the effort, particularly in the aftermath of breaking the pitcher, but a few obscured words were a small price to pay for the gleaming top B with which Swann heightened her realization of the mother’s desperation and despair. There are echoes of Brünnhilde’s defiance and maturity through suffering in Gertrud’s music, and Swann sang the rôle with sincerity rather than hysterics.

Honey, I’m home: baritone Scott MacLeod as Peter (left) and soprano Lyndsey Swann as Gertrud (right) in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

His first offstage ‘Tra la la la’ established that the defining trait of baritone Scott MacLeod’s Peter was irrepressible optimism. His carefree, confident demeanor notwithstanding, the rôle’s frequent ascents to top E♭s, Es, Fs, and F♯s challenged the singer. The necessity of repeatedly placing notes above the stave undermined his support of the voice’s lower octave. Many productions of Hänsel und Gretel compound the problem of adult singers’ depictions of children by casting singers too old to be believable as the parents of pre-adolescent children, but MacLeod was an appropriately youthful, virile father; perhaps too virile in his description of the potential horrors to which his wife subjected their children by ordering them into the haunted wood in search of strawberries. Peter’s paean to providential retribution for evildoers and the sustaining capacity of faith in the opera’s final scene can be uncomfortably didactic, but this Peter imparted relief rather than evangelism, a wise course for a man more likely to be found in a Biergarten than at Mass. MacLeod’s Peter was heartier of spirit than of voice, but his animated stage presence lent the performance a wonderful propulsive energy.

The rôle of the Knusperhexe, née Rosina Ledkermaul, was created in the opera’s Weimar première by mezzo-soprano Hermine Finck, the third of composer Eugen d’Albert’s six wives, and was sung in the 1894 Vienna production by Marie Lehmann, sister of the famed soprano Lili Lehmann and herself a noted Wagnerian who sang Wellgunde and Waltraute in the first complete Bayreuther Festspiele Ring in 1876. The part was taken in Greensboro Opera’s production by mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp, an alumna of UNCG who was a Grand Finalist in the 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and seems destined to follow the Lehmann sisters into Wagner repertory. Like Hänsel’s and Gretel’s parents, the sorceress who antagonizes them has often been sung by singers more likely to be seen riding motorized scooters than broomsticks. Fair Rosina’s hearing and vision are impaired, intensifying her crone tendencies, but Humperdinck’s music for her calls for anything but a lady with failing faculties. It is fortunate, then, that Krupp’s faculties were on blazing form. This witch needed no spells in order to dominate Hänsel and Gretel: the raw might of her voice exploded like grenades fired into the auditorium. The trills with which Humperdinck seasoned the music are not in a voice as substantial as Krupp’s, but she made laudable efforts at them and gleefully took every high option suggested by the composer. Her top B♭ was literally—and legitimately—show-stopping. It is not easy to evoke sympathy for a woman who converts unsuspecting children into snacks, but Krupp brought a hint of vulnerability to her performance. There was no corresponding weakness in her singing.

Ready, aim, fire: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

Many operas are like automobiles. They can be very pretty, valuable, and comfortable, but, without engines, they go nowhere. Not surprisingly, much of the responsibility for the efficacy of a performance of Hänsel und Gretel rests upon the shoulders of its dual engines, the singers who portray the title siblings. Greensboro Opera’s performance had in mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis and soprano Joann Martinson Davis a pair of artists who jump-started the performance with their exuberant singing in the opera’s opening scene and sustained that ebullience to the final bar of their music. Unlike productions that are undermined by the lugubrious work of singers who struggle vocally and dramatically to plausibly portray children, this Hänsel und Gretel was enlivened by depictions of the title characters that exuded unaffected jocularity. Not the sort of chirping soubrette often heard in the rôle, Martinson Davis was a gratifyingly full-voiced Gretel who encountered no problems with the girl’s top notes and trills.

Foley Davis was equally successful as Hänsel. Male singers have depicted boys and young men less persuasively than Foley Davis embodied Hänsel's pluckiness and impetuosity. Her diction was superb throughout the range, and the freedom with which she traversed the part’s two octaves was extraordinary. In the first two acts, she and Martinson Davis charmingly illustrated the siblings’ coltish relationship, and the mezzo-soprano made Hänsel’s sheltering of his sister in the wood unusually moving. Their account of the beloved Abendsegen was sublime. Martinson Davis’s Gretel joyously greeted the morning after a harrowing night in the forest with a sensational top D. The youths’ vigorous gorging on morsels of the Knusperhäuschen contrasted tellingly with their confrontation with the witch. Their cunning prevailing, they rejoiced with stunning unison top B♭s. Many of the world’s opera companies regularly stage Hänsel und Gretel, but few of them offer their audiences Hänsels and Gretels as captivating as Greensboro’s.

It is oversimplification to state that opera is cinema with singing, but, like films, opera productions rely upon savvy direction and dedicated performances by their casts to compellingly tell their stories. The tale of Hänsel and Gretel is too familiar to need complex directorial explication, but it is as true in opera as in any other field that familiarity breeds contempt. Greensboro Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel satisfied because it invited the audience to forget the world’s worries for two hours and surrender to the pleasures of fairy-tale spectacle. Calamities persisted beyond the theater’s walls, but, within those walls, beautiful singing transported listeners to a realm in which love overcomes wickedness.

 

Additional performances of Hänsel und Gretel are scheduled for 8, 9, and 10 March at the Theatre at Well•Spring. Hänsel, Gretel, and Peter will be sung in the 10 March performance by Emily Wolber, Lilla Keith, and Jacob Kato. Please visit Greensboro Opera’s website for more information or click here to purchase tickets.

Brother behind bars: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, soprano Joann Martinson Davis, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: D. Scarlatti, J. Brahms, C. Franck, E. Chausson, E. Chabrier, J. M. Jarrett, & J. W. Work III — Donald Hartmann and Ināra Zandmane in recital (UNCG School of Music Recital Hall, 20 January 2019)

DOMENICO SCARLATTI (1685 – 1757), JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 – 1897), CÉSAR FRANCK (1822 – 1890), ERNEST CHAUSSON (1855 – 1899), EMMANUEL CHABRIER (1841 – 1894), JACK M. JARRETT (born 1938), and JOHN WESLEY WORK III (1901 – 1967): Recital by Donald Hartmann, bass-baritone, and Ināra Zandmane, piano [University of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Music Recital Hall, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; 20 January 2019]

Song is a wondrous thing, at once stupefyingly simple and complicatedly contrived. Children can master it artlessly, but it can elude the most revered artists. To sing is to simultaneously inhabit two planes, traversing the parallel poetry of melody and tonality of words. In mathematics, it is posited that a line at infinity completes an affine plane, providing a point at which parallel lines, never uniting in tangible reality, ultimately intersect. Infinity is the realm of song, its improbable intersections of music and words facilitating innumerable variations of psychological interaction. It is in these tuneful collisions of sounds and syllables that the true artist finds the most perfect meaning of song, the art of revealing the sublime that lurks within the obvious.

Even amongst the most ardent music aficionados, connoisseurs of song are unique creatures. Memories of cherished performances are honored like battle scars. Storied Lieder singers and accompanists are their Pattons and Eisenhowers. For the lover of Art Song, a recital in which singer and accompanist earn recognition as collaborative artists is an occasion of significance commensurate with its rarity. To perform Lieder is not difficult, but to descend in four or five minutes’ duration into the depths of a song demands resources of communal concentration and musicality that exceed the capacities of some artists. Cognizance of the limitations of their abilities and challenging themselves to surpass them are vital aspects of earnest musicians’ artistry, and these qualities are the foundation upon which bass-baritone Donald Hartmann and pianist Ināra Zandmane built a recital that was a palpable, unmistakably personal musical journey from beginning to end. Presenting faculty recitals is often a contractual obligation, a fact that in some instances is all too apparent, but this was a recital focused on exploring and expanding artists’ faculties.

Celebrating four decades on the operatic stage not by boasting of enviable statistics and critical acclaim but by continuing to meticulously and lovingly hone his craft [whilst preparing for this recital, he was also rehearsing the rôle of Zuniga in North Carolina Opera’s production of Bizet’s Carmen], Hartmann offered the Greensboro audience a cohesive, intelligently-ordered programme distinguished by singing with emotional introspection that contrasted markedly with his exhilaratingly uninhibited comedic operatic characterizations. It is tempting to question whether the buffa or the seria more accurately reflects the essence of this artist, but is not the foremost lesson taught by Shakespeare’s and Verdi’s Falstaffs that laughter and tears are triggered by different combinations of the same stimuli? Hartmann’s portrayals of Rossini’s Bartolo and Don Magnifico are particularly satisfying because their hilarity is complemented by virility and vulnerability. In comedy, he reminds audiences that foppishness and foolishness are not identical, interchangeable concepts. In this recital, he asked the listener to recognize that the shadows in which men hide in their darkest hours cannot exist without the light from which they flee.

Hartmann’s voice is an instrument that can be both cavernous and caressing, and the aural potency of his Stygian timbre was heightened by the finesse of Zandmane’s playing, not least in the Baroque piece with which they boldly launched the recital. Likely adapted from an earlier composition for soprano, Domenico Scarlatti’s cantata da camera for bass and basso continuo ‘Amenissimi prati, fiorite piagge’ did not appear in print in an academically-credible critical edition until 1971, after which time the piece was recorded by Early Musical specialist Max von Egmond and occasionally sung in recital by José van Dam. His lauded command of Rossinian bravura writing notwithstanding, Hartmann is not the sort of singer expected to excel in Baroque music, but he shares Samuel Ramey’s aptitude for adapting his technique to the requirements of music like Scarlatti’s.

Hartmann declaimed the cantata’s opening recitative, ‘Amenissimi prati, fiorite piagge,’ with complete avoidance of affectation, delivering the words with directness rare in performances of music of this vintage. Sustaining the vocal line with fluidity that evoked the Arcadian atmosphere of the text, he compellingly limned the longing for freedom from the torments of amorous attachment that permeates the aria ‘Amar non voglio per non penare.’ The sense of hope inspired by the promise of a new day exuded by the recitative ‘Quando sui primi albori del matutino’ shone from the music, singer and pianist transforming the recital hall into a tranquil ‘stanza del piacere e del contento.’ The effectiveness of Hartmann’s and Zandmane’s association was especially apparent in the aria ‘Il fior coll’aura, l’aura coll’onda scherzar vedrò,’ which received from them a reading of guileless charm. Moreover, the singer’s navigation of fiorature was admirable despite the intermittent obtrusion of aspirates. In the final aria, ‘Donne belle, se tutti gl’amanti,’ the cantata’s narrator advocates nature’s delights as an alternative to love’s inconstant pleasures. [The recitative ‘Così, libero e sciolto dall’empia schiavitù del dio bendato’ is not included in the edition of the cantata employed in this performance.] Asserted with sensitivity of the caliber demonstrated by Hartmann and Zandmane, allied with the quality of Scarlatti’s music, it was a persuasive argument.

Never hidden from the public, the Lieder of Johannes Brahms have enjoyed increased exposure in recent years, in part courtesy of performances and recordings by singers whose mother tongues are not German. Most renowned in his native Greensboro for performances of Italian music, Hartmann has displayed comparable affinity for insightfully interpreting works auf Deutsch, a skill that was abundantly evident in his singing of five of Brahms’s songs in this recital. [A recording of his performance of Schubert’s ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’ in a previous UNCG recital should be heard by all who value Lieder.] Beginning with a touchingly sincere reading of ‘Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund,’ the twenty-fifth song in the composer’s 1894 collection of Deutsche Volkslieder (WoO. 33), the bass-baritone elucidated the subtleties of the music with immediacy exemplified by his enunciation of ‘du lässt mir keinen Ruh’.’ The sentimental trajectory of his voicing of the sixth of the WoO. 33 Volkslieder, ‘Da unten im Thale,’ reached its zenith in the line ‘Für die Zeit wo du g’liebt mi hast, dank i dir schön,’ sung with restrained intensity. Zandmane’s intuitively text-driven playing established a sonic canvas in ‘In stiller Nacht’ (WoO. 33, No. 42) upon which Hartmann rendered the imagery of words like ‘die Blümelein, mit Tränen rein hab’ ich sie all’ begossen’ with somber hues. In secure, sonorous voice throughout the recital, his performances of these songs were unerringly faithful to the music’s innate straightforwardness.

The second of Brahms’s Opus 6 Lieder, ‘Feldeinsamkeit,’ uses a text by Hermann Allmers, and Zandmane’s musicianship again fostered an ambiance that enabled Hartmann to follow rather than force the words. His articulation of ‘Mir ist als ob ich längst gestorben bin’ was one of the recital’s most mesmerizing moments. The words of ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen’ from Vier ernste Gesänge (Opus 121), first performed five months before Brahms’s death, are taken from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the spirit of the text resolves the melancholic trek of the ‘serious songs’ with an effusion of optimism. Hartmann made an honorable effort at the difficult diminuendo at the song’s conclusion, but it was the conviction of his singing that engendered the performance’s immense emotional impact.

The trio of French songs chosen by Hartmann provided the recital with a beguiling interlude of sorts, the relationships among the pieces’ different musical idioms confirmed by both the singer’s lyrical approach and Zandmane’s stylistically kaleidoscopic pianism to transcend a shared language. In their performance of César Franck’s mélodie ‘La procession,‘ the repetitions of ‘Dieu s’avance à travers les champs’ in the forgotten Charles Brizeux’s text assumed a crucial rôle in the song’s narrative. Perhaps the most familiar of the seven of Ernest Chausson’s Opus 2 mélodies, ‘Les Papillons’ (No. 3) is a setting of a text by Théophile Gautier, and the poet’s words fluttered from Hartmann’s throat as hypnotically as the composer’s notes danced from Zandmane’s fingers. The comedic tension that grew with each utterance of ‘comme de bons campagnards’ in Emmanuel Chabrier’s strophic ‘Villanelle des petits canards’ was delightfully alleviated by a wily interpolated ‘quack’ at the song’s end. Though he professed that this repertory did not captivate him when he first encountered it, continued acquaintance clearly inspired genuine fondness. Zandmane’s playing was at its most ebullient in these songs, marvelously so in Chabrier’s music. The effervescent Veuve Clicquot of her work blended deliciously with the smooth Courvoisier of Hartmann’s vocalism.

Asheville-born composer Jack M. Jarrett’s operatic setting of his own translation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 drama Cyrano de Bergerac premièred at UNCG on 27 April 1972, with baritone Charles A. Lynam (1930 – 2013), with whom Hartmann studied, in the title rôle. Like all of the selections in this recital, the bass-baritone’s inclusion of music from the balcony scene from Act Two of Jarrett’s Cyrano de Bergerac was an homage to a meaningful link with his musical education. The swirling, sensual Romanticism of the composer’s music brings to mind ‘Zweite Brautnacht,’ the heroine’s rapturous paean to wedded bliss in Act Two of Richard Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena, the voice soaring above a dense deluge of sound. Zandmane played so passionately, expertly discharging the erotic electricity of a climactic trill, that details of Jarrett’s orchestration came to life with astonishing clarity.

Hartmann phrased ‘Let us take advantage of this occasion to speak in the shadows of night’ with the hesitant excitement of a shy lover. There was an amiable but wrenching pathos in his statement of ‘Naught else remains for me but to die, for the voice of my soul has caused you to tremble in the warmth of the night’ that would have suited Don Quixote as organically as it embodied Cyrano—or, to invoke another Strauss leading lady, Der Rosenkavalier’s Marschallin, whose facilitation of her beloved’s love for another is not unlike Cyrano’s wooing of Roxanne on Christian’s behalf. The tessitura of this music, intended for a higher, lighter voice, tested Hartmann, precipitating a few pinched tones above the stave, but the prevailing impression made by his singing was one of bittersweet confession of feelings too tender to endure daylight’s cruel disclosure.

For his encore, Hartmann gave a movingly heartfelt performance of John Wesley Work II’s arrangement of Harry Dixon Loes’s ‘This Little Light of Mine’ that radiated what Quakers extol as ‘the gift to be simple.’ Hartmann is an artist for whom tonal beauty is always a welcome result but never the sole aim of his industry. Rarely is his singing pretty merely for the sake of being pretty, for in his artistic journey beauty is a mode of transportation, not a destination. There were occasional missed entrances, textual mistakes, and negligible intonational lapses in this recital, but the unpardonable transgressions of sloppiness, unpreparedness, and disinterest were wholly absent. Beauty of expression was the cornerstone of this recital, one in which two parallel talents intersected in the exquisite infinity of song.

CD REVIEW: Mark Abel — TIME AND DISTANCE (J. DeStefano, H. Plitmann, C. Rosenberger, T. Tadmor, M. Abel, B. Carver; Delos DE 3550)

MARK ABEL (born 1948): Time and Distance — Janelle DeStefano, mezzo-soprano; Hila Plitmann, soprano; Carol Rosenberger and Tali Tadmor, piano; Mark Abel, organ; Bruce Carver, percussion [Recorded at The Bridge, Glendale, California, USA, June – November 2017; Delos DE 3550; 1 CD, 57:03; Available from Delos Music, Naxos Direct, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Poets, philosophers, and similarly-inclined personages have long proposed that music is a universal language, one in which sentiments impervious to the communicative capacities of words alone can be satisfactorily and comprehensibly articulated. Music can be argued to be a sort of communal mother tongue in which differences of accent, syntax, and vocabulary do not impede understanding. Its dialects are as numerous as combinations of melody and harmony, but it is not ‘speaking’ its language but hearing its discourses that wields the true connective energy of music. The sounds of Zydeco are meaningful to the listener whose first language is that of Zelenka or Zandonai because they stimulate the heart as boldly as they provoke the brain. Minds perceive as they are trained to do, but hearts are governed by a consistent mechanism. One man’s tunes are different from another’s, but, like the hearts to which they appeal, they are propelled by beats that any man can discern.

Music can peer clear-sightedly into corners of the psyche in which the eyes perceive only darkness, but time and distance are confoundingly convoluted concepts for musical explication. Spatially, they are remarkably analogous entities: tangible in their physical manifestations but intrinsically intangible, their shared power is that of separation. The mind assesses the ravages of time and the displacements of distance, yet the solemn duty of gauging the emotional tolls of the effects of time and distance falls to the heart. In the works of American composer Mark Abel featured on Delos’s masterfully-recorded release Time and Distance, the intricacies of the relationships that inexorably link humanity with the divisive repercussions of the physical and emotional separations wrought by time and distance are examined in songs of grace and gravity. The music on this disc does not inhabit the shadows made by abstractions. Too plentiful to enumerate are the passages in this music that are so wrenchingly private that they may compel the listener to ask, ‘How can this man whom I have never met know so much about my life?’ This intuition, uncanny and unifying, is the foundation of Abel’s unique musical language and the quality that makes Time and Distance a disc that severs new veins of raw emotion each time that it is heard.

With an unsettlingly personal text by the composer, ‘The Invocation’ is an apt preamble to the metaphysical exploration of Time and Distance. Performed by mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano and pianist Carol Rosenberger with a suggestion of futile inquisitiveness, questioning having failed to penetrate the closely-guarded justification of the status quo, the song emerges as its own kind of inquisition. To what or to whom is the eponymous invocation addressed? For what response can flawed beings truly hope? Abel advances this searching pragmatism with music in which the writing for voice and piano echoes the ambivalent coexistence of optimism and cynicism that permeates the text. Rosenberger plays with an ideal equilibrium of dramatic impetus and aloofness, enabling DeStefano to emphatically evince the stark irony of words such as ‘We are tempted, we succumb, sometimes dangle from the bottom rung / And still we ask: Why must happiness be earned?’ without disrupting the organic progression of the music. This is not a performance that seeks to hide unpleasant realities behind façades of artificial loveliness: neither singer nor pianist rejects stringency when it is required, and the openness of their collaboration yields candid interpretive beauty.

In ‘Those Who Loved Medusa,’ Abel utilizes a provocative text by a fellow Californian, poet Kate Gale, as a catapult for some of his most theatrical music. Materializing in an atmosphere that undulates with the jangling of pseudo-ancient crotales, conjured by the work of percussionist Bruce Carver, the voice of soprano Hila Plitmann shimmers against the backdrop of Rosenberger’s pianism like a mirage of a lone Joshua tree in the Mohave, ephemeral but identifiable. Plitmann’s moonlight timbre contrasts markedly with the bleak imagery of the words, heightening the discomfort inflicted by the poet’s stinging irony. The soprano delivers the line ‘Fear the woman with her own snakes’ with restrained vehemence that discloses a deeply intellectual grasp of the text’s inherent contradictions, Medusa becoming Eve, Pandora, and every woman who has tasted the bittersweet elixir of destruction. Rosenberger plays hypnotically, charming the music’s writhing serpents, but the spell is easily broken. The vocal line strikes at the heels of tonality, Plitmann’s accuracy of pitch and verbal clarity claiming for battered womanhood a sonorously venomous victory.

The composer again looked to his own words for In the Rear View Mirror, Now, creating a triptych of songs with both strongly individual temperaments and an abiding cohesiveness. Plitmann is here accompanied by pianist Tali Tadmor and Abel as organist, and the structure of the music is paralleled by the cooperation of this musical trinity. A composer’s performance of his own music cannot be accepted as definitive without scrutiny, but Abel’s skill at the keyboard rivals Rachmaninoff’s playing of his works for piano, preserved on recordings and piano rolls. Tadmor’s work is no less successful, lyricism tempering bursts of bravura. The first song, ‘The Long Goodbye,’ is sung with a consistency of purpose embodied by Plitmann’s fervent singing of the words ‘Blame is ugly,’ her voice lending allure to the most disquieting nuances of the text. Reaction to the cultural disintegration instigated by gentrification of the San Francisco Bay Area shapes ‘The World Clock.’ Plitmann infuses the momentous lines ‘Technology changes / But people? Never / A simple principle, ages old’ with potent urgency, intensified by the sensitive accompaniment. There is an unmistakable kinship between the prevailing mood of Abel’s ‘The Nature of Friendship’ and the emotional claustrophobia of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. ‘Platonic love’s a most welcome narcotic’ and ‘They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat if it came to that’ are lines that the reclusive genius of Amherst might have written, and Abel’s musical settings amplify the essence of his words. Plitmann sings this music with concentrated directness. Her performance of In the Rear View Mirror, Now brings to mind the statement inscribed on vehicles’ side mirror: ‘objects in mirror are closer than they appear.’ ​Moving forward may increase the measurable distance between past and present, Abel intimates, but sentimental proximity is affected by no rules of logic or physics.

Herself an accomplished singer, Joanne Regenhardt published in a collection entitled Soundings a series of poems that radiate musicality, the sonic implications of her words rendering even an uninflected recitation of her verse a tuneful experience. Abel’s handling of her texts in The Ocean of Forgiveness bears the hallmarks of complementary sensibilities, the composer’s poetic insight leading him to the fathomless levels of meaning within the words. This artistic symbiosis also permeates DeStefano’s and Tadmor’s performance of the songs, initiated with an account of ‘Desert Wind’ that invites the listener to participate viscerally, transforming hearing into a conduit for feeling. In her forthright, almost frighteningly sincere voicing of ‘Sally’s Suicide,’ DeStefano enunciates the line ‘Existence like a sea anemone had become a fastened thing’ with unforgettable eloquence, seeming to find in those words an outlet for an exclamation from her own soul. The focus of the singer’s and pianist’s performance of ‘In Love with the Sky’ is also internalized, their partnership elucidating details of Abel’s shifting musical tableaux that less-attentive artists might overlook. The subtleties of textual cadences and thematic development that provide the momentum for the transition from ‘Reunion’ to ‘Patience’ are realized by DeStefano and Tadmor with uncommon cognizance of the words’ function as the blueprint for the music’s architecture. The Ocean of Forgiveness is a musical edifice as complex as the ideas that dwell within its depths: galvanized by the confident performance that they receive on this disc, these songs impart a genuinely moving awareness of the fear of drowning that prevents many people from surrendering to the tide of absolution.

Having begun with ‘The Invocation,’ concluding Time and Distance with ‘The Benediction’ bestows an element of finality upon the disc’s final moments—journey’s end, destination achieved. Composed in 2012, ‘The Benediction’ returns to Abel’s own poetry, enlivened in this performance by Plitmann’s verbal acuity. She and Tadmor find in the song’s surging plangency aspects of all of the songs heard on Time in Distance, revisiting the disparate tributaries of the disc’s primary expressive flow with an air of resolution reminiscent of that of the music that follows Brünnhilde’s immolation in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Abel’s is not a musical language of full stops, however: this is music of commas and semicolons, phrases completed but anticipating the arrival of new ideas.

Much contemporary vocal music is marred by a disconcerting disparity between the spirit of the words and the aural persona of the music, so pronounced in some pieces that one questions composers’ literacy. The peculiar sorcery of words’ transfiguration by music that gave birth to song is too often sacrificed to ego, creators seeking accolades at the expense of artistry. Franz Schubert earned praise by composing Lieder in which melody uplifted poetry. Johannes Brahms earned praise by writing songs in which the hidden secrets of the heart were exposed more graphically than in an autopsy. With the songs on Time and Distance, Mark Abel earns praise for musical innovation. Moreover, he garners affection by recapturing the enchantment of song. Man may never conquer the challenges of time and distance, but he comes nearest to triumph in music.