CD REVIEW: Henry Purcell – DIDO AND AENEAS (R. Lloyd, R. Davies, E. Manahan Thomas, R. Morris, E. Irving, J. Harper, M. Golding; Signum Classics SIGCD417)

HENRY PURCELL (1659 – 1695): Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626—Rachael Lloyd (Dido), Robert Davies (Aeneas), Elin Manahan Thomas (Belinda), Roderick Morris (Sorceress), Eloise Irving (Second Woman, First Witch, Spirit), Jenni Harper (Second Witch), Miles Golding (Drunken Sailor); Armonico Consort; Christopher Monks, Musical Director [Recorded in the Church of St Augustine, Kilburn, London, England, on 20 and 21 October 2014; Signum Classics SIGCD417; 1 CD, 50:45; Available from Signum Classics, ClassicsOnline HD, Amazon, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

In August 1940, as the tide of war swept across Europe and over the English Channel into Britain, Sir Winston Churchill famously rallied his countrymen with unforgettable words of gratitude for the awe-inspiring efforts of the Royal Air Force: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ If the field under consideration were opera in Britain and the entity deemed so few a simple quantity of notes, a related sentiment might justifiably be expressed about Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. Frustratingly, so much of what is ‘known’ about Purcell’s concentrated operatic masterpiece is actually conjecture for which factual substantiation is scant and often subject to individual interpretation. A matter of certainty is that the libretto for Dido and Aeneas is a simplification of Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid undertaken by the Dublin-born eventual Poet Laureate of England, Nahum Tate, who when not occupied with putting figures from Antiquity upon the theatrical and operatic stages was all too happy to tinker with Shakespeare. Precisely where, when, and by whom Dido and Aeneas was first performed cannot be ascertained with any degree of certainty, but the impact of that inauspicious beginning on the development of opera in and beyond the British Isles is indisputable. What is known with relative sureness is that Dido and Aeneas, Purcell’s first opera and only through-composed vocal work for the theatre, had been performed in dancing-master Josias Priest’s school for young ladies at Gorge’s House in Chelsea—one of the most fashionable addresses in Seventeenth-Century suburban London—by July 1688. No manuscript score survives, and the sole authentic Seventeenth-Century source, a printed copy of Tate’s libretto, may or may not have been published in conjunction with the opera’s première, but since the opera’s resurrection for commemorations in 1895 of the bicentennial of the composer’s death, Dido and Aeneas has a place of deserved prominence in the annals of opera in English. A singer as important as Kirsten Flagstad deemed Purcell’s Dido worthy of inclusion in her repertory alongside Wagner’s Elsa, Elisabeth, Brünnhildes, and Isolde, singing the Carthaginian queen in performances in Bernard Miles’s 200-seat Mermaid Theatre in the St. John’s Wood section of London and recording the rôle for HMV. Nancy Evans and Dame Joan Hammond had already recorded Dido before Flagstad’s surprisingly stylish interpretation was committed to vinyl in 1952, ushering in an era of rediscovery that continues to periodically redefine standards of performance of Purcell’s music in the Twenty-First Century. From the revival of interest in Dido and Aeneas in 1895 unto the present day, a progression of accomplished ladies ranging from Britons Dame Janet Baker, Josephine Veasey, Dame Emma Kirkby, and Sarah Connolly to Americans Tatiana Troyanos, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Vivica Genaux have given the ill-fated Dido a legacy as multi-faceted as that of any heroine in opera. Approaching the opera on the scale on which it is likely to have been staged in Purcell’s time, Signum Classics’ studio recording featuring Armonico Consort offers an uncomplicated reading of Dido and Aeneas that serves as a well-timed reminder that, whether an opera was written in 1688 or 1988, the foremost historically-informed, period-appropriate performance practice is sincerity.

Armonico Consort’s Artistic Director Christopher Monks presides from the harpsichord over a performance notable for both its seriousness and the consistency of its musical accents. Purcell was an unsurpassed master of stylistic assimilation, his scores synthesizing aspects of trends from Continental Europe and the British Isles into an unique musical language. In Dido and Aeneas, the influence of John Blow’s roughly contemporaneous opera Venus and Adonis is apparent alongside recognizable traits honed from familiarity with French and Italian models. Hearing this recording not long after witnessing Spoleto Festival USA’s production of Pier Francesco Cavalli’s Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona made Dido’s kinship with the Italian composer’s mature operas especially conspicuous. Adhering to the Venetian customs of their time, Busenello’s libretto for Cavalli’s 1641 Didone discarded the tragic demise of Virgil’s account in favor of a lieto fine in which Dido is ‘rescued’—rather chauvinistically, modern observers might be inclined to think—by another suitor’s marriage proposal after Aeneas’s departure, but Purcell’s Dido shares with Cavalli’s Didone an imperturbable dignity that qualifies them as two of operas earliest tragic heroines. Viewing Dido and Aeneas from an anachronistic perspective, Dido is not unlike Bellini’s Norma and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne in being discarded by a ‘foreign’ lover. Just as Pollione’s music in Norma is of a martial character that contrasts with the lunar glow of the music for Norma and her community, Purcell’s music for Aeneas often sounds thorny in comparison with the sensual writing for Dido and her Carthaginian subjects. Monks and the Armonico Consort musicians—first violinist Miles Golding, second violinist Ben Sansom, violist Nichola Blakey, cellist Gabriel Amherst, double bass player Andrew Durban, and theorbist Robin Jeffrey—explore the dramatic significance of this polarity, rejecting the foolish but frequently-indulged temptation to depict Aeneas as an one-dimensional symbolic affront to feminine constancy. Monks’s continuo playing is unobtrusively inventive, and Jeffrey coaxes beguiling sounds from the strings of his instrument. There are many passages in this performance in which the fine playing prompts appreciation of how effective a small ensemble can be in music like Purcell’s: not one bar of the score here sounds undernourished, and the ingenuity and subtle beauty of the music command attention in virtually every phrase.

Following the example of the orchestra, the Armonico Consort chorus employs eight voices, sopranos Jenni Harper and Eloise Irving, altos Sarah Denbee and Roderick Morris, tenors Ruairi Bowen and Guy Simcock, and basses Francis Brett and Michael Hickman. Remembering that the choruses in Händel’s operas, in vogue in London a generation after the creation of Dido Aeneas, were typically sung by the soloists in ensemble, Armonico Consort’s use of a chorus of eight is likely a close approximation of what Purcell expected to hear. As Dido’s countrymen, the choristers sing 'When monarchs unite, how happy their state, they triumph at once o'er their foes and their fate' with optimism, the subjects’ devotion to their queen obvious. Their knowing smiles are seen in the mind’s eye as they suggestively intone 'Cupid only throws the dart that's dreadful to a warrior's heart' and ‘To the hills and the vales, to the rocks and the mountains.’ Assuming more sinister identities, they make the witches’ 'Harm’s our delight and mischief all our skill’ as villainously effective as Scarpia’s ‘Credo’ in Puccini’s Tosca, and their sonorous singing of ‘In our deep vaulted cell the charm we’ll prepare, too dreadful a practice for this open air’ is chilling in its devious intensity. Resuming their Carthaginian guises, the ladies and gentlemen phrase 'Great minds against themselves conspire, and shun the cure they most desire' with woeful inflections. Despite the compact dimensions of the ensemble, their singing of the despondent final chorus, ‘With drooping wings ye Cupids come, and scatter roses on her tomb,’ lends the piece the force of the great choruses of lamentation in Händel’s Israel in Egypt.

The Sydney-born Golding, a veteran of distinguished ensembles of both period and modern instruments, is also heard in this performance as the Drunker Sailor, whose 'Come away, fellow sailors' and 'Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore' he sings raucously in tandem with the chorus. He is unlikely to be invited to sing Rodolfo in La bohème at the Royal Opera House, but his Everyman singing here is mostly inoffensive, largely owing to the brevity of his music. His is hardly the strangest performance of a rôle that has been subjected to some very bizarre concepts.

Emerging from the chorus as the Second Witch, Harper revels in the opportunity to deliver a gem of a line like 'Our plot has took, the Queen's forsook,’ and she takes part in the witches’ cawing, which admittedly quickly outstays its welcome, with every appearance of delight. Her fellow chorister Irving proves a mistress of disguise as the Second Woman, the First Witch, and the deceptive Spirit. She sings the Second Woman's 'Oft she visits this lone mountain, oft she bathes her in this fountain' with girlish freshness, and she later credibly impersonates Mercury’s vexation in the Spirit’s 'Stay, Prince! and hear great Jove's command' and 'Tonight thou must forsake this land.'

Beginning with a memorable performance by Arda Mandikian on the HMV set with Flagstad, the best recorded Sorceresses have imparted that an ugly voice is not necessary to successfully convey the character’s enmity. Entrusting the rôle to a male singer as Purcell might have done has become increasingly preferred in recent years, and Morris, pairing this assignment with his choral duties, is a potent countertenor Sorceress. He spits out 'Wayward sisters, you that fright the lonely traveller by night' with the acrimony of a provoked cobra, and there is no questioning the candor of the sentiment of this Sorceress’s 'The Queen of Carthage, whom we hate, as we do all in prosp'rous state.' The euphoria that sweeps through Morris’s singing of 'See, the flags and streamers curling, anchors weighing, sails unfurling' is nefariously fetching. Always thinking ahead, Morris’s Sorceress rallies her coven with a pointed articulation of 'Our next motion must be to storm her lover on the ocean!' Morris’s soft-grained, pewter-tinged timbre is a suitably ethereal instrument for the Sorceress’s music, but his earthy singing creates a portrait of a creepy character of flesh and blood.

The debonair voice of Welsh soprano Elin Manahan Thomas contributes to one of the finest performances of Belinda’s sweet, sisterly music on records. In Thomas’s singing, Purcell’s idiom seems as natural as everyday conversation. The good-natured communicativeness of her singing of 'Shake the cloud from off your brow, fate your wishes does allow' is endearing: who could ignore her entreaty to allow contentment to prevail? More than meddling inspires Thomas’s Belinda’s utterance of 'Grief increases by concealing,' and the soprano declaims 'Then let me speak; the Trojan guest into your tender thoughts has press'd' with unmistakable innuendo. The open-hearted glee in her singing of 'Fear no danger to ensue, the hero loves as well as you' with the Second Woman and chorus is charming. Thomas’s voice glides over the chorus in 'Thanks to these lonesome vales, these desert hills and dales' and 'Haste, haste to town, this open field no shelter from the storm can yield,’ organically guiding the drama. Many singers seemingly view Belinda as a simple lass to whom Purcell allotted some nice music, but Thomas amplifies the expressivity of this Dido and Aeneas with her portrayal of a Belinda fully worthy of her queen’s confidence.

Colchester native baritone Robert Davies is a refreshingly uncomplicated, masculine Aeneas. There are no pretensions of philosophical depth or self-conscious intellect in this fellow: he is a soldier and adventurer through and through, though one who has the good manners to be at least temporarily unnerved by his betrayal of Dido’s trust. The insinuation with which Davies voices 'When, Royal Fair, shall I be bless'd with cares of love and state distress'd?' is witty, and his emphatic 'Aeneas has no fate but you!' leaves no doubt about the virility of this demigod. Davies voices 'If not for mine, for Empire's sake, some pity on your lover take' with touching emotional directness. He makes the double meaning of 'Behold, upon my bending spear a monster's head stands bleeding' as plain as Wagner’s incessant extolling of Siegfried’s testosteronic sword. A vein of dismay courses through Davies’s phrasing of 'Jove's commands shall be obey'd, tonight our anchors shall be weighed,' and the tenderness limned in his 'But ah! what language can I try my injur'd Queen to pacify' is unexpectedly touching. A crucial component of the success of Davies’s performance is his refusal to pursue stylishness by altering his basic method of vocal production. He sings Purcell’s music without affectation, and his rugged, attractive tone molds an Aeneas who more than usually deserves his half of the opera’s title billing.

From her opening statement of 'Ah! Belinda, I am press'd with torment not to be Confess'd' to the last note of the celebrated lament, mezzo-soprano Rachael Lloyd is a Dido whose inexorable trajectory towards tragedy is enacted with honesty and thoughtfully-shaded tone. Lloyd pronounces 'Whence could so much virtue spring?' with the disbelief of a woman whose injured heart is reluctant to admit affection. That Dido’s happiness is destined to be short-lived in no way reduces its potency, and Lloyd’s cry of 'Your counsel all is urged in vain; to earth and heav'n I will complain!' tenably expresses the character’s doubt and fear. Dido’s doubts and fears ultimately prove justified, of course, and Lloyd unlooses avalanches of fury in 'Thus on the fatal banks of Nile, weeps the deceitful crocodile' and 'No, faithless man, thy course pursue; I'm now resolv'd as well as you.' Dido’s longing for death can seem immoderate, even reckless, but Lloyd shapes the queen’s expiry as an act of defiance, in effect defying the stasis imposed upon the character by Tate’s libretto. She sings 'To Death I'll fly if longer you delay' and 'But Death, alas! I cannot shun; Death must come when he is gone' without exaggeration, and she voices 'Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me' with determination rather than despair. Her performance of the imposing lament, 'When I am laid in earth,' reverberates with relief and singularity of purpose, her solid top Gs hurled like clenched fists at the unjust gods. Lloyd develops Dido’s death as a sort of Baroque Liebestod: it resolves but does not define her characterization. Like Davies’s Aeneas, Lloyd’s Dido is not an act of posing and posturing. She is not an ostentatiously glamorous queen, but she is all the more moving for being a flawed, nobly human one.

In this performance, shorn of artifice and psychological baggage that has more to do with Proust than with Purcell, the distance between Dido and Aeneas and the vocal music of contemporary British composers like Thomas Adès, Jonathan Dove, and Joseph Phibbs seems very small. This is neither because Purcell was in some exceptional way sophisticated beyond his contemporaries nor because today’s most gifted composers are old-fashioned: the proximity is explained by the manner in which Purcell perfected the art of uniting English words and music. Assessed solely as a recital of Purcell’s vocal lines, this is a very good but not a great Dido and Aeneas, but it exudes an intelligibility missing from many performances. A vital part of the success of this recording is its confirmation of the reality that Dido and Aeneas constitutes fifty of the most momentous minutes in the history of opera.

CD REVIEW: Ludwig van Beethoven – MISSA SOLEMNIS, Op. 123 (G. Kühmeier, E. Kulman, M. Padmore, H. Müller-Brachmann; Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; B. Haitink; BR Klassik 900130)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1827): Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123—Genia Kühmeier (soprano), Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano), Mark Padmore (tenor), Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone); Anton Barachovsky, violin; Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Bernard Haitink, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in Herkulessaal der Residenz, Munich, Germany, 25 – 26 September 2014; BR Klassik 900130; 1 CD, 79:22; Available from BR Klassik, Amazon, iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

Almost every listener with particular affection for Ludwig van Beethoven’s magnificent behemoth, the Missa solemnis, has amidst the work’s extensive discography a single favorite recorded performance from which affection could not be deviated except by the discovery of recorded interpretations by God or Beethoven himself. The demands of the score are so extravagant that mere survival is admirable, but the qualities that define an effective performance of Missa solemnis are prioritized differently by each individual listener. Enrico Caruso’s famous quip about Verdi’s Il trovatore requiring the four best singers in the world, logic validated by countless dismal performances of the opera, might be expanded and applied with equal credibility to Beethoven’s Missa solemnis: all that a performance of the work requires to be successful is the participation of four extraordinary soloists, the world’s best chorus and orchestra, and a conductor who is both poet and platoon commander. Mastery of Bach’s, Händel’s, Mozart’s, and Haydn’s contrapuntal writing does not guarantee success in Beethoven’s music. Whereas the fugues in Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, Händel’s Saul, Mozart’s Requiem, and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung call for finesse, the gargantuan fugues of the Missa solemnis need the brute authority of a traffic cop who can marshal resources with unflinching determination and clear direction. Well into his ninth decade, Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink might not be assumed to be the most likely candidate for taking up badge and whistle and leading a wholly successful performance of Missa solemnis, but one of the peculiar joys of music is the complete obliteration of assumptions. Remarkably, this recording of Missa solemnis, the product of a pair of performances in Munich’s Herkulessaal der Residenz preserved in wonderfully spacious and admirably clear sonics by Bayerischen Rundfunks producer Michael Kempff and balance engineer Ulrike Schwarz is Haitink’s first. Documenting his concept of the monumental score with a lifetime’s experience with the Symphonies, Concerti, and Fidelio to his credit, the conductor does not allow his reputation as a Beethoven interpreter to be the core of his reading of Missa solemnis. In short, this recording is not a gap-filler in the discography of an important conductor but an insightful artist’s meticulously-honed view of one of the greatest works in the Western liturgical canon.

When Haitink recorded Fidelio some years ago with Jessye Norman in the title rôle, the performance was notable for being perhaps the only recording to have emerged in the years since the release of Karl Böhm’s Deutsche Grammophon recording with Dame Gwyneth Jones and James King that is a bonafide performance of Beethoven’s opera rather than a statement of a conductor’s idiosyncratic concept of it. On the whole, this is also true of Haitink’s recording of Missa solemnis. The Maestro’s pacing of the work is not without an apt air of reverence, but the prevailing ethos of the performance is musical, not dogmatic. Beethoven’s relationship with religion was notoriously complicated, but the sentiments in Missa solemnis speak for themselves when allowed to do so. Haitink permits them the use of their own voices, and his performance is ultimately more moving than many readings that attempt to be overt paeans to indoctrinated faith. The musical forces of the Chor und Symphonierchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks respond to Haitink’s leadership with the unambiguous enthusiasm of fellow musicians who share or at least understand the conduction’s vision. The orchestra’s musicians, players collectively and individually as talented as any of their colleagues in Europe’s most renowned orchestras, deliver one of the most accurate traversals of Beethoven’s score on records, achieving studio-quality precision without losing the do-or-die intensity of live performance. When the music calls for rafter-rattling volume, the musicians supply it unabashedly, but these musicians comprehend what many of today’s singers do not, that producing notes loudly is not the same thing as playing music passionately. This was a critical distinction to Beethoven, and it must also be in the performance of his music.

From the first bars of the ‘Kyrie eleison,’ the finest qualities of Haitink’s interpretation of Beethoven’s daunting music are apparent. Foremost is clarity of line, maintained even in the most grandiose ensemble passages. Indeed, it is remarkable to observe the extent to which Haitink sustains chamber-music-like textures when both orchestra and choir are in full cry. To this is added an intuitive command of dynamics. Neither loud nor soft volumes seem exploited for easy effects: taking his cues from the score, Haitink intelligently exposes Beethoven’s intentions rather than imposing his own. The well-judged tempo adopted for the beginning of the Mass is appropriately measured but not sluggish, establishing the grandeur of the music without being sunk by it. The pointed, still-youthful voice of tenor soloist Mark Padmore emerges from the fabric of the expertly-balanced choral singing with the impact of sunlight breaking through storm clouds, the urgency of his phrasing and diction minimizing the difficulties encountered by a light, lyric voice in this music. It was for a Tamino and not a Siegfried that the part was conceived, however, and the consistently attractive sounds that Padmore emits, projecting rather than forcing the voice, are far more effective than the rough-hewn noises of larger instruments. Soprano Genia Kühmeier’s luscious but lean voice sounds more comfortable in Beethoven’s music than almost any other voice of similar weight recorded in the Missa solemnis, and her singing in the ‘Kyrie’ gleams attractively, hoisted above the stave by Haitink’s supportive management of the string figurations that accompany her. Mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman brings heartening fullness of tone in the middle octave to her singing, and she is among the handful of exponents of the alto part who are not weak links in their respective recordings. In this performance, Kulman’s well-integrated, secure singing is a decided strength. The solo quartet is completed by bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann, another impeccably-trained singer whose work in this performance exceeds the quality of singing by famous basses whose participation in competing recordings of Missa solemnis seemed inspired primarily by efforts at selling records. Considered one by one, the soloists yield certain points to their colleagues on other recordings: Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf more readily evinced the mysticism of the text, Christa Ludwig offered more seamless transitions between registers, Nicolai Gedda had more thrust at the top of the range, and Gwynne Howell and Kurt Moll had greater resonance in the bottom octave of their voices. As an ensemble, however, Haitink’s singers constitute as fine a solo quartet as might be assembled today. They alternate majestically with the choir in both the ‘Kyrie eleison’ and the ‘Christe eleison,’ their efforts highlighting the solitary and the universal implications of supplicants’ pleas for divine mercy.

The surging opening subject of the ‘Gloria’ makes ferocious demands upon the choristers’ throats, the sopranos in particular suffering from being taken repeatedly to the G and A at the top of the stave. The Munich singers hold their own, producing laudably reliable intonation even when singing at full volume at the extremes of their ranges. The soloists make a beautiful oasis of ‘Gratias agimus tibi,’ Kulman singing with especially fine tone that brings to mind the singing of the little-remembered Mary Jarred in Sir Thomas Beecham’s 1937 Leeds Town Hall performance of Missa solemnis. The compactness of the vocal writing for the soloists in ‘Domine fili unigenite’ draws from the singers performances of splendid focus. The choristers’ singing of the Larghetto ‘Qui tolllis peccata mundi’ is lovely. The tenors soar to the top A that launches ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus,’ trumped in short order by a veritable litany of top As from the sopranos. The stately fugue on ‘In gloria Dei patris, amen,’ marked Allegro, ma non troppo e ben marcato by Beethoven, has in Haitink’s handling precisely those qualities. All of the singers, choristers and soloists, handle their passagework impressively, not least when the soloists’ voices intertwine above the basses’ intoning of ‘Cum sancto spiritu,’ detonating the explosive resolution of the frenetic counterpoint.

It is also to the basses that Beethoven entrusted the first words in the ‘Credo,’ and Haitink’s is among the few performances on disc that meticulously observe the composer’s subito forte indications. Beethoven here demands top B♭s of the sopranos, which the ladies provide without undue stress. Padmore begins ‘Et incarnatus est’ ravishingly, the baritonal colorations of the lower octave of his voice lending the text a pronounced element of unanswerable authority. The choral tenors manfully brave the high tessitura of ‘Et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas,’ and the altos display formidable strength in ‘Credo in Spiritum Sanctum qui ex patre filio que procedit,’ an Allegro ma non troppo section that leads the sopranos to another fearsome top B♭. The closing pages of the ‘Credo’ are among the most difficult ever composed for choir, and after the deceptively simply Allegro con moto respite shared by the first violin, flute, and oboe, the pace and momentum are relentless until relieved like the discharge of lightning by the startling alternations of pianissimo and fortissimo in the concluding Grave. Soloists, chorus, orchestra, and conductor scale the heights of the music without once losing their footing.

The ‘Credo’ is the pensive cerebrum of the Missa solemnis, and the ‘Sanctus’ is its throbbing heart. Haitink takes the ‘Mit Andacht’ marking at the start of the movement very seriously but does not ignore the subtle touches of irony in Beethoven’s word-setting. The soloists create an atmosphere of hushed awe in the hesitant opening passage and then unleash a maelstrom of bravura singing in ‘Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua, osanna in excelsis.’ The Sostenuto ma non troppo Preludium to the ‘Benedictus’ is lushly played, the basses’ statement of ‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini’ seeming to emerge from the depths of the earth. Symbolizing the ascent of the Trinity into heaven​ in the form of the Holy Spirit, represented as a dove​, ​the solo violin part in the ‘Benedictus’ is among Beethoven’s most exquisitely beautiful melodic inspirations: neither in concert works nor in his sonatas for violin did the composer fashion a sustained melody of a quality that surpasses that of the solo line in the ‘Benedictus.’ Following Haitink’s lead, Anton Barachovsky phrases the violin solo with eloquence. His tone occasionally sounds slightly anemic, perhaps resulting from microphone placement, but Barachovsky’s playing eschews the excessive vibrato that mars many performances. His phrasing is matched by the soloists’ articulations of text, as well as by the orchestra’s caressing of their music. The powerful crescendo to the subito forte on the central syllable of the final ‘excelsis’ and the subsequent decrescendo to the piano G-major chord that closes the movement are compellingly realized.

In the dolorous opening subject of the ‘Agnus Dei,’ Müller-Brachmann’s steady, handsome bass-baritone voice cannot provide the orotundity of tone at the bottom of the compass that a bass has—or should have—at his disposal, but this thoughtful singer phrases the descending melodic line with utter simplicity and sincerity, making of the text an intensely personal statement that amounts to a confession made directly into the ear of Providence. When the melancholy of the bass line is transformed into an expression of desperate angst by the entrance of the alto and tenor, Kulman’s Ferrier-like timbre joins with Padmore’s thin but unbreakable thread of silvery tone in winding through the music with the organic surety of a river forging its course through a canyon. Kühmeier’s voice floats above the ensemble stunningly, her top Gs glowing like beacons in Saint John of the Cross’s ‘dark night of the soul.’ The Allegretto vivace ‘Dona nobis pacem,’ famously described by Beethoven as a ‘Bitte um innern und äussern Frieden,’ is a devotion into which the disorder of conflict intrudes, and Haitink conducts it as an exposition of the power of compassion to quell doubt, hopelessness, and sorrow.

Conducting Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is surely one of the most terrifying tasks in Classical Music. Composing this gargantuan score must have been no less intimidating even for the steel-willed Beethoven. Completing the score occupied nearly four years of his life, and the work’s first performance in 1824, documented as a bewildering experience for the audience, introduced Beethoven’s masterwork to a musical milieu that perhaps was not yet ready for it. Many conductors also grapple with the Missa solemnis before they are ready to dedicate to it the study, submersion, and surrender that the music demands. With this recording, Bernard Haitink crowns a storied career including countless triumphs in Beethoven repertory with a performance of Missa solemnis that exhibits a mastery of the piece that eludes all but a select society of conductors. It is an achievement for which this conductor prepared for more than sixty years, leading critically-acclaimed performances in Chicago and Zürich before taking the podium before the microphones in Munich. Beethoven deserves no less.

CD REVIEW: G. Sanz – SONES DE PALACIO Y DANÇAS DE RASGUEADO (Xavier Díaz-Latorre, guitar; Pedro Estevan, percussion; Cantus Records C 9630) and I. Albéniz, F. Guerau, S. de Murcia, G. Sanz, & F. Sor – LA GUITARRA DELS LLEONS (Cantus Records C 9623)

[1] GASPAR SANZ (circa 1640 – circa 1710): Sones de palacio y danças de rasgueado de Instrucción de música (Zaragoza, 1674)—Laberintos Ingeniosos: Xavier Díaz-Latorre, five-course guitar; Pedro Estevan, percussion [Recorded in Chiostro della Chiesa di S. Michele a Voltorre, Varese, Lombardy, Italy, in November 2003; Cantus Records C 9630; 1 CD, 65:16; Available from Amazon, iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, La Quinta de Mahler, and major music retailers] and [2] ISAAC ALBÉNIZ (1860 – 1909), FRANCISCO GUERAU (1649 – 1722), SANTIAGO DE MURCIA (circa 1685 – after 1732), GASPAR SANZ, and FERNANDO SOR (1778 – 1839): La Guitarra dels Lleons—Xavier Díaz Latorre, historical guitars; Pedro Estevan, percussion [Recorded in the Sala de Teclados, Museu de la Música de Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, in November 2011, February 2012, and February 2013; Cantus Records C 9623; 1 CD, 60:30; Available from Amazon, iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, La Quinta de Mahler, and major music retailers]

Released in 1971, the American band Three Dog Night’s album Harmony contained a Hoyt Axton-penned tune with lyrics, subsequently crooned by singers ranging from Elvis Presley and Waylon Jennings to Cher and Ike and Tina Turner, that said, 'I've never been to Spain, but I kinda like the music.' Pinning down lucid meanings for the lyrics of popular songs of the 1970s can be as easy as solving quadratic equations, but the literal sentiment of Axton's song is straightforward: there are indeed many people who have never visited Spain who know and love the country's indigenous music. If one surrenders oneself to the music on this magnificent pair of Cantus recordings featuring guitarist Xavier Díaz-Latorre and percussionist Pedro Estevan, Sones de palacio y danças de rasgueado de «Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española» and La Guitarra dels Lleons, though, the listener feels transported to Spain without traveling a single mile. In the performances on these discs, presented with superbly-written (and excellently-translated) liner notes by José Carlos Cabello that provide proper historical and musical frames of reference by discarding erroneous traditions and looking into rather than beyond the music, the aromas of marcona almonds and pajarero figs infuse the air with an atmosphere of the real Spain, the Spain of proper ladies donning mantillas and peinetas during Semana santa and old men playing escoba in public parks. Among the recumbent cultures of modern Europe, their singularities subjected to the suppression of the drive towards an unified continent, the defiantly individual culture of Spain, itself an amalgamation of wildly diverse elements, remains strong, and the guitar is as emblematic of the proud history and customs of Spain as afternoon tea is of cherished English formality. Cabello’s notes are strikingly informative in their revelations of how much ‘knowledge’ about the Spanish guitar as a musical phenomenon is based upon misinformation and mistaken assumptions, but the true education offered by these discs is in the undiluted art of the instrument itself, an art now as ephemeral as legitimate bel canto. Xavier Díaz-Latorre confirms with his playing on these discs that he is not merely a guitar virtuoso: in these performances, encompassing more than two centuries of creative output for the guitar, he is an oracle receiving from the spirits of composers remembered and forgotten the concentrated essence of the Spanish guitar. The listener who hears these discs may never have been to Spain, but this music instills an invigorating sentido of Spain in the listener.

Likely baptized in Aragón on 4 April 1640, Francisco Bartolome Sanz y Celma received theological education at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain’s oldest university and one of Europe’s most prestigious centers of higher learning, before pursuing musical studies in Italy, where his tuitional path likely led him to Naples, Rome, and Venice—if, that is, the gentleman about whom this information is recorded was actually the composer of the music on these discs. Little verifiable information about Sanz exists, and the autobiographical sketch of the author included in Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española is too flattering to be wholly trusted. During his time in Italy, whoever he was, he obviously acquired sufficient skills to qualify him as both an acknowledged pedagogical authority on playing and composing for the Baroque guitar and as master of the instrument at the court of Don Juan José de Austria, the illegitimate son of Felipe IV. With the publication of his Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española, first appearing in Zaragoza in 1674 and eventually extending to three volumes issued as a single publication in 1697, the enigmatic Sanz essentially standardized tablature for the guitar and organized the Spanish school of composition for the instrument that persists unto the Twenty-First Century. In a similarly pioneering vein of ​musical trendsetting, the ensemble Laberintos Ingeniosos was launched with an impetus for not only perpetuating but actively revitalizing the punteado (plucked) and rasgueado (strummed) styles of playing that guitarists such as Andrés Segovia sought to purge from Classical Spanish guitar as vestiges of undesired gypsy influences. In their performances of Sanz’s music on this disc, reissued to celebrated a decade of innovation and tireless dedication to the founding principles of Laberintos Ingeniosos, Díaz-Latorre and Estevan create an authentically Seventeenth-Century sound world that is also astoundingly modern. This duality is one of the wondrous peculiarities of Spanish music in general: works of broadly contrasted vintages can rub shoulders with uncanny stylistic compatibility.

Playing a five-course guitar built in 1997 by Australian luthier Peter Biffin, fitted with gut strings by Sofracob and d'Aquila, Díaz-Latorre exploits the instrument’s timbre to produce an entrancing spectrum of colors that finds cleverly-manipulated echoes in the battery of sounds made by Estevan’s mastery of riq, adufe, tamburello, pandereta, darbouka, dumbek, and kántharos. The contrasts among the Piezas por la E y C are realized with extraordinary dexterity by both gentlemen, the courtly formality of the opening Xácara (Diez y seis diferencias y algunas dellas con estilo de Campanelas) giving way to the brilliant flights of fancy of the Paradetas (Improvisación). The aesthetics of Seventeenth-Century Spain and Johann Sebastian Bach momentarily intersect in the Passacalles (con variedad de passages), phrased by Díaz-Latorre with an air of elegant formality that brings to mind the spirit of Bach’s familiar BWV 582 C-minor Passacaglia and Fugue. The Zarabanda española (Improvisación), reminiscent of the beautiful sarabandes in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s music for harpsichord, inspires Díaz-Latorre to playing of deeply satisfying virtuosic variety. Canario (Quince diferencias escogidas) is one of the most enjoyable pieces on the disc, here played with the unmistakable zeal of true affection.

Beginning with a galvanizing account of the Preludio y Fantasía (con mucha variedad de falsas y una sesquiáltera para los muy diestros), Díaz-Latorre and Estevan craft performances of the Piezas por la O that sizzle with energy but also permit appreciation of the wide sentimental expanses of the music. The sublime—or, in the parlance of its fitting sobriquet, serene—Alemanda (La Serenissima) is delivered with marked sensitivity and delicacy of approach, juxtaposing jarringly with the all-stops-out frenzy of the succeeding Jiga al ayre inglés. The inventive maneuvering of the principal theme of Passacalle (Veinte y ocho partidas de mucho arte)—achieved by both composer and musicians with much art, indeed—provides a dizzying display of the full panoply of the techniques espoused by Sanz. The four Piezas por la D are as ingeniously characterized as the movements of Georg Philipp Telemann’s 1733 Tafelmusik. His playing of the Pavana al ayre español (Cinco partidas con mucha novedad) reveals the great cogency of Díaz-Latorre’s articulation of melodic units, a trait also evident in his performance of Xácara. The aural canvases of both the Passeos por el cuarto tono y una giga por el mismo punto (Improvisación) and Tarantella (Improvisación) are daubed with the immediacy of Picasso’s Guernica, the colors in the music derived from interpretation of the unaffected gestures of the musicians.

The quintet of Piezas por la Cruz constitute a sequence of numbers that delightfully epitomize the heterogeneity of Sanz’s art. The Capricho arpeado y una sesquiáltera de mucho arte receives from Díaz-Latorre a reading of unflappable poise, and the alluring Alemanda (La Preciosa con Campanela) is finessed to beguiling effect by the players’ subtle but red-blooded demeanor. The Corrente and Zarabanda francesa are, like similar movements in the harpsichord suites of Georg Friedrich Händel, clever treatments of original thematic material in the guises of the popular dance rhythms of the time, and Díaz-Latorre reacts to Estevan’s rollicking percussion with his own exuberant playing. This sense of collaboration is also the lifeblood of their performance of the Giga (Improvisación), in which grace and gusto join hands and dance to Sanz’s serendipitous inspiration.

Represented by the Marionas por la B (Veinte y ocho diferencias) the Piezas por la B adhere to the same high standards of the other collections excerpted in Díaz-Latorre’s and Estevan’s voyage through Sanz’s work. The unhurried but blade’s-edge spontaneity of their playing discloses every nuance of Sanz’s writing and engenders the stimulating finale to which every similar disc should aspire.

La Guitarra dels Lleons, a true celebration of the storied history of composition for the Spanish guitar, is in its repertory, preparation, and quality of performance as magnificent an homage as has been committed to disc in tribute to any niche in music. The palpable singularity of purpose apparent in Díaz-Latorre’s and Estevan’s work on the Sanz disc is continued on La Guitarra dels Lleons with equally stunning results. Both in terms of impressively adaptable technique and the insightful use of instruments from different periods in the development of the Spanish guitar, this disc summarizes more than two hundred years of ingenuity in an hour of pulse-quickening, ear-caressing music-making.

For his performance of the music of one of Spain’s greatest composers, Isaac Albéniz, Díaz-Latorre plays a smooth-toned guitar made in Seville in 1859 by Antonio de Torres. The instrument veritably sings beneath the guitarist’s fingers in the ‘Preludio: Asturias (Leyenda)’ from the 1892 Chants d'Espagne (Opus 232), a piece redolent of Albéniz’s urbane but distinctly Spanish cosmopolitanism. The melodic figurations and smoky harmonies evoke both the immediately-recognizable soul of Spain and a slyly accessible modernism. The electrifying ‘Cádiz,’ an episode from Albéniz's 1890 Sérénade Espagnole (Opus 181), is played with the intensity that makes even an hour spent in that city an experience that the senses never forget.

Díaz-Latorre and Estevan revisit the music of Gaspar Sanz with spirited performances of four pieces that affirm that their comprehension and love of Sanz’s standard-setting idiom have blossomed with even greater beauty and histrionic authority with the passage of time. These are anything but carbon copies of their earlier interpretations. Díaz-Latorre here plays the guitarra de los leones, an instrument of Iberian origins dating from circa 1700 that is as much an artistic as a musical treasure. The same might be said of Díaz-Latorre’s and Estevan’s performances. The boundless imagination of their playing of Xácaras (Diez y seis diferencias y algunas dellas con estilo de Campanelas) facilitates a textural lightness through which the ubiquitous sounds of small-town Spain reverberate. The cloudless vistas of Canario (Quince diferencias escogidas) are complemented by the starlit meanderings of Passeos por el cuarto tono y una giga por el mismo punto (Improvisación), mesmerizingly played by both Díaz-Latorre and Estevan. The unbridled elation of their rendition of La Tarantella y Improvisación​ is utterly infectious.

Turning to the music of the too-little-remembered Fernando Sor with the sweet but robust timbre of an 1806 guitar by Cádiz-based maker Josef Pagés, Díaz-Latorre takes on one of the composer’s most enduringly popular and challenging works, his Variations on ‘Das klinget so herrlich’ from Act One of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (Opus 9). Published in London in 1821, the Variations quickly entered the recital repertories of virtually every guitarist capable of playing them; and more than a few not fully capable of playing them, to be sure. It is unlikely than any guitarist in the work’s nearly-two-century history played the Variations more dazzlingly than Díaz-Latorre. Good performances of Bach’s harpsichord and organ works often give the impression that the music requires more than ten fingers and, in the case of the organ music, two feet. So fleet is Díaz-Latorre’s execution of passagework in Sor’s music that it would be no surprise to discover that he possesses a few extra digits to employ in his playing. In his performance, the basic structure of Mozart’s theme never entirely disappears in the whirlwinds of Sor’s variations. The banal tune that serves as the spine of the Introduction et Variations sur l'air „Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre“ (Opus 28), composed in Paris in 1827, also remains in the foreground even when Sor’s inventions are at their most fantastical. That funny little melody was most familiar in the Napoleonic era during which Sor was active as a composer as the accompaniment for bawdy lyrics written in 1709 in celebration of the erroneous news of the death of the first Duke of Marlborough: many modern listeners know it as 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.' In his Introduction and Variations, Sor made silk from a sow’s ear, and in playing the piece Díaz-Latorre makes delectable jamón ibérico from rather tough meat, the sunny overtones of the Pagés instrument gleaming beneath his touch.

Díaz-Latorre again coaxes from the guitarra de los leones cascades of golden sources in his playing of the music of Santiago de Murcia. The animated Zarambeque is enlivened by the bright tones of the instrument and the ways in which the guitarist channels them through the streams of melody, bolstered by Estevan’s exhilarating rhythms. Díaz-Latorre is especially successful at balancing subjects and countersubjects with naturalness that avoids allotting undue prominence to any note or phrase. Inner voices sing as cogently as primary themes in his playing, inviting the listener into the recesses of the music that often remain hidden. Díaz-Latorre’s jaunt through Cumbées is a study in wedding insurmountable technical wizardry with the inimitable joy of playing that cannot be faked by even the most talented artists.

Francisco Guerau’s Diez y ocho diferencias de Mariona are played on an Italian-crafted instrument dating from circa 1700, and it is fascinating to note the somewhat metallic, more rustic sound of the Italian guitar in comparison with the polished-ruby tones of the Spanish instruments. Even in the quintessentially Spanish patterns of Guerau’s music, the sonorities are noticeably different from those in the other selections on La Guitarra dels Lleons—different but no less ingratiating. Díaz-Latorre navigates the hairpin turns in the music with laudable concentration that focuses the prismatic rays of his own genius. Listeners for whom this selection is an introduction to Guerau’s work could hope for no better.

Veterans of the battles waged by ensembles like Hespèrion XXI to restore in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries authenticity, technical validity, and proper contexts to music of previous centuries and diverse cultures, Xavier Díaz-Latorre and Pedro Estevan devote to both of these discs the kind of demonstrative musicality that is ‘historically informed’ in performances of works of any period. These performances are anything but generic, however. From Sanz to Albéniz, the pieces on Sones de palacio y danças de rasgueado and La Guitarra dels Lleons span more than two centuries of music for Spanish guitar. The playing of Xavier Díaz-Latorre and Pedro Estevan is both a chronicle of the evolution of Spanish music and an irrefutable elucidation of its growing preeminence in global culture.

CD REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi – LA TRAVIATA (V. Zeani, B. Prevedi, R. Merrill; St-Laurent Studio Opera Vol. 6 YSL T-267) and Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giacomo Puccini, & Verdi – OPERATIC RECITAL (V. Zeani; DECCA Most Wanted Recitals! 480 8187)

[1] GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): La traviata—Virginia Zeani (Violetta Valéry), Bruno Prevedi (Alfredo Germont), Robert Merrill (Giorgio Germont), Marcia Baldwin (Flora Bervoix), Charles Anthony (Gastone de Letorière), Ron Bottcher (Il barone Douphol), Gene Boucher (Il marchese d’Obigny), Louis Sgarro (Il dottor Grenvil), Karan Armstrong (Annina), Lou Marcella (Giuseppe), Peter Sliker (Un domestico di Flora); Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera; Georges Prêtre, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in performance at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, New York, on 12 November 1966; St-Laurent Studio Opera Volume 6 YSL T-267; 2 CDs, 115:28; Available from St-Laurent Studio] & [2] VINCENZO BELLINI (1801 – 1835), GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848), GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924), and VERDI: Operatic Recital—Virginia Zeani, soprano; Orchestral del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Roma; Gianandrea Gavazzeni and Franco Patanè, conductors [Recorded in Teatro della Pergola, Florence, Italy, 8 – 15 September 1956 (tracks 5 – 8), Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy, 25 – 31 July 1958 (tracks 9 – 18); DECCA Most Wanted Recitals! 480 8187; 1 CD, 79:41; Available from Amazon, ArkivMusic, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

It seems logical to begin an assessment of any recording featuring the Romanian-born soprano Virginia Zeani by stating that this exceptional singer needs no introduction, but the distressing reality is that this is perhaps no longer the case. The propensity in opera in the Twenty-First Century for substituting praise for adequate singers of today for remembrance of extraordinary singers of yesterday is nearly as confounding as the genre itself, but an environment in which mention of Virginia Zeani is met with blank stares on the faces of young singers and opera lovers—an environment inconceivable not so long ago—is endemic of an Art form that cannot possibly know where it is going because it no longer cares about where it has been. The neglect of no one singer or listener will destroy the future of opera, but the attitude that it represents is a greater threat to the genre than funding shortfalls or aging populations. It is hardly insignificant that Dame Joan Sutherland wrote that both she and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, regarded Zeani’s voice as the finest natural instrument they heard during their storied careers in opera. Aside from a few indifferently-engineered titles recorded in her native Romania and recordings of widely-varying quality of live performances, in many of which she partnered her husband, bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Zeani’s is a voice scarcely documented on recordings. For this reason alone, the releases of St-Laurent Studio’s edition of a 1966 Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi’s La traviata and Zeani’s installment in DECCA’s Most Wanted Recitals! Series are invaluable, but the greater reason for jubilation is the quality of the singing enshrined on these discs. Disheartening as it is to realize that a career as significant as Zeani’s could be neglected by subsequent generations, especially as her dedication to teaching has contributed to the development of some of today’s most accomplished singers, there are at least these releases to which to point as examples of the sound of one of the Twentieth Century’s most purely beautiful voices.

It was as Violetta in the 12 November performance of La traviata preserved on St-Laurent Studio’s discs that Zeani made her début with the Metropolitan Opera, for which she would ultimately sing only three performances [two as Violetta in New York and one as Elena in Verdi’s I vespri siciliani on tour in Newport, Rhode Island]. It is an exasperatingly scant MET legacy for a singer of Zeani’s stature, but hers was the misfortune of emerging in an era in which Sir Rudolf Bing had Sutherland for Zeani’s coloratura parts, Leontyne Price for her Verdi repertory, and Renata Tebaldi for her verismo rôles. [Her consort Rossi-Lemeni fared little better, amassing only a dozen performances with the company during the 1953 - 1954 Season.] Her Electrocord studio recording of La traviata, made in Romanian in 1968, is a worthy memento of her Violetta, but this MET performance is a still more compelling document of the bewitching artistry of which she was capable in Verdi’s music. Zeani was, to a great extent, one of the most ‘complete’ Violettas in memory. As dashingly lovely as Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor​, she possessed the extraordinary physical beauty for Violetta that must often be taken on faith, but, hearing this MET performance, it is the absolute suitability of the voice for the rôle that i​s​ immediately and consistently enthralling. In Act One, there are occasional ​signs of the inevitable nervousness that is part of a début in a house like the MET, but from her first lines in the Brindisi, 'Tra voi saprò dividere il tempo mio giocondo,' the voice gains markedly in security and easily-projected resonance. Unlike many Violettas, she makes much of a conversational line like 'Un tremito che provo,' highlighting the dramatic significance of the text without overemphasizing its musical prominence. Likewise, there is unmistakable sincerity in her voicing of 'Solo amistade io v'offro: amar non so, né soffo un così eroico amore.' The soprano's breath control in her imaginatively-phrased account of 'Ah, fors'è lui che l'anima solinga ne' tumulti' is a marvel, but her coloratura in 'Sempre libera degg'io folleggiare di gioia in gioia,' in which the pair of D♭​6s are barely touched and there is no interpolated E♭​6, betrays​​ intermittent uncertainty. Few Violettas manage to portray as sympathetic a character in the context of Act One, however, and by any standard except her own best work Zeani’s vocalism is remarkable.

It is in the Act Two scene with Germont that Zeani irrefutably proves her mettle.​ The probity with which she delivers 'Donna son io, signore, ed in mia casa; ch'io vi lasci assentite più per voi che per me' reveals the delicate heart of her Violetta​, and the simplicity of her singing of 'Il previdi – v'attesi – era felice troppo' is heartbreaking. Zeani accentuates the almost rigid rhythmic profile of 'Non sapete quale affetto vivo, immense m'arda in petto' to startling effect, effectively elucidating the terrible price of the sacrifice that Germont is demanding of her. 'Ah! dite alla giovine sì bella e pura' surges from her with the force of ​a thunderbolt. The unaffected sadness with which this Violetta bids Germont farewell is profoundly moving, and the sheer vocal poise of Zeani's singing of the arching 'Amami, Alfredo, quant'io t'amo' is arresting. Zeani declaims 'Alfredo, Alfredo, di questo core non puoi comprendere tutto l'amore' in response to Alfredo's denunciation of Violetta at Flora's ball with undiluted emotion, the words illuminated by her glistening tone. After the frequent ascents into the upper register in Act One, Violetta's tessitura in Act Two hovers at the top of the stave, and this lower center of vocal gravity provides Zeani with steadier technical footing. This increased confidence fosters singing and vocal acting of special eloquence.

The knell of death resounds in Zeani's voice from her first note in Act Three. Violetta's reading of Germont's letter is often one of the most muddled scenes in opera, sopranos either preserving their resources by reciting the letter as though it were a shopping list or over-emoting with the extravagance of Sarah Bernhardt’s infamous portrayal of Sardou's Fédora. In this performance, Zeani makes a plausible attempt at reading the letter without resorting to embarrassing melodrama. Her cry of ​'È​ tardi!'​ after reading Germont's words is piercing, however, the whole weight of Violetta's suffering borne by those two words. Zeani’s voicing of 'Addio, del passato bei sogni ridenti' rivals the most rapturous accounts of the aria on disc, her top As utterly solid and supported with tonal placement and breath control that should be models for all aspiring Violettas. She phrases 'Parigi, o caro, noi lasceremo, la vita uniti transcorreremo' in the duet with Alfredo with conviction that imparts a concerted effort to defy the ravages of disease. In the final scene, there are genuine shock and rage in Zeani's 'Ah! gran Dio! Morir sì giovine, io che ho penato tanto!'​ and 'Se una pudica vergine degli anni suoi sul fiore,’ but it is again the combination of technical acumen and tonal luster rather than histrionic effects that facilitates the dramatic verisimilitude of this Violetta. Comparing this Metropolitan Opera performance, recorded from the audience [none of Zeani’s MET appearances were broadcast performances] in generally good if occasionally distant sound that Yves St-Laurent has restored with admirable attention to faithfully preserving the timbres of the voices, with the familiar Covent Garden Traviata broadcast from January 1960, Zeani was marginally off her best form on the evening of her MET début, but she remained a Violetta of genuinely stunning style, substance, and sentimental effectiveness. [An additional, even finer perspective on Zeani’s Violetta will be furnished by the forthcoming release by Celestial Audio (catalogue number CA1740) of a beautifully idiomatic 1963 RAI Roma broadcast featuring Zeani, Luigi Infantino as Alfredo, and Antonio Boyer as Germont.]

The Lombard tenor Bruno Prevedi (1928 – 1988) is a singer whose work truly justifies the too-familiar cliché: were he singing in 2015 as he did in 1966, he would occupy a place of prominence in Italian repertory that few of today’s tenors could rival. Having débuted at the MET in 1965 as Puccini’s Cavaradossi, Prevedi was largely dismissed by the New York press for failing to be Bergonzi, Corelli, or Tucker, but his portrayal in this performance with Zeani is not unworthy of comparison with Bergonzi’s Alfredo, one of his best rôles. Prevedi’s is not a youthful-sounding Alfredo, but the freshness of his vocalism is impressive. His voicing of ‘Libiamo, ne’ lieti calici che la bellezza infiora’ is buoyantly light-hearted, contrasting with the seriousness of his statement of ‘Oh, se mia foste, custode io veglierei pe’ vostri soavi dì.’ Prevedi suffuses ‘Un dì felice, eterea, mi balenaste innante’ with all the hope of young love, and his ‘Oh, quanto v’amo!’ is an intensely private admission. The tenor’s pitch sags from time to time, most noticeably in the first half of Act One, but his intonation in his part’s moments of greatest stress is generally accurate. In Act Two, the legitimately Italianate fervor of Prevedi’s singing of ‘Lunge da lei per me non v’ha diletto!’ and Alfredo’s aria, ‘De’ miei bollenti spiriti il giovanile ardore’ is wonderful. Unlike many Alfredos of similar vintage, Prevedi was allowed one verse of his cabaletta, ‘O mio rimorso! O infamia e vissi in tale errore,’ which he sings strongly despite a bizarrely truncated ending that makes the number seem more than usually perfunctory. The desolation and anger that shape his exchange with his father are also the core of his Alfredo’s public shaming of Violetta at Flora’s ball. Prevedi’s articulation of ‘Ogni suo aver tal femmina per amor mio sperdea’ has the slashing edge of a dagger, contrasting tellingly with his despondent ‘Ah sì che feci! ne sento orrore.’ In Act Three, he phrases both ‘Parigi, o cara, noi lasceremo’ and ‘Oh mio sospiro, oh palpito, diletto del cor mio!’ affectionately, seemingly clinging to a desperately idealistic belief that Violetta will recover and resume their idyllic coexistence. In his five seasons at the MET, Prevedi was heard alongside stalwarts of the company—Martina Arroyo, Dorothy Kirsten, Anna Moffo, Leontyne Price, Gabriella Tucci—in several of Verdi’s and Puccini’s most popular tenor rôles. His singing lacked the aristocratic grace of Bergonzi, which it resembles in the lower octave, and the raw power of Corelli, but his Alfredo in this performance is a sonorous-voiced Latin lover in the tradition of Marcello Mastroianni who exudes affection for his Violetta and for Verdi’s music: what more is required?

Giorgio Germont was the rôle of Robert Merrill’s (1917 – 2004) MET début on 15 December 1945, when his Violetta and Alfredo were Licia Albanese and Richard Tucker. It was also as Germont that Merrill celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as a MET artist in 1970, on which occasion he was reunited in a ceremony following Act Two of the Halloween performance of La traviata with eight of his MET Violettas, an illustrious sorority that included singers as diverse as Bidú Sayão, Eleanor Steber, Victoria de los Ángeles, Dame Joan Sutherland, and Teresa Żylis-Gara. Merrill recollected that, at the time of the 1946 NBC broadcast performances recorded by RCA Victor, Arturo Toscanini advised him that Germont is a rôle that a singer can master only after he is a father himself, and the ‘greenness’ of Merrill’s early interpretations of Germont had ripened by the time of this 1966 performance into a knowing, keenly-felt portrait of a man whose actions are driven by a commitment to upholding his family’s honor. Merrill’s performances were often more memorable for the quality of the vocalism than for psychological insights, but his Germont in this 1966 La traviata is an elegant, emotionally vital presence. In Act Two, Merrill and Zeani communicate more of Germont’s and Violetta’s feelings solely through thoughtful execution of Verdi’s score than many singers manage to do with more overtly dramatic effects. Merrill phrases ‘Pura siccome un angelo iddio mi die’ una figlia’ with a father’s love for his daughter, and that affection is shared with Violetta in his comforting performance of ‘Sì, piangi, o misera – supremo, il veggo, è il sacrificio – ch’ora io ti chieggo.’ Unlike many Germonts, even those who sing well, Merrill seems to actually listen to Zeani’s enunciation of Violetta’s counterarguments. The aria ‘Di Provenza il mar, il suol’ defeats many otherwise capable Germonts, but this performance preserves one of Merrill’s most effective recorded accounts of it, the tone steady and attractive throughout the wide range of the music. His ‘Di sprezzo degno se stesso rende chi pur nell’ira la donna offende’ in response to Alfredo’s spiteful condemnation of Violetta exhibits as much hurt as ire. At the sides of his son and the dying Violetta in Act Three, Merrill’s Germont intones a moving ‘Di più non lacerarmi troppo rimorso l’alma mi divora,’ and his caressing ‘Cara, sublime vittima d’un disperato amore’ bears the weight of an enormous guilt. With many beloved studio recordings and broadcast performances in circulation, it is possible to take for granted what an important singer Merrill was. This performance reminds the listener of the wonders of which he was capable when in his prime.

Georges Prêtre presides over a performance that integrates finesse with full-throated singing, the cumulative power of the drama minimizing the significance of moments of sloppy ensemble and indifferent singing and playing by the Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra. In the casting of secondary rôles, the performance confirms Sir Rudolf Bing’s success in building a true company during his tenure as the MET’s General Manager: Marcia Baldwin as Flora, Karan Armstrong as Annina, the evergreen Charles Anthony as Gastone, Ron Bottcher as Barone Douphol, Gene Boucher as Marchese d’Obigny, Louis Sgarro as Dottore Grenvil, Lou Marcella as Giuseppe, and Peter Sliker as Violetta’s servant all sing ably, contributing to the overall high musical standards of the performance. The spatial configurations of the Alfred Lunt production of La traviata, first seen at the MET less than two months before this performance [it opened on 24 September 1966], aurally impacted the recording of the voices, resulting in greater clarity in Acts One and Three than in Act Two. The opera’s Preludio is missing from the recording, but, composing for Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in 1853, Verdi likely did not expect the Preludio to be heard by a majority of the audience. This indispensable St-Laurent Studio release supplies a marvelous glimpse into a brief chapter in the history of the Metropolitan Opera now inexcusably at risk of being forgotten.

Artfully and lovingly remastered and prepared for CD release in Universal’s Most Wanted Recitals! Series by Victor Suzán Reed, Zeani’s 1956 and 1958 DECCA recordings of arias by Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Puccini offer evidence of the soprano’s exceptional versatility, a quality in possession of which her only true rivals in the Twentieth Century were Maria Callas and Renata Scotto. Like Callas, whose Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Kundry were admired alongside her celebrated bel canto portrayals, Zeani won acclaim not only as Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi heroines but also as Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, albeit sung in Italian. It was upon bel canto repertory that Zeani’s early success was founded, however; and which undoubtedly inspired the recordings here restored to the catalogue. Of ​unknown provenance, the arias from Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, and I Puritani permit appreciation of the bravura technique that won Zeani the ardent appreciation of Trieste and London audiences for her revelatory 1957 performances as Donizetti’s Lucia and Bellini’s Elvira. Here elucidating the delicacy of Lucia’s mental state from her first entrance in Act One, Zeani sings the aria 'Regnava nel silenzio' captivatingly, the divisions dispatched with disarming naturalness. Her trills lack the crispness of Callas’s and Sutherland’s, but, unlike many of her rivals in this repertory, she at least bothers to attempt them. In Lucia’s Mad Scene, some of the highest notes, including the traditional interpolated E♭6, seem to have been produced with strong-armed willpower rather than ideal technical control. Though not devoid of expressivity, these performances are the work of a very gifted young singer who had not yet fully honed the interpretive skills that later portrayals evinced. Still, Zeani’s phrasing of Amina’s 'Ah, non credea mirarti' from Act Two of Bellini’s La sonnambula radiates girlish melancholy, and her impeccably-voiced 'Qui la voce sua soave,' the aria from Elvira’s Mad Scene in Act Two of Bellini’s I Puritani, is second only to Callas’s performance in her 1953 studio recording as an exposition of the character’s despair.

Most illuminating ​among these early recordings are the studio account​s​ of Violetta’s scene that ends Act One and 'Addio del passato' from Act Three​ of La traviata, recorded a decade before her MET début and skillfully accompanied, like the Lucia, Sonnambula, and Puritani excerpts, by the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Gianandrea Gavazzeni. The basic construction of Zeani’s 'Ah, fors'è lui che l'anima solinga ne' tumulti' is much as it was at the MET in 1966, but even in the relative comfort of studio sessions she did not linger over the D♭​6s in the cabaletta—not that Verdi asked her to, of course. Her ‘Addio del passato,’ though not yet the emotional exegesis that it would later be at Covent Garden and the MET, is already a potent promulgation of the fading Violetta’s inner torment. Not surprisingly, the aria is searingly, exquisitely sung, as it was in the 1956 Naples performance of La traviata also preserved on disc five months before she created the rôle of Blanche de la Force in the world première of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at La Scala.

​Also dating from 1956 are the recordings of Mimì's 'Sì​, mi chiamano Mimì' from Act One and 'Donde lieta uscì' from Act Three of Puccini’s La bohème. Both arias are sung with obvious understanding of Puccini’s melodic structures, and the texts are declaimed with the vowels on the breath in the now-extinct fashion of Rosetta Pampanini. The balance of Zeani’s Puccini recital, stylishly supported by the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Franco Patanè, was recorded in Rome in 1958, slightly less than a decade before her Cio-Cio San, Mimì, and Suor Angelica were exalted in Barcelona. Lauretta's 'O mio babbino caro' from Gianni Schicci is standard fare for any soprano’s Puccini programme, but Zeani’s performance actually justifies its inclusion. Hers is a passionate rather than a naïve plea, but it is one that few fathers could resist. Innocence is the hallmark of her performances of Liù's 'Signore, ascolta' and 'Tu che di gel sei cinta' from Turandot, however, but it is the simple beauty of the vocalism that inspires awe. Zeani’s singing of Cio-Cio San's 'Un bel dì vedremo' and 'Tu, tu, piccolo iddio!' from Madama Butterfly is characterized by audible responses to the character’s feelings that are rare for studio performances of arias removed from their contexts. The top B♭s that crown ‘Un bel dì vedremo’ and the climactic top A in ‘Tu, tu, piccolo iddio!’ are unforgettable tones. The soprano refuses to wallow in the anguish of Suor Angelica's 'Senza mamma,’ focusing instead on mourning for the nun’s dead child with near-perfect management of line. In the theatre, Manon Lescaut proved one of Zeani’s finest parts, not least in a magical 1969 Rome production that partnered her with the Des Grieux of Richard Tucker. On this disc, her accounts of Manon’s 'In quelle trine morbide' and 'Sola, perduta, abbandonata' fuse the temperament of Maria Zamboni, Mafalda Favero, and Clara Petrella with the dulcet femininity of Licia Albanese and the sumptuousness of Renata Tebaldi. Her singing of 'Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore’ summons memories of the Toscas of Dorothy Kirsten and Antonietta Stella, the sweetness of the voice allied with a strength that lends credibility to her impersonation of a woman who sings a gorgeous lyric aria and a moment later plunges a knife into the heart of a tyrant. The punishing tessitura of Magda's 'Chi il bel sogno di Doretta' from Act One of La rondine does not prevent Zeani from forging a performance as notable for poetic use of text as for perfectly-placed high notes. These selections are an intriguing preview of the committed, often triumphant Puccinian that Zeani would ultimately prove to be.

It will perhaps seem counterintuitive to suggest that both Studio St-Laurent’s terrific La traviata and Universal’s superb Operatic Recital featuring Virginia Zeani incite a dogged woe. The splendors of these discs force contemplation of the evolution of opera in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century and the first fifteen years of the new millennium. Without question, there are talented, well-trained singers at work in the world’s opera houses today, some of whom sing rôles like Verdi’s Violetta, Alfredo, and Giorgio Germont persuasively. In many cases, the visages are now younger, the waists slimmer, the diction better, and the emotions less aggrandized, but how can ignorance and dismissal of the work of Verdians like Maria Caniglia, Zinka Milanov, Anita Cerquetti, Dorothy Kirsten, and the ravishing Virginia Zeani be regarded as anything resembling progress?

Bella Violetta: Soprano Virginia Zeani as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera in 1966 [Photo by Louis Mélançon, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

RECORDING OF THE MONTH / June 2015: Tri Nguyen & Dima Tsypkin - CONSONNANCES (T. Nguyen; Quator 'Ilios; Lunelios LNL 888 1001)

TRI NGUYEN and DIMA TSYPKIN: Consonnances – Music for Vietnamese Ɖàn Tranh and String Quartet—Tri Nguyen, Ɖàn Tranh; Quator ‘Ilios [Recorded in Studio Sequenza, Montreuil, France, in April 2013; Lunelios LNL 888 1001; 1 CD, 63:29; Available from Amazon (digital), iTunes, and major musical retailers]

If there is one abiding lesson that every tragedy and ill-conceived response of the past year should have seared in the conscience of humanity it is the dismaying fact—indeed, a tragedy in its own right—that the expansion of our abilities to interact with one another regardless of distance and difference has engendered not the expected synergy among cultures but rather illogical but zealous drives to isolate and segregate. Somehow, the compulsion to look beyond one’s own social boundaries, to embrace what one does not fully understand because doing so enriches the experience of living in a complicated but marvelous world, has become in the insecure psyche of modern society a betrayal rather a responsibility of one’s individuality. Robert Kennedy wrote that ‘the answer to the intolerant man is diversity,’ but that diversity largely remains a concept rather than a reality as much in the Arts as in any other realm of life. The repertory of Western Classical Music is as rich a legacy as exists in Art, but what, in truth, remains to be said with the same idioms that have defined music in the West since melody was first borrowed by man from the mouths of nature? It is every man’s inclination to be comfortable with that with which he is familiar, but unimagined rewards often await those curious and courageous enough to peer over the walls of their self-imposed confinement—rewards like those that greet listeners who set aside preconceptions and submerge themselves in Consonnances with open ears, open minds, and open hearts. A degree of cultural integration that would render the notion of the assimilation of elements of Eastern and Western musics an essential component of the future of Classical Music is perhaps only a dream, but this disc offers tantalizing glimpses of the possibilities of music truly without borders. As a confluence of cultures, Consonnances is a revelatory disc. In realistic terms, however, revelations and artistic value are also merely concepts. What makes hearing Consonnances such an enjoyable experience is that it simply is a disc that documents very fine musicians making sublime music together. When musicians unite, diplomacy requires neither words nor politics.

Educated both in his native Vietnam and in France, where he assumed a place in an artistic legacy that encompasses the artistry of celebrated Romanian pianist Clara Haskill, Tri Nguyen is both a composer and pianist trained in the Western tradition and a virtuoso on the đàn tranh, a sixteen-stringed cousin of the zither that likely evolved from the Chinese guzheng, an instrument familiar from many cinematic depictions of Chinese culture. Here collaborating with Quator 'Ilios, Nguyen and the Quartet’s cellist, Dima Tsypkin, fuse both the sounds of the đàn tranh and the aural atmosphere of Vietnamese folk music with the particular sonorities of the Western string quartet. Rather than distorting the textures of either component, their work capitalizes on the ways in which the unique capabilities of the đàn tranh and the string quartet intersect. Though the musical languages are very different, it is impossible when hearing Consonnances not to think of Johann Strauß II’s G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald and its prominent zither solos. Nguyen shares Strauß’s affinity for translating music for what is considered a ‘folk’ instrument into the parlance of mainstream concert music with results that seem wholly appropriate rather than quaint. The 'Ilios players—violinists Buynta Gorya​eva and Iryna Topolnitska, violist Caroline Berry, and Tsypkin—are ideal co-celebrants in this cross-cultural homage to shared musical propensities, their own sensibilities reflecting Nguyen’s Panglossian artistic heritage. These five individuals have clearly absorbed almost every nuance of one another’s styles, enabling them to approach the pieces on Consonnances as dialogues rather than đàn tranh works with string quartet obbligato. The quartet’s playing, guided by Tsypkin’s emotionally-charged performance, matches insightfully-managed tonal textures with phrasing that is unerringly attuned to melodic strands. It is apparent from the first notes on the disc that Consonnances is anything but a pedagogical experiment: this is the music of earnest conversation, cooperation, and the sort of cultural cross-pollination upon which the continued blossoming of global music depends.

Drawing inspiration from their respective cultural heritages, Nguyen’s as a child of an aristocratic Mandarin family in Vietnam and Tsypkin’s as a product of Soviet Belarus, these visionary artists have created music that seduces the listener with sounds both eerily familiar and quite new. The burgeoning romance of ‘Khóc Hoàng Thiên’ (‘Complaints to the Sky in the Falling Dust’), conveyed in throbbing melodic figurations, will be recognized by any listener who has ever gazed into the sky, wondering whether a distant beloved looks upon the same celestial bodies. The wistfulness of ‘Trăng Thu Dạ Khúc’ (‘Autumn Moon Lullaby’) cascades from the instruments’ timbres, and the laments of young lovers separated by circumstance echo through the beautifully-arranged strains of ‘Lý Giao Duyên’ (‘Exchange of Love’). A suggestion of the inevitability of nature permeates ‘Lưu Thủy Đoản’ (‘Waterdrops’), the unsettling gurgling of rain falling into a stream lulled by the union of man and nature in the evocative ‘Lý Con Sáo’ (‘Song of the Blackbird’).

In the vein of the overtly erotic music that opens Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and the thorny, gamelan-influenced presence of the silent Tadzio in Britten’s Death in Venice, ‘Sương Chiều’ (‘Twilight Mist’) contrasts the oppressive din of the physical world with the frenetic utterances of lovers in congress in inventive counterpoint that draws from Nguyen and Topolnitska playing of stormy brilliance. The Orphic associations of ‘Khỗng MinhTọa Lầu’ (‘Strategist Khỗng on the Fortress’), the music depicting the serene musicality of a master tactician juxtaposed with the cacophony of disorganized martial aggression, are elucidated with stirring clarity by Nguyen’s virtuosic but tranquil mastery of the đàn tranh. He and Tsypkin envelop the quiet contemplativeness of ‘Nam Ai’ (‘Sadness of the South’) in tones that inhabit the realm of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The sentimental discernment of their partnership shines in every bar of this performance.

The bashful, hesitant interaction of newlyweds on their wedding night in ‘Lưu Thuỷ Hành Vân’ (‘Move with Water, Walk on Clouds’) conjures the scented aura of the end of Act One of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, but Nguyen’s paramours address one another with sweet words of mutual respect and spiritual fulfillment rather than carnal desire. The grandeur of ‘Ái Từ Kê’ (‘Emperor’) establishes a mood that could hardly be more different, the magnificence of the imperial court invoked by the broad strokes of suspended harmony. An air of celebration also infuses ‘Tử Quy Từ’ (‘The Joy of Coming Home’) with a distinct musical profile that exudes the exquisite pleasures of belonging and acceptance. ‘Rao Buổn’ (‘Melancholy’) and ‘Hoài Xứ’ (‘Nostalgia’) are, in a sense, the most profoundly personal pieces on Consonnances. Here, the myriad of influences on Nguyen’s artistic development are synthesized into a singular mode of expressivity both intrinsically Eastern and unmistakably universal. If an important artist’s worldview can be concentrated into the intoxicating elixir of two pieces of music, these surely capture the essence of Nguyen’s aesthetic.

One of the inalienable rights about which tongues are ever wagging is the freedom to like what one likes without explanation or justification, and Art is an ideal arena in which to figuratively let that freedom ring. The peril against which all artists who deserve that distinction fight is the perversion of the right to like indiscriminately into a license to dislike discriminately. Ignorance is pardonable as it can be remedied, but uninformed dismissal and disrespect are the slippery slopes down which society tumbles into intolerance and unredeemable stupidity. Few children faced with steaming portions of toxic-looking vegetables never heard from their mothers, ‘You might like it if you try it.’ The ethos of artistic nurturing should be no different. Consonnances is a disc via which five musicians exclaim to the reluctant listener, ‘Try it! You just might like it.’ Without artists like Tri Nguyen, Dima Tsypkin, and the members of Quator 'Ilios, without discs of the uncompromising integrity and phenomenal beauty of Consonnances, without the celebrations of identity and community that this disc represents, of what legitimate value is the continued life of Classical Music for which its practitioners and supporters strive?