CD REVIEW: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL (J. Archibald, N. Reinhardt, M. Schelomianski, D. Portillo, R. Gilmore; Alpha Classics 242)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384—Jane Archibald (Konstanze), Norman Reinhardt (Belmonte), Mischa Schelomianski (Osmin), David Portillo (Pedrillo), Rachele Gilmore (Blonde), Christoph Quest (Bassa Selim); Ensemble Aedes; Le Cercle de l’Harmonie; Jérémie Rhorer, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 21 September 2015; Alpha Classics 242; 2 CDs, 120:51; Available from NAXOS Direct (USA), Amazon (USA), fnac (France), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

When spurred in 1781 by an irreconcilable row with his Salzburg-based employer to abandon the town of his birth and seek his fortune in the Hapsburg capital, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart found Vienna a city as much in the musical clutches of Italians as it had been when Antonio Vivaldi took his last breaths there forty years earlier. Muzio Clementi dominated Viennese keyboards, Antonio Salieri was director of the imperial Italian opera and would in seven years’ time become imperial Kapellmeister, and Metastasio remained the court’s favored librettist. Into this environment was infused the enlightening influence of Emperor Joseph II, who had been Holy Roman Emperor since the death of his father in 1765 but did not assume total control of the Hapsburg realms until the passing of his mother, Maria Theresa, in November 1780. Whilst still sharing the throne with his formidable Mutter, Joseph II initiated a groundbreaking, five-year project (1778 – 1783) intended to advance opera in German as a viable rival for the Italian opere serie that held sway in Viennese theatres. The phenomenal success of Joseph II's Nationalsingspiel initiative was the twenty-six-year-old Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, premièred in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 16 July 1782. The inaugural performances of Entführung having taken in more money than Mozart earned for a year’s toil at Salzburg’s archiepiscopal court, it might seem that composer’s financial security was serendipitously assured, but his windfall amounted to only slightly more than a third of the box office receipts for the opera’s first two performances. What Entführung established beyond dispute, however, was that Mozart was a composer whose musical brilliance and uncanny insights into the human condition were potent in any language.

It is sometimes erroneously suggested—or, more dangerously, assumed—that Die Entführung aus dem Serail was Mozart’s first foray into composing opera auf Deutsch, but his career prior to his relocation to Vienna included the composition of the 1768 Singspiel Bastien und Bastienne, extensive (and overtly operatic) incidental music for the drama Thamos, König in Ägypten, and Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe, a 1780 reworking of his 1775 opera La finta giardiniera with a German text. It was his presentation of the score of his unfinished 1779 Singspiel Zaide to Nationalsingspiel director Johann Gottlieb Stephanie der Jüngere that solidified the commission for Die Entführung aus dem Serail, but assertions that Zaide, which Mozart initially entitled Das Serail, was essentially a ‘trial run’ for Entführung are also inaccurate. [A forthcoming recording by Classical Opera and an excellent cast, scheduled for release by Signum Classics in September 2016, is certain to fully reveal Zaide's merits.] Mozart put Zaide aside in order to compose Idomeneo, which premièred in Munich on 29 January 1781, six months to the day before the young composer received the Entführung libretto—frequently dismissed by later observers and acknowledged by Mozart himself as one of the weakest that he set to music—from Stephanie. The text may have disappointed Mozart, but the colorful, by modern standards not-quite-tactful tale of rescued lovers and collisions between oriental and occidental cultures stimulated his imagination, motivating the composition of a score that continues to challenge performers and enchant audiences.

Conducted with seemingly inexhaustible verve by Jérémie Rhorer, whose pacing of this performance, recorded in performance in Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in September 2015, places him in the company of Josef Krips, Karl Böhm, and Sir Colin Davis among conductors with natural affinities for handling this deceptively uncomplicated score, the musicians of period-instrument ensemble Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and singers of Ensemble Aedes maintain unparalleled presences in this performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, clanging and clamoring raucously but shortchanging none of the too-often-unheralded brilliance of Mozart’s music. Not surprisingly, the percussionists jingle and jangle merrily, taking advantage of every opportunity given to them by Mozart’s Turkish-inspired writing, but their enthusiasm never spills over into playing loudly merely for the sake of creating a good-natured din. There is a clear purpose to every drumbeat and tinkling of the triangle, purpose discerned from rather than in spite of Mozart’s instructions. Not least in the introduction to Konstanze’s aria ‘Martern aller Arten,’ the woodwind playing is extraordinary, the balances among instruments and unassailable intonation remarkable for a live performance. Rhorer’s tempi and Mozart’s robust orchestrations make daunting demands on the strings, and the Le Cercle de l’Harmonie players respond to every challenge with vigor and virtuosity. The choristers exude high spirits in their ideally-blended singing of the Janissaries’ choruses. Rhorer is an experienced Mozartean, but, intuitively serving his cast and the twenty-something composer, his is an effervescently youthful Entführung.

Presiding over his seraglio with fleet-tongued authority, Berlin-born thespian Christoph Quest’s Bassa Selim is a winsomely straightforward tyrant who is slow to anger but ferociously menacing when his pride is offended. Quest’s diction is appropriately patrician without being ridiculously stilted, and his avoidance of distorting syllables even when raging enables comprehension of every word of his part. When he realizes that the game is up and that he has been outwitted, Quest’s Selim is gracious in defeat—a trait from which scores of today’s authority figures from Addis Ababa to Zagreb could learn much. Many actors have made a star turn of Selim, but Quest creates a legitimate character who lurks in the shadows of the drama even when his voice is silent.

In the 234 years since the première of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, there cannot have been a more beautifully-sung and thoughtfully-acted Pedrillo than Texas-born tenor David Portillo. Delivering every line of his dialogue with sure timing, he makes Pedrillo a lovable figure before singing a note, but his greatest strengths are revealed when he joins Belmonte and Osmin in the Act One trio, ‘Marsch, marsch, marsch!’ Portillo is a born comedian whose musicality matches his skillful use of text, and in his Act Two aria ‘Frisch zum Kampfe!’ he is the rare Pedrillo not brought to grief by the top As and B. Pedrillo’s rollicking duet with Osmin, ‘Vivat, Bacchus,’ is one of the score’s highlights, and Portillo’s uninhibited, golden-toned singing makes this and the quartet with Konstanze, Belmonte, and Blonde, ‘Ach Belmonte! Ach mein Leben,’ exhibitions of gloriously-sustained bel canto. The young tenor voices the Act Three romance ‘In Mohrenland gefangen war ein Mädel hübsch und fein’ with feeling and superb phrasing, and his lines in the penultimate scene’s vaudeville, ‘Nie werd’ ich deine Huld verkennen,’ stand out. Already an artist of refinement, Portillo possesses a voice of superlative quality and the technical security to nurture it properly. As he sings Pedrillo here, it is an invaluable pleasure to hear a true tenore di grazia in a rôle in which grace is too often a pitifully scarce commodity.

Nearly as dulcetly charismatic as Portillo’s Pedrillo is the Blonde of American soprano Rachele Gilmore. Like her colleague and her character’s beloved, she faces every obstacle in her music unhesitatingly, plunging below the stave as intrepidly—though not always as effectively—as she vaults into the vocal stratosphere. In the latter realm are the zeniths of Blonde’s Act Two aria ‘Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln,’ in which Gilmore ascends to the trio of E₆s as though doing so were as easy as speaking. The fun-loving Blonde is at her minxish best in her duet with Osmin, ‘Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir,’ and Gilmore and her Osmin sing the number delightfully, relishing their characters’ barbed banter without turning their sparring into a yelling competition. The soprano’s sunny jaunt through the aria ‘Welche Wonne, welche Lust’ is as frothy as fresh meringue, and she sings pertly in the quartet and the vaudeville. In dialogue, Gilmore is often genuinely funny. Vocally, only a handful of slightly off-center notes betray nerves or technical pitfalls, but she is a hard-working, no-holds-barred Blonde who earns her laughs and ovations.

In recent years, Osmins have often been the weak links in performances of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Calling for an extensive range, agility, and comedic abandon, the rôle is as difficult to cast as the more sober Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. The part of Selim’s grumpy overseer does not sound like a wholly natural fit for Russian bass Mischa Schelomianski, but he conquers the music, singing rather than barking and proving all the more amusing for approaching the rôle with a measure of restraint. It is only just a measure, though, and he grumbles and gripes hilariously in the Act One Lied, ‘Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden,’ and the subsequent duet with the inconveniently intruding Belmonte. The bass’s sturdy intonation and excellent breath control are decided assets in his singing of the aria ‘Solche hergelaufne Laffen.’ He hurls vitriol at Belmonte and Pedrillo with deadpan insouciance in ‘Marsch, marsch, marsch!’ In Act Two, Schelomianski is a suitable partner for Gilmore in the duet with Blonde, ‘Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir,’ and for Portillo in the scintillating ‘Vivat, Bacchus!’ Osmin’s Act Three aria ‘O! wie will ich triumphieren!’ is the pinnacle of the rôle and one of the finest comic arias for the bass voice in the repertory. Schelomianski reaches the aria’s D₂s without substantial effort (and also without sufficient volume), but his negotiations of the roulades, almost a parody of Händel’s writing for his bass villains, are imprecise. He bawls nastily in the vaudeville: the servant is not as dignified a loser as the master. Schelomianski does not rival Gottlob Frick and Kurt Moll as an exponent of Osmin’s music, but his is a satisfying performance that is anything but a weak link in this Entführing.

A rising star in the operatic firmament whose Houston Grand Opera portrayals of Cassio in Verdi’s Otello and Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte thrilled audiences, American tenor Norman Reinhardt is here a stylish, polished Belmonte whose earnestness is expressed in clear tones and long-breathed lines. Immediately establishing his character’s determination to find and free his adored Konstanze, Reinhardt sings his Act One aria ‘Hier soll ich dich denn sehen, Konstanze!’ resolutely, divulging no vulnerabilities in the music’s range or expansive lines. This Belmonte’s frustration boils in the duet with Osmin, but the brief recitative ‘Konstanze! dich wiederzusehen!’ and aria ‘O wie ängstlich, o wie feurig,’ strongly but sweetly sung, coruscate with anticipation and renewed purpose. Happily reunited with Pedrillo but further thwarted by the unrelentingly obstructive Osmin, Reinhardt’s Belmonte brings unflagging concentration to their trio, ‘Marsch, marsch, marsch!’ The Act Two aria ‘Wenn der Freude Tränen fließen’ receives from the tenor a performance of consummate stylishness, and his vocalism in the quartet is ardent and handsome. Reinhardt, who will sing the fearsomely difficult rôle of Rodrigo di Dhu in Rossini’s La donna del lago opposite Cecilia Bartoli’s Elena and Vivica Genaux’s Malcolm at the 2017 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, performs Belmonte’s frequently-omitted Act Three bravura aria ‘Ich baue ganz auf deine Stärke’ with gusto and confident command of the divisions. He unleashes a current of focused, flowing tone in the duet with Konstanze, ‘Welch ein Geschick!’ There are passages throughout the rôle, particularly in Act One, in which greater vocal heft would be welcome, but Reinhardt avoids forcing the voice in climaxes, wisely relying upon projection rather than volume to carry the sound over the orchestra. This is a Belmonte in the tradition of George Shirley and Stuart Burrows, and Reinhardt’s debonair singing whets the appetite for his future appearances on disc.

Not surprisingly for a rôle virtually composed to order for soprano Caterina Cavalieri, Salieri’s star pupil and one of the most admired singers in Vienna, and bearing the name of the woman who became his wife nineteen days after the première of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart lavished an astounding array of musical riches on Konstanze. In Acts One and Two essentially a tragic heroine in the lineage of Händel’s Rodelinda, Hasse’s Ipermestra, and Jommelli’s Armida, Konstanze is transformed in Act Three into a rejuvenated young woman ready for romantic adventure. In this performance by Canadian soprano Jane Archibald, the transition is obvious, the glinting steel in the voice in the scenes before Konstanze’s reunion with Belmonte tempered by vocal velvet that her swain’s attention replenishes. In her Act One aria, ‘Ach, ich liebte, war so glücklich,’ Konstanze expresses herself in arching phrases that test but never defeat the singer’s breath control. Archibald launches the recitative ‘Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele’ in Act Two with dramatic thrust that contrasts markedly with the time-suspending desolation that shapes her singing of the aria ‘Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose.’ The timbres of Archibald’s and Gilmore’s voices are similar enough to make vocal colorations crucial as a means of discerning which lady is singing, and, though Archibald’s palette is limited in the extremities to which her music often takes her, she is attentive to adapting the silvery patina of her sound to the moods of the words. Many singers, including Maria Callas, have deemed ‘Martern aller Arten’ the most difficult aria ever composed for the soprano voice, and this assessment is not without justification. In this one aria, the soprano is asked to span the entire range required of the Kaiserin in all of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, extending to D₆, and to execute fiorature akin to those braved by the Königin der Nacht in Die Zauberflöte and Strauss’s Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos. There is far more to Konstanze than this aria, but it is often the gauge by which a Konstanze’s success is judged. By this criterion, Archibald’s performance is impeccable, her singing of ‘Martern aller Arten’ stunningly assured. Konstanze’s lines in the quartet are voiced with resilience, and Archibald partners Reinhardt and their colleagues hypnotically in the duet with Belmonte and the vaudeville in Act Three. Konstanze is a rôle that has unexpectedly fared quite well on disc. A wiry voice like that of Erika Köth tapped unanticipated reserves of solidity, and a radiantly beautiful voice like that of Arleen Augér produced power without being pushed. Archibald displays in this performance that she is eminently capable of singing both beautifully and boldly, and she is a satisfyingly complete Konstanze.

What makes this Alpha Classics recording of Die Entührung aus dem Serail such a special release is the uncommon distinction and consistency of its casting. As performances at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2015 – 2016 Season confirmed, Entführung is an opera with singular requirements that are not easily met even by very accomplished singers. Intelligently guided by Rhorer and bolstered by masterful orchestral playing and choral singing, this Die Entführung aus dem Serail takes flight on streams of Mozart singing of a caliber seldom heard since the storied days of Schwarzkopf, Streich, Wunderlich, and Haefliger.

RECORDING OF THE MONTH | July 2016: Franz Schubert — DIE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN, D.795 (Robert Murray, tenor; Andrew West, piano; Stone Records 5060192780628)

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828): Die schöne Müllerin, D.795 (Opus 25)—Robert Murray, tenor; Andrew West, piano [Recorded in Britten Studio, Snape Maltings, Suffolk, UK, 6 – 9 October 2014; Stone Records 5060192780628; 1 CD, 64:14; Available from Amazon (UK), Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

There is something inexpressibly exhilarating about standing before an audience, whether in the palpitating atmosphere of the recital hall or the unnerving virtual environment of the recording studio, with only a piano and melody guiding one’s precarious steps along the precipice. Like Bellini’s somnambulistic Amina as she toddles high above her bucolic village, the Lieder singer has no safety net, no parachute, no cabled harness steadying his gait. In the most magical instances, however, the Art of Song is conjured like the iridescent bridge that conveys Wotan and his companions to Walhalla. Such instances are why the notion of positioning singers before the horns of phonographs was conceived more than a century ago and why the Classical recording industry remains an embattled but vitally necessary pillar of today’s culture. Perhaps it is true that, as some observers allege, fewer recordings of genuine merit come to market now than in previous generations, but a recording like this performance of Franz Schubert’s seminal 1824 masterwork Die schöne Müllerin always justifies the wait. One of the earliest Lieder cycles in the modern sense, Die schöne Müllerin remains popular with singers of every Fach, but few of them have recorded a Schöne Müllerin as spellbinding as this one. This performance lures the listener into a fascinating microcosm, sometimes claustrophobic in its intimacy, that derives inspiration from music and words and inspires the hearer to abandon predispositions and prejudgments gleaned from other recordings and devote complete attention to these remarkable Lieder as though encountering Schöne Müllerin for the first time.

Considering that the poems by Wilhelm Müller that inspired and provide the texts for Die schöne Müllerin were published in 1820, only four years before the first publication of the Lieder cycle, and that Schubert was occupied during the period in which the bulk of the songs were written, from May to September 1823, by the composition of his large-scale opera Fierrabras, the cycle’s gestation was surprisingly brief. Melodic fecundity and interpretive depth were seemingly as readily available to Schubert as they were to Mozart, and both qualities imbue every bar of Die schöne Müllerin. The nuances of Müller’s verses are given avenues of expression by Schubert’s music that would never be possible in even the most intelligent recitation, the poetry of the music highlighting the musicality of the words. The extent to which Schubert identified personally with the cycle’s sentimental journey from exuberant youthful optimism to bleak despondency precipitated by unreciprocated love continues to be debated by biographers and musicologists. There are far more questions than answers about details of the composer’s amorous pursuits, but the psychological depth with which he amplified Müller’s words suggests at the very least a profound connection with the subject matter. That connection is perpetuated in this performance, in the context of which both singer and pianist are no less committed to communicating the subtleties of Die schöne Müllerin than Schubert was when he fused Müller’s texts with his music.

Whether the music at hand is the work of Sammartini, Schubert, or Schönberg, any performance benefits from the participation of gifted, dedicated musicians, and this performance of Die schöne Müllerin is defined by the keenly intelligent handling of Schubert’s music by tenor Robert Murray. A noteworthy master of a varied repertory who was especially delightful—and atypically glamorously-voiced— as the charismatically romantic Frederic in the 2015 English National Opera production of the Gilbert and Sullivan gem The Pirates of Penzance, Murray is not unknown to aficionados of beautiful tenor singing. Both his attractive, evenly-produced natural instrument and his talents for subtle, insightful interpretation merit preservation on recordings, his portrayal of Marzio in Classical Opera’s Signum Classics recording of Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto [reviewed here] having shone amidst high-wattage performances, and his singing on this disc is as strong a raison d’être for this handsomely-produced Stone Records account of Die schöne Müllerin as is the quality of Schubert’s music.

No man is an island in Lieder repertory, however, and Murray’s partner in this Schöne Müllerin, pianist Andrew West, is an artist of equal accomplishment and perspicacity. A member of the faculty of the prestigious Royal Academy of Music and a panelist on the jury of the 2014 Kathleen Ferrier Competition, in the 2003 edition of which Murray was a prizewinner, West is a collaborative musician of the first order. Equally acclaimed as a soloist and a partner to other musicians and singers, West is no mere accompanist in this performance of Die schöne Müllerin. Building upon years of cooperation, his fingers are as integral a part of the interpretation of Schubert’s music on this disc as Murray’s vocal cords.

As Murray and West approach the cycle in this performance, the first four Lieder form an engrossing portal into both the narrator’s physical surroundings and his emotional state. Murray sings ‘Das Wandern’ with boyish charm, his rhythmic buoyancy, perfectly complemented by West’s playing, conveying the bounce in the youth’s step as he explores the world before him. The depth of understanding between singer and pianist is especially evident in ‘Wohin?’ and ‘Halt!’ Here and in ‘Danksagung an den Bach,’ tonal richness from both musicians adds a dimension of dramatic excitement to the cycle’s progress. Murray does not hesitate to provide full-on, open-throated, operatic tone when the emotional ethos of music and text warrant it, and some of the most unforgettable moments in this Schöne Müllerin come when Murray and West flee the polite salon and allow the songs play out as though their action were being brought to life in the opera house. That this is achieved with any of the cycle’s inherent introspection bring sacrificed is a particular success of this performance.

‘Am Feierabend’ and ‘Der Neugierige’ launch another sequence that escorts the listener ever further into the recesses of burgeoning inner torment and its outward manifestations. Murray sings these and ‘Ungeduld’ with penetrating insightfulness, using his bright vowels and crisp consonants to illuminate the text in a way that renders the words’ significance unmistakable. His is an account of ‘Morgengruß’ that radiates simplicity and faith in new beginnings, but West’s handling of the piano part elucidates the uncertainty that lurks beyond the music’s deceptively orderly façade. The very different moods of ‘Des Müllers Blumen,’ ‘Tränenregen,’ and ‘Mein!’ are traversed by Murray and West with unaffected eloquence, and the pianist’s probing use of Schubert’s harmonies as expressive devices in ‘Pause’ melds with the tenor’s intuitive management of phrasing in the bittersweet melodic lines of ‘Mit dem grünen Lautenbande.’ Where many performances begin to drag, this one soars, gaining momentum with each Lied and escalating tension by finding within each song its function within the broader scope of the cycle.

The visceral energy of West’s playing in ‘Der Jäger’ enhances the idiomatic sparkle of Murray’s diction, the words charged with the same electricity that races through the music. Throughout this Schöne Müllerin, Murray articulates the text with the flair of a native speaker of German and the sagacity of one who has devoted considerable time to studying the literal and figurative meanings of the words. There is never an indication of lugubriousness in ‘Eifersucht und Stolz’ or ‘Die liebe Farbe,’ both of which are sung and played with ideal tempi, dynamics, and balance between voice and piano. The expressive heavy lifting in this performance is entrusted to the words: rather than attempting to force a comprehension of the cycle upon the listener, this Schöne Müllerin invites participation, the kaleidoscopic incandescence of Murray’s vocalism providing ethereal perspectives that enable the listener to form his own unique interpretation of the music’s message. The sheer attractiveness of tone lavished on ‘Die böse Farbe’ and ‘Trockne Blumen’ is tremendous, making the songs satisfying solely as pure music, but there is always a reason for beauty in this performance: things which cannot be spoken without harshness must be sung especially beautifully.

Widely viewed as the narrator’s paean to the relief from his despair found in death in the waters of the brook, ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ is in this performance not without a discernible vein of pragmatism. The bleakness and inevitability of the poet’s perception of fate gain from the unexaggerated forthrightness of Murray’s singing an element of serenity that offers a glimmer of redemptive hope in the face of self-annihilation. This sense of magnanimity that permeates Murray’s and West’s reading of ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ is expanded in ‘Des Baches Wiegenlied’ into an examination not of the unforgiving finality of death but of its transcendence of earthbound cares; to borrow a conceit from Shakespeare, its shaking off of mortal coils. The brook flows on, and so, too, does the cycle of anticipation, fulfillment or disappointment, and renewal.

Some singers focus so doggedly on devising identifiably unique interpretations of a work like Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin that they seemingly overlook the most basic tenet of any performance of the cycle: singing. Whether one takes the metaphysical dimension of Die schöne Müllerin at face value or ascribes to it relevance of cosmic proportions, the fact remains that these Lieder are first and foremost music. Ernst Haefliger and Erik Werba were sensitive to this distinction forty years ago, and Robert Murray and Andrew West exhibit this to today’s listeners with sensitivity and sophistication. Played with virtuosity, sung with beauty and fearlessness, and interpreted with wit and discernment, this is a Die schöne Müllerin in which Müller’s words and Schubert’s music sound astonishingly new.

CD REVIEW: Gaetano Donizetti — PARISINA D’ESTE (M. Devia, D. Gonzales, G. Zancanaro, D. Kavrakos, T. Tramonti; Bongiovanni GB 2569/70-2)

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Parisina d’Este—Mariella Devia (Parisina), Dalmacio Gonzales (Ugo), Giorgio Zancanaro (Azzo), Dimitri Kavrakos (Ernesto), Tiziana Tramonti (Imelda); Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; Bruno Bartoletti, conductor [Recorded ‘live’ in performance at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence, Italy, on 20 May 1990; Bongiovanni GB 2569/70-2; 2 CDs, 159:56; Available from Bongiovanni, NAXOS Direct, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), and major music retailers]

As befuddling as why some singers achieve worldwide recognition whilst equally-qualified colleagues toil in relative obscurity is the question of why the caprices of fate consign exceptional singers to neglect by record labels. With few aspects of opera in the Twenty-First Century as lamented as the perceived decline of genuine bel canto in the exalted tradition of Giulia Grisi, María Malibran, and Giuditta Pasta, the paucity of commercial recordings featuring Chiusavecchia-born soprano Mariella Devia is as baffling as it is frustrating. In generations past, it was Turkish soprano Leyla Gencer, another celebrated scion of the royal house of bel canto, who reigned as Queen of the Pirates, ignored by major labels but adored by aficionados, who eagerly collected private recordings of her performances. Now, Gencer’s crown has passed to Devia, whose commercial discography is inexplicably sparse: aside from studio recordings of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Linda di Chamounix and professionally-produced ‘live’ recordings on hard-to-find labels, aural preservation of the excitement that Devia has generated in her bel canto outings is woefully inadequate. Even an event as significant as Devia’s triumphant return to New York as Elisabetta opposite Stephen Costello’s absurdly-maligned portrayal of the title rôle in Opera Orchestra of New York’s 2014 concert performance of Roberto Devereux was not recorded for broadcast or commercial release! In the age of Gencer, the major labels had Callas, Sutherland, Scotto, Sills, and Caballé, of course, but for whose benefit has Devia been overlooked? Every new release bearing Devia’s name among the cast is cause for anxious anticipation, and Bongiovanni’s release of this performance of Donizetti’s 1833 Parisina d’Este, recorded in the same theatre, Florence’s Teatro della Pergola, in which the opera was premièred, is a welcome addition to the recorded legacy of one of the most important artists in the history of bel canto.

Alas, despite considerable assets, Bongiovanni’s new release of what sounds like a decently-captured, minimally-remastered in-house recording of a performance from the 1990 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production of Parisina is not the caliber of tribute that Devia’s singular gifts deserve. Mostly free from audience noise aside from curtailed applause, the usual bronchial intrusions, and a spectacularly ill-timed nasal noise of indeterminate origin that upsets the delicate atmosphere of the heroine’s first entrance, the sound quality does not impede enjoyment of the performance, but the distortion and peaking that result from the boxy, claustrophobic acoustic are unkind to the voices, especially the raison d’être prima donna. Under the well-schooled baton of Bruno Bartoletti, a veteran of the Maggio Musicale orchestra who was in his penultimate season as the Artistic Director of Maggio Musicale at the time of this performance, Donizetti’s music is performed with an apt dose of the verve that the conductor reliably brought to early Verdi repertory during his five-decade tenure with Lyric Opera of Chicago. Bartoletti’s tempi for arias and cabalettas are uniformly appropriate, and he paces ensembles with obvious instinct for Donizetti’s modes of scene construction.

Their work not reproduced in anything approaching high-fidelity sound, the Maggio Musicale choral and orchestral forces are precisely what an informed listener might expect them to be: enthusiastic, committed, and slightly provincial. [It should be noted that standards have increased exponentially in the years since this performance of Parisina was recorded. Today, the Florentine musicians often match and sometimes exceed the levels of excellence expected of their Milanese and Venetian counterparts.] As clamoring courtiers, boisterous soldiers, refined ladies-in-waiting, and offstage boatmen, the choristers sing vigorously. That individual voices are frequently distinguishable among the ensemble is perhaps more a circumstance of stage blocking and positioning of the recording device than of problems with training and balance. The instrumentation of Parisina cannot have failed to delight Donizetti’s illustrious tutor Johann Simon Mayr, and the Maggio Musicale musicians play their parts with the authentic Italian gusto that the score demands.

Portraying Parisina’s lady-in-waiting Imelda, soprano Tiziana Tramonti is heard here near the beginning of a career that has subsequently taken her to many of the world’s most familiar opera houses in leading rôles. Her duties in Parisina are confined to scenes with her mistress in all three of the opera’s acts, but Tramonti sings capably throughout the performance, spiritedly supporting Devia and making her mark as a singer of great promise.

The supple, sonorous voice of Greek bass Dimitri Kavrakos flows through Donizetti’s music for Duke Azzo’s minister and Ugo’s adopted father Ernesto like the sparkling waters of the Aegean. In his Act One scenes first with Azzo and then with Ugo, Kavrakos convincingly plays the parts of courtier and concerned father, sensitive to the insecurities of both his employer and his foster son. Kavrakos’s voice anchors the finale primo handsomely, his lower register retaining its impact even in ensembles. Kavrakos lends great immediacy to Ernesto’s utterances in the Act Two scene with Ugo, powerfully depicting the character’s distress with tones that blend beauty with granitic strength. Furthering the grand impression made in the Act One finale, the bass delivers Ernesto’s lines in the finale secondo with unwavering authority. Like Devia, Kavrakos is too-little-represented on commercial recordings: the quality of his performance in this Parisina makes the meager chronicling of his considerable bel canto credentials all the more regrettable.

In the ranks of important Italian baritones of the Twentieth Century, Giorgio Zancanaro merits inclusion alongside Pasquale Amato, Giuseppe De Luca, Tito Gobbi, Giuseppe Taddei, and Ettore Bastianini. A native of Verona, Zancanaro came to singing relatively late in life, without formal training and following a stint as a police officer, but his polished-brass timbre, well-integrated vocal registers, and easy upper extension were apparent from the start of his career. As a Verdi baritone, he had few wholly-qualified peers during the peak years of his career, and his singing as Azzo in this performance of Parisina reveals that his mastery of Verdi repertory was founded upon a solid bel canto technique. His singing of Azzo’s Act One cavatina ‘Per veder su quel bel viso’ and cabaletta ‘Dall’Eridano si stende’ exudes aristocracy and ducal entitlement, and both the resplendent tone and magnificent top notes typical of Zancanaro’s best work abound. In the finale primo and the Act Two duet with Parisina, the baritone is a worthy partner for Devia, his vivid vocal acting lighting the soprano’s histrionic fuse. The indecision that grips Azzo in the finale secondo is obliterated by his merciless vengeance in Act Three, and Zancanaro rises to every challenge of the part, thundering thrillingly in the Act Three finale. That Zancanaro’s Azzo is less memorable than his Conte di Luna, Rigoletto, and Rodrigo di Posa is attributable to Donizetti, his librettist Felice Romani, and even Lord Byron, from whose 1816 poem of the same name the opera’s plot was derived, but this is a splendidly-sung performance of challenging music.

The punishing rôle of Ugo, the heroine’s exiled lover and, as is ultimately revealed, the unwitting son—by his first wife, thankfully—of her husband, was first portrayed by Gilbert Duprez, celebrated as the first tenor to consistently produce C₅ with chest resonance. Recordings of different performances and/or different recordings of this performance from the 1990 Maggio Musicale production of Parisina have long been available from non-commercial sources, some of which cite Italian tenor Dano Raffanti as the portrayer of Ugo. Raffanti was listed for the rôle in the 1990 Annuario EDT dell'Opera Lirica in Italia, and, while it is possible that Raffanti sang the part in some performances, the Ugo heard on these discs is unquestionably Catalan tenor Dalmacio Gonzales (né Dalmau González Albiol). Unfortunately, the bright-voiced Gonzales has the dubious distinction of suffering most from the recording’s ambiance—or, more accurately, the lack thereof. So reliably distant in the soundscape are his contributions to the performance that it could almost be alleged that the recordist endeavored to slight him, and assessing his efforts beyond confirming that he sings when Ugo is asked by Donizetti to sing is difficult. [In most available editions, Jerome Pruett endures a similar indignity in recordings of the legendary 1974 Opera Orchestra of New York Parisina with Monserrat Caballé. Is there some cosmic curse on the rôle, a sort of Duprez’s revenge?] The ears must strain to fully appreciate Gonzales’s performance, but the expenditure of effort is generously repaid. The tenor’s accounts of the impetuous Ugo’s Act One cavatina ‘Io l’amai fin da quell’ora’ and cabaletta ‘Per le cure, per le pene’ are fantastic, his slender, sinewy voice soaring through Donizetti’s daunting vocal lines and cresting on clarion, mostly secure top notes of which Duprez would have been proud. In the duet with Parisina, ‘Ma girne in bando ancora,’ and the finale primo, Gonzales’s Ugo proves to be an engaging lover, the tenor’s timbre contrasting markedly but blending appealingly with Devia’s. Both his aria ‘Io sentii tremar la mano’ and the cavatina ‘Questo amor doveva in terra’ in Act Two are sung stylishly and expressively, and Ugo’s desperate part in the finale secondo is enacted with dramatic intensity. A pioneer in the lineage of tenori di grazia that produced Juan Diego Flórez, Lawrence Brownlee, Javier Camarena, and Andrew Owens, Gonzales is here heard at the zenith of his powers, the continual struggle to hear him notwithstanding.

This recording of Parisina documents Mariella Devia’s artistry nearly two decades into her international career, a career still very much in progress: now traversing her sixty-ninth year, her schedule for the second half of 2016 and 2017 includes performances of the title rôles in Bellini’s Norma and Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, two of the most perilous parts in the bel canto repertory. Her professional début in Treviso in 1973 introduced her to the public in a rôle that was to be a cornerstone of her repertory, the eponymous protagonist of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. [Incidentally, in the same year in which she headlined Maggio Musicale’s production of Parisina, Devia sang in a now-legendary RAI Roma concert broadcast performance of Lucia opposite the Edgardo of Alfredo Kraus in which the score was performed without cuts and in the composer’s original, generally higher-than-traditional keys. A superb-quality recording of the broadcast is available on CD (catalogue number CA1671) from Australian retailer Celestial Audio.] At her first entrance in Act One, it is obvious that Devia was in excellent voice for this performance, but there is a surprisingly prominent suggestion of caution in her singing. Fidelity to Donizetti’s score only partially accounts for the relative paucity of the soprano’s trademark sopracuti. Still, her singing of Parisina’s Act One cavatina ‘Forse un destin che intendere’ and cabaletta ‘V’era un dì quando l’alma’ is undeniably exhilarating, the inimitable voice moving through the music with only a slight hint of sluggishness. Charges that Devia is primarily a vocal phenomenon are not wholly unfounded. She is not unfailingly an animated performer, but she is at her peak as a singing actress in the duet with Ugo and Act One finale in this performance, singing and emoting with equal aplomb. Devia approaches the Act Two scene with Imelda as a springboard for her beguiling voicing of the romanza ‘Sogno talor in correre.’ As reminiscent of Verdi’s energetic music for Macbeth and his dastardly Lady as of the duet for the titular heroine and her brother Enrico in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Parisina’s duet with Azzo unites Devia and Zancanaro in a glorious masterclass in the now-elusive art of bel canto. The quartet ‘Per sempre, per sempre, sotterra sepolto’ is arguably the finest music in the score, and Devia’s vocalism highlights its quality. The soprano is at her ravishing best in Parisina’s Act Three rondò, ‘Ciel, sei tu che il tal momento,’ the spot-on intonation and limpid tone above the stave spiraling intoxicatingly through Donizetti’s ascending lines. Disappointingly imperfect, this Parisina is nonetheless a gratifying addition to Devia’s gallery of recorded Donizetti portraits.

The success of many of Parisina’s companions in the Donizetti and broader bel canto repertories depends upon their leading ladies, and few leading ladies in recent years have borne the weight of bel canto performances more successfully than Mariella Devia. The discouragingly [and bewilderingly] lukewarm critical reception for Opera Orchestra of New York's May 2016 concert performance of the opera featuring Angela Meade, Aaron Blake, and Yunpeng Wang suggested that Parisina remains a difficult sell for modern audiences. That Mariella Devia sold it to the Florentine audience in 1990 is manifest in every phrase of her singing on this pair of discs. Her salesmanship deserves a better marketplace than this recording provides, but devotees of the Queens of the Pirates gratefully take what they can get.

CD REVIEW: Ruggero Leoncavallo — ZAZÀ (E. Jaho, R. Massi, S. Gaertner, P. Bardon, D. Stout, N. Spence, K. Rudge, S. Thorpe, F. Wyn, J. Ferri; Opera Rara ORC 55)

RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO (1857 – 1919): Zazà—Ermonela Jaho (Zazà), Riccardo Massi (Milio Dufresne), Stephen Gaertner (Cascart), Patricia Bardon (Anaide), David Stout (Bussy), Nicky Spence (Courtois), Kathryn Rudge (Natalia), Simon Thorpe (Duclou), Fflur Wyn (Floriana), Julia Ferri (Toto), Christopher Turner (Augusto), Helen Neeves (Signora Dufresne), Edward Goater (Marco), Robert Anthony Gardiner (Un signore), Eleanor Minney (Claretta), Rebecca Lodge (Simona); BBC Singers; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Maurizio Benini, conductor [Recorded at BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK, in November 2015; Opera Rara ORC 55; 2 CDs, 136:01; Available from Opera Rara and major music retailers]

So often are opera lovers cautioned that the plots of the works that they love must be taken with a grain of salt that the true aficionado’s diet must be dangerously suffused with sodium. Whether a score’s drama is one of Roman emperors, legendary warriors, or more ordinary personages, opera is the realm of idealism set to music. The denizens of operatic plots rarely behave as their counterparts off the stage might be expected to do: perhaps their actions are larger for having absorbed the vicarious ambitions of their portrayers and observers. For all of its verismo vestments, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s seldom-heard Zazà is clothed in unabashedly Romantic hues that would be embarrassingly garish if viewed outside of the opera house. The tale of a vaudeville chanteuse’s vain seduction and eventual selfless rejection of a married man melds the realms of the Moulin Rouge and the Palais Garnier, but the opera’s plot is marginally too starry-eyed to be swallowed without the seasoning of that proverbial dose of salt. The histrionic shortcomings of the heroine and her circle notwithstanding, Zazà has been done few favors by the handful of indifferently-produced recordings of the score despite admirable performances of the title rôle by Mafalda Favero, Clara Petrella, Lynne Strow-Piccolo, and Lisa Houben. What Zazà needs is star treatment, and that is what the opera receives in spades from Opera Rara in this expertly-prepared studio performance, recorded in advance of a critically-acclaimed concert outing at the Barbican. Here extending the focus of the label’s celebrated endeavors to the very end of the Nineteenth Century, Zazà having premièred at Milan’s Teatro Lirico on 10 November 1900, the principal question raised by this release is whether Opera Rara can deal as authoritatively with verismo as with bel canto. The answer, this recording proves, is a resounding Sì!

Guided by the propulsive, idiomatic conducting of Maurizio Benini, the musicians of the BBC Symphony Orchestra play Leoncavallo’s episodic score with brio that qualifies them as honorary Italians regardless of the flags under which they were born. The opera’s orchestration is clever and colorful if never especially inventive, though the use of the offstage banda to create the contrasting back- and front-of-house perspectives of Zazà’s milieu is witty and managed by Benini with panache and by the banda personnel with raucous brilliance. Motivic writing is not as prominent in Zazà as in many post-Wagner works originating on any side of the Alps, but Benini’s attentiveness to the most minute details of thematic material ensures that subtleties of characterization can be enacted by the singers without exaggeration. The conductor looks to the score for guidance on setting tempi that serve both drama and cast, and his clear-sighted pacing of the performance minimizes the doldrums of Leoncavallo’s workaday passages.

Emerging from the ranks of the BBC Singers, whose vocalism enlivens every scene in which Leoncavallo employed choristers, mezzo-sopranos Rebecca Lodge as Simona and Eleanor Minney as Claretta, soprano Helen Neeves as Signora Dufresne, Milio’s wife, and tenor Edward Goater as the Dufresne family butler Marco epitomize the exalted measure of excellence to which the choir adheres. Throughout the performance, the choristers are individually and collectively credible in every guise in which the composer presents them.

Opera Rara releases have reliably utilized first-rate talent in supporting rôles, and this Zazà is among the label’s greatest successes in this regard. The boyishly handsome tenor Nicky Spence has never sounded better on disc than as the put-upon impresario Courtois in this performance of Zazà—quite a feat considering his impressive discography! Whenever the character appears, Spence’s evergreen voice infuses Leoncavallo’s conversational music with golden-toned life. Baritones Simon Thorpe as the put-upon stage manager Duclou and David Stout as the journalist Bussy further raise the vocal standards of the recording, and their strong work is seconded by the accomplished singing of tenors Christopher Turner as the writer Augusto and Robert Anthony Gardiner as the unnamed Signore.

The characterful vignettes created by the ladies of the supporting cast are no less vibrant than those engendered by their male colleagues. Mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge provides great pleasure with her impersonation of Zazà’s maid Natalia, the indefatigable energy of her singing heightening the character’s significance. Irish mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon, consummate mistress of a wide repertory spanning from unforgettable portrayals of Händel’s travesti heroes to rewarding ventures into Twenty-First-Century music, is captivating as Zazà’s perennially-inebriated mother Anaide. Even in a relatively small rôle, how an artist of Bardon’s stature can shine! As Floriana, Zazà’s rival on stage and in love, soprano Fflur Wyn is the oft-thwarted seconda donna to the life, her bright timbre, crisp diction, and take-no-prisoners vocalism unmistakably conveying the character’s vexation. Heeding the examples of her singing teammates, Julia Ferri portrays the speaking rôle of Totò, Milio’s daughter Antonietta, without artifice, enunciating her lines clearly and animatedly.

In reviewing a 2005 Alice Tully Hall concert performance of Zazà by Teatro Grattacielo, New York Times critic Bernard Holland praised the ‘strong, cultured baritone’ that Stephen Gaertner wielded in his interpretation of Zazà’s once-and-future lover Cascart. A decade later, that assessment applies even more fully to the singer’s Cascart for Opera Rara. Gaertner is a connoisseur’s baritone, one whose performances offer tantalizing glimpses of bygone eras in which singers like John Charles Thomas, Lawrence Tibbett, and Leonard Warren were emblematic of the magnificence of American baritone singing. In this portrayal of Cascart, a rôle created by Mario Sammarco, who originated the rôle of Carlo Gérard in Andrea Chénier for Umberto Giordano four years before the première of Zazà, and first sung at the Metropolitan Opera by Pasquale Amato, Gaertner sings with the unapologetic machismo of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, the true swagger of a nightclub star sure of his value and virility. From the beginning of his scene with Zazà in Act One, there is obvious tenderness in his approach to the part, however, and Gaertner woos and pleads without crooning. In Act Two, the sheer sonic impact of his singing of ‘Buona Zazà del mio buon tempo ascolta’ is arresting, but the character’s gentleness towards Zazà is again evident in the humor with which Gaertner’s Cascart goads her with ‘E s’anco ti spossare? saresti... una borghese!’ When the baritone sings ‘Zazà, piccola zingara, schiava d’un folle amore’ in Act Four, the extent to which Cascart’s destiny is intertwined with Zazà’s is palpable, and the sincerity of Gaertner’s delivery is moving. With a singer of Gaertner’s abilities in the rôle, Cascart’s part in the drama is all the more pivotal, and the misfortune of Zazà’s love for Milio is intensified by her neglect of a man so devoted to her.

Production Manager Kim Panter and her Opera Rara colleagues are owed considerable gratitude for adding one of today’s finest tenors to the label’s roster of compelling artists. Here performing Leoncavallo’s music for Zazà’s initially reluctant but ultimately fervent paramour Milio Dufresne with laudably firm, focused tone that meaningfully conveys the tension of complicated love, Italian tenor Riccardo Massi makes his Opera Rara début in a rôle to which his talents are ideally suited. With acclaimed portrayals of rôles as challenging as Alvaro and Radamès in Verdi’s La forza del destino and Aida and Cavaradossi and Calàf in Puccini’s Tosca and Turandot to his credit, Massi is an elegant singer with a voice reminiscent in its blend of strength and sweetness of that of his countryman Giovanni Malipiero. When Milio makes his first entrance in Act One, the performance as a whole gains momentum, and Massi voices ‘È un riso gentile quall’alba d’aprile’ with the Italianate fervor that the music desperately needs and has received on disc only from the slightly over-parted Giuseppe Campora. In the subsequent scene with Zazà, Milio’s burgeoning love simmers in Massi’s resonant vocalism until it can be restrained no longer: bursting forth like flood waters pulverizing a dam, his words of affection pour from the tenor’s throat, resonant but refined. In Act Two, Massi invests both ‘Mia Zazà, mio bene! Ragiona dunque; che follie son queste?’ and ‘Zazà, Zazà, non ti attristare’ with subtle inflections drawn from the text, giving Milio greater depth than Leoncavallo achieved in words or music. Milio’s aria in Act Three, ‘Oh mio piccolo tavolo ingombrato siccome ingombro è di sgomenti il cuore,’ its sentiments not unlike those of the heroine’s ‘Adieu, notre petite table’ in Act Two of Massenet’s Manon, is scaled by Massi as a genuinely inward meditation, the character’s desperate uncertainty magnified by the insurmountable solidity of the tenor’s singing. The emotional obstacle course of Act Four never disrupts the meticulously-maintained balance of Massi’s performance. The expressive immediacy of his articulations of ‘Zazà, tu mi rimproveri d’aver ti troppo amata?’ and ‘Ed ora io mi domando come, vicino a te, potei scordar la dolce mia buona creatura!’ reveals the essence of his artistry: there is beauty in even the ugliest moments of life. In tinging his performance with haunting morbidezza without resorting to Gigli-esque sobs and cheap effects, Massi makes Milio less a conceited prig than a man swept along by an illicit affection, his timbre burnished and his intonation absolutely secure throughout the range. How could a man who sings so well not be forgiven?

Breathing life into the too-easily-caricatured title rôle, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho allies glistening, well-controlled vocalism with ardent but polished emoting that often proves revelatory. Building upon a career firmly rooted in Opera Rara’s familiar bel canto territory, Jaho waded into the tempestuous waters of verismo with a heartrending portrayal of Puccini’s Suor Angelica at Covent Garden, and she is scheduled to bring her shattering Cio-Cio-San to Kennedy Center in Washington National Opera’s 2016 – 2017 Season. It is hardly coincidental that, four years after Leoncavallo’s opera was first performed, the first Zazà, Rosina Storchio, was also Puccini’s first Cio-Cio-San or that Geraldine Farrar was the first to sing both rôles at the Metropolitan Opera. Though a temperamental cabaret singer to the marrow of her bones, Jaho’s Zazà is most fully an open-hearted, deeply-feeling woman. Facing a bevy of distractions in Act One, Jaho’s Zazà fires ‘Ogni seme di bene in te si strugge, e diventa l’amore una parola!’ at Cascart with unmistakable meaning, and the soprano’s singing in the exasperated but dutiful daughter’s scene with her worrisome mother is a model of barely-concealed ennui. Then, singing ‘Io son diversa da voi – Non ardisco dirvelo, e pur d’un sogno mi beava!’ to Milio, she is transformed from the haughty creature of the stage into a disquietingly vulnerable woman hopelessly in love in spite of herself. Limning the progress of that love’s development in Act Two, Jaho voices ‘Amor mio, che farà non più vicina a te, la tua Zazà, la tua piccina’ expressively, her luminous upper register projected excitingly without forcing. Joining with her mother and Cascart, this Zazà dispatches ‘Ah, ah, ah! Che quadretto!’ charmingly, her irony as bewitching as her flirtation. Her exclamation of ‘Bisogna ch’ei scelga – O me o l’altra... Via!’ has the conviction of Tosca, the diva’s soul bared in a single phrase. Unexpectedly learning in Act Three that her lover is not only married but also father to a precious daughter, Zazà undergoes another metamorphosis, heartbreakingly depicted by Jaho in the scene with Milio’s daughter Totò. Here, singing ‘È finita!... Ammogliato... e un angelo ha per figlia!’ with mesmerizing simplicity that brings to mind Maria Callas’s singing in scenes like those with Norma’s and Cio-Cio-San’s children, the exuberant, fiery lover becomes the tragic heroine determined to act for the greater good. Confronting Milio in Act Four, the pain that courses through Jaho’s stark readings of ‘M’ami troppo? Mai quanto basta!... Ti par tedioso l’amor mio?’ and ‘Ebbene, si, so tutto! Che hai moglie... che mi fuggi!’ is tempered by an omnipresent acceptance of the inevitability of safeguarding the bond between father and child. Jaho sings ‘Che ho fatto? Egli parte! Egli va? Non torna indietro...’ with unbreakable determination, will triumphing over desire. Leoncavallo lunges at the jugular with Zazà’s final utterance of ‘Milio! torna! Milio... È all’angolo... È sparito! È non ritorna più... mai più! Tutto è finito,’ but Jaho prefers music to mania. Like Massi, she finds the light in the darkness of her character’s circumstances. How Zazà’s story ends is one of opera’s mysteries, but how her life is changed by a sole encounter with a young girl is made startlingly real—that verismo, at last!—by this uncommonly intuitive soprano.

Even in a performance as wonderful as this one, the reasons for Zazà’s neglect are apparent. The composer most often associated with Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, remarked that, with the extraordinary success of his early opera Cavalleria rusticana, he was, in terms of renown, crowned before he was king. A similar assessment might justifiably be applied to Leoncavallo, whose Pagliacci ushered him into immortality in 1892, whilst his compositional skills and individual style were still developing. The difference is that several of Mascagni’s post-Cavalleria rusticana scores—L’amico Fritz, Guglielmo Ratcliff, and Il piccolo Marat, for instance—are confident, tightly-constructed, masterful works of a quality that Leoncavallo’s Zazà cannot claim as her own. Compared with Pagliacci and even Leoncavallo’s infrequently-performed but meritorious La bohème, premièred a year after the first performance of Puccini’s Bohème, Zazà amounts to an enjoyable journey without a clear destination: unlike the finest verismo scores, that is, it is attractive music that never really goes anywhere. Zazà is a heroine of a different mettle than Nedda, Mimì, and Musetta, however, and Ermonela Jaho succeeds in the context of this recording better than Leoncavallo managed to do at making her a three-dimensional woman of genuine emotions. Finally heard in the top-quality sound that the score deserves, the heart missing from previous recordings beats powerfully in this one. In short, hold the salt: all of the ingredients needed to savor Opera Rara’s Zazà are present in this performance in precisely the right proportions.

RECORDINGS OF THE MONTH | June 2016: Benjamin Britten — SERENADE FOR TENOR, HORN, & STRINGS and Georg Friedrich Händel — WHERE’RE YOU WALK (Allan Clayton, tenor; Linn Records CKD 478 and Signum Classics SIGCD457)

[1] BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913 – 1976): Young Apollo, Op. 16; Lachrymae, Op. 48a; Prelude and Fugue, Op. 29; Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, Op. 31—Allan Clayton, tenor; Richard Watkins, French horn; Máté Szücs, viola; Lorenzo Soulès, piano; Aldeburgh Strings; Markus Däunert, director [Recorded at Snape Maltings, Snape, Suffolk, UK, 20 – 22 October 2012 (Lachrymae, Prelude and Fugue), 24 – 25 November 2013 (Serenade), and 4 April 2015 (Young Apollo); Linn Records CKD 478; 1 CD, 55:02; Available from Linn Records, ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

[2] GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759), THOMAS ARNE (1710 – 1778), WILLIAM BOYCE (1711 – 1779), and JOHN CHRISTOPHER SMITH (1712 – 1795): Where’re You Walk – Handel’s Favourite Tenor [A programme of music composed for or sung by John Beard (circa 1715 – 1791)]—Allan Clayton, tenor; Mary Bevan, soprano; The Choir of Classical Opera; The Orchestra of Classical Opera; Ian Page, conductor [Recorded in All Saints Church, Tooting, London, UK, 15 – 18 September 2015; Signum Classics SIGCD457; 1 CD, 68:59; Available from Signum Classics, ClassicsOnlineHD, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

It may seem counterintuitive, daft, or even provocative to suggest that the foremost thrill of the human voice is its innate propensity for disaster, but is the mountain climber exhilarated more by how far up he manages to go or by how far down it is to the doldrums of mundane, earthbound life? A perverse component of the mystique of Maria Callas is the realization of proximity to failure: listening carefully to her ‘live’ recordings reveals that the precarious, barely-sustained notes on high were often more vociferously cheered than the full, easy ones, the conqueror rewarded. It is the prospect of a performance going wrong that establishes the perspective that promotes enjoyment of all that goes right. In the haze of brilliantly-combusting imperfection, singers who quietly plot their own paths to self-sufficient artistic grace are often, exasperatingly, in peril of disappearing into the shadows. A good-humored, unpretentiously handsome gentleman who has intimated that he would just as happily be a match-saving footballer, English tenor Allan Clayton is no Ivory Tower-dwelling, platitude-spouting Artist. With a trophy-earning striker’s balance of natural ability and unwavering discipline, he possesses a Champions League-worthy voice and an uncanny ability to find the goal despite every conceivable complication on the pitch—and with imperturbably certain pitch! Philosophy suggests that the profusion of ugliness in this world is necessary in order to give meaning to the recognition of beauty, and the same conceit can be extended to music. With this pair of very different but remarkably compatible discs, their content separated by two of the most decisive centuries in the history of Western music, Allan Clayton eschews the notion of pontificating on why he is among today’s finest singers and simply sings in accordance with his gifts. Whether tackling the penalty kicks of Benjamin Britten’s angular writing in the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings or the roll and cut reverses of arias from the great operas and oratorios of Georg Friedrich Händel’s tenure in London, Clayton restores to the vocal recital disc a focus on the singer’s voice rather than his ego. That a particular excitement of voices is their variability is what makes a singer like Allan Clayton so special: fantastically reliable, each successive phrase of his singing impresses anew. If full appreciation of the contrast of a singer like Clayton with the ranks of more ordinary troubadours means that profusions of mediocre discs must be endured, what a minuscule price this is to pay for these superb Linn and Signum Classics recordings.

Setting the stage for Clayton’s performance of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, the Linn disc, distinguished by the sonic quality for which the label is rightly celebrated, opens with beautiful performances of Britten’s Young Apollo (Opus 16), Lachrymae (Opus 48a), and Prelude and Fugue (Opus 29). Interestingly, Britten suppressed the score of Young Apollo after its 1939 première by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation forces for which it was commissioned, and the piece, inspired by John Keats’s unfinished epic poem ‘Hyperion,’ was not performed again until 1979, three years after the composer’s death. As performed here by Aldeburgh Strings and pianist Lorenzo Soulès, whose adroit handling of the prickly writing for the keyboard is commendably unaffected, it is difficult to imagine that Britten would object to the piece’s reinstatement to the repertory.

Director and concertmaster Markus Däunert leads the Aldeburgh musicians in comfortably navigating the harmonic channels of Lachrymae, a series of variations on the principal theme of John Dowland’s song ‘If my complaints could passions move’ in which the familiar melody of Dowland’s ‘Flow my tears’ is also sampled. Lachrymae was written in 1950 for viola virtuoso William Primrose and revised in 1975 for violist Cecil Aronowitz, at which time the original piano part was reimagined for string orchestra, producing the version performed on this disc. Máté Szücs, principal violist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, proves an excellent exponent of the piece in this performance, drawing from his instrument tones that recall the glowing-amber timbre of the Guarneri viola preferred by Primrose throughout much of his career. Here, too, Däunert and the Aldeburgh Strings musicians follow the composer’s meanderings expertly, the sinuous textures of the music sometimes reminiscent of the ethereal writing for strings in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The melancholy that colors Dowland’s songs is subtly evinced by Szücs’s noble phrasing and soothed by Däunert’s insightfully-gauged support.

Composed in 1943, the Opus 29 Prelude and Fugue for strings in eighteen parts is an aptly unsettled bridge between the other works on the disc and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, the composition of which it immediately followed. The Prelude is played with the gravitas that the music demands, each musician clearly attentive to the importance of her or his part to the Prelude’s shifting tonalities and the crucial violin solo lines beautifully realized by Däunert. Performance of a fugue with an unique part for each of the eighteen instruments, a device familiar from the polyphonic masterpieces of Thomas Tallis, requires extensive resources of concentration, rhythmic precision, and uninhibited cooperation. This performance displays an abundance of these resources, the Aldeburgh Strings producing detailed, engaging vignettes that unite in a complex but marvelously coherent musical mosaic. Throughout this traversal of the Fugue, the inventiveness of Britten’s contrapuntal writing is evident. Though not as widely-known as his Simple Symphony and Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for similar forces, the Opus 29 Prelude and Fugue constitute one of Britten’s most accomplished works, a distinction made audible in the performance on this disc.

It is no coincidence that horn soloist Richard Watkins occupies the Dennis Brain Chair on the faculty of the Royal Academy of Music. Continuing the legacy of Brain, at whose suggestion the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings was composed in 1943, whilst Britten convalesced from a serious bout with measles and concurrently toiled on the libretto for his opera Peter Grimes, and Barry Tuckwell, with whom Britten recorded the Serenade two decades after its première, Watkins acquits himself impeccably in this performance of the Serenade. His easy command of the horn’s infamously tricky natural harmonics, exploited to chilling effect by Britten, is nothing short of remarkable, but the technical mastery of his playing never overwhelms its innate expressivity. Especially in the Serenade’s Prologue and Epilogue, entrusted solely to the horn, Watkins rises to the challenges of Britten’s music spectacularly, producing a stream of even, accurately-pitched tones that fully expose the genius of the composer’s writing for the instrument.

Not surprisingly, the vocal part in the Serenade was written for and first performed by Sir Peter Pears, Britten’s partner in life and music and the muse for whom the composer created a succession of the finest tenor rôles in Twentieth-Century opera. With his opening phrase in ‘Pastoral,’ his elocution of Charles Cotton’s text shaped by an audible sensitivity to Britten’s use of consonants as rhythmic markers, Clayton establishes himself as a triumphantly worthy successor to Pears. The serenity with which the younger tenor delivers the line ‘The shadows now so long do grow’ ideally complements the yearning discord lurking within the music. Lord Tennyson’s words in ‘Nocturne’ are articulated with equal comprehension, the contrasting open and closed vowels in the lines ‘O love, they die in yon rich sky, / They faint on fill or field or river’ enunciated with clarity that enhances the gnawing harmonic complexity of Britten’s setting. With a haunting text by William Blake, ‘Elegy’ is among its composer’s most poignant inspirations, its vocal line so meticulously sculpted for Pears’s sinewy voice that even speaking the words in time to the music seems to recreate the graceful whirr of his singing. Clayton’s voice is both more beautiful and more secure throughout the range than Pears’s, but the forthrightness with which he limns the distress of lines like ‘O rose, thou art sick’ recalls Pears’s interpretive perspicuity.

The anonymous text drawn from the Lyke-Wake Dirge melds with Britten’s music in ‘Dirge’ with a sensual desolation that gains pathos from the sincerity with which Clayton sings ‘If even thou gavest hosen and shoon.’ Like all of its companion movements in the Serenade, ‘Hymn’ receives from tenor and musicians a reading of unflappable musicality and intelligence, their seamless collaboration yielding extraordinary dividends. Here, too, Clayton’s use of text, in this instance by Ben Jonson, heightens the impact of the composer’s harmonies, so carefully crafted to complement the nuances of the words, not least in the passage beginning with ‘Earth, let not thy envious shade.’ Tapping the vein of melody in John Keats’s verse, ‘Sonnet’ inspires singer and musicians to starkly persuasive, startlingly lucid music making, the sting of the lines ‘Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards, / And seal the hushèd / Casket of my Soul’ surging from the disc. In the Serenade and in Britten’s music in general, the foremost pleasures are almost always found in the dialogues among artists instigated by the intimacy of even his most expansively-constructed scores. Forcing nothing, Clayton and his colleagues here converse with the camaraderie of beloved friends. Is this not the truest essence of what music is meant to achieve?

Likely born in 1716 or 1717, only a few years after the death of the heirless Queen Anne ended the Stuart dynasty and settled the English crown on the heads of the German-speaking Electors of Hannover, the tenor John Beard was not only one of the most renowned singers of the Eighteenth Century but was also one of the few lower-voiced singers who managed to snatch leading, heroic rôles in operas and oratorios from the gilded throats of castrati. That he earned the respect and endorsement of a man as particular as Georg Friedrich Händel is indicative of the tremendous quality of Beard’s voice and the integrity of his artistry. As a gentleman of the Commonwealth might suggest, though, the proof of Beard’s importance to Eighteenth-Century British music is in the pudding, and the music composed for or adopted by Beard constitutes a deliciously rich concoction. After hearing the selections on this Signum Classics disc, it is perplexing to note that programmatic exploration of repertory associated with Beard has heretofore been rare. Not merely owing to its subject is this disc unusual, however: here, too, Allan Clayton offers singing of a caliber that both discloses his own skills and highlights the accomplishments of the composers whose music he sings. How might one better pay homage to a legendary artist of the past than by performing music that formed his artistic identity with fresh insights and imagination?

Neither Thomas Arne nor William Boyce is as appreciated by Twenty-First-Century listeners as his talents and fame in Eighteenth-Century Britain merit, but Beard was more generous with his gifts than modern-day observers are with their attention. Anyone who has heard the familiar strains of the chorus of ‘Rule, Britannia’ in a film or television score has encountered Arne’s music, perhaps unknowingly, and the composer’s Artaxerxes was one of the most successful English operas of the Eighteenth Century, its notoriety having been so great that it was during a performance of the Metastasio-derived Artaxerxes that rioters chose to destructively object to an ill-timed elimination of discounted tickets. The air ‘Thou, like the glorious sun’ is indicative of the quality of the score, and the performance that it receives is indicative of the quality of Clayton’s singing on this disc. Every note of the music and syllable of the text are given their due, and Clayton phrases with a poet’s feeling for words. The Sinfonia prefacing Part Two of Boyce’s masterful 1742 oratorio Solomon introduces a sequence of beautifully-written numbers that give credence to the reputation that the composer enjoyed among his contemporaries. Clayton sings both the recitative ‘My fair’s a garden of delight’ and the air ‘Softly rise, o southern breeze’ contemplatively but with unmistakable histrionic thrust. The superbly-trained voices of the Choir of Classical Opera deliver ‘Ye southern breezes gently blow’ rousingly, the balance among parts absolutely ideal and the words cleanly articulated.

Born in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, John Christopher Smith followed his father to London and into service to Händel, for whom he was copyist and, after the older composer’s blindness prevented him from leading public performances of his own music, conductor until Händel’s death in 1759. Though not on par with the quality of his employer’s scores, Smith’s surviving works reveal charm and well-crafted vocal writing and instrumentation that bear the stamp of Händel’s influence. In the delightful air ‘Hark how the hounds and horn’ from Smith’s 1755 opera The Fairies, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Clayton sings with the boyish playfulness of Puck, the aristocratic elegance of Theseus, and the romantic ardor of Demetrius and Lysander. Smith asks nothing of the tenor that he cannot supply with panache, and his buoyant rhythmic accuracy conveys all the enchantment of the text and the opera’s plot.

Taking full advantage of the unfailingly period-appropriate but never pedantic support of the Orchestra of Classical Opera and conductor Ian Page, the selections by Händel constitute a fascinating explication of the working relationship between the master composer and one of his most trusted interpreters. Clayton provides precisely the jubilant spirit and musical exuberance that the delightful air ‘Tune your harps to cheerful strains’ from Esther requires, and his Italian diction proves no less vibrant than his native tongue in his impeccably stylish performance of the aria ‘Sol nel mezzo risona del core’ from the too-seldom-performed Il pastor fido.

The winningly dovetailed seriousness of purpose and youthful energy that made their recent account of Mozart’s Il re pastore one of the finest opera recordings of recent years distinguish the Classical Opera personnel’s dramatically-charged playing of the Sinfonia that opens Act Two of Ariodante. Following Page’s lead, Clayton voices the daunting aria ‘Tu vivi, e punito’ thrillingly, his bravura technique as impressive as his handling of more introverted music. The recitative ‘M’inganna, me n’avveggo’ and aria ‘Un momento di contento’ from Alcina could hardly make a greater contrast, and the tenor’s poised vocalism fills the long-breathed lines of ‘Un momento di contento’ exquisitely, the simple beauty of his timbre highlighting the communicative power of Händel’s genius. No less noteworthy is Clayton’s singing of ‘Vedi l’ape che ingegnosa’ from Berenice. In this aria, too, his affinity for musical storytelling is wonderfully apparent.

If there is a more euphonious recorded performance of music from the Eighteenth Century than Clayton’s account with radiant-voiced soprano Mary Bevan of the duet ‘As steals the morn upon the night’ from Händel’s 1740 John Milton-inspired ode L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, there are no words adequate to describe it. In reality, mere words are sorry company for Clayton’s and Bevan’s singing, as well. There is an almost erotic tension in the serpentine intertwining of their voices, and the singers effortlessly match flawless intonation with unobtrusive vibrato. In the recitative ‘Let but that spirit’ and air ‘Thus when the sun from’s wat’ry bed’ from Samson and the recitative ‘’Tis well, my friends’ and air ‘Call forth thy pow’rs, my soul, and dare’ from Judas Maccabaeus, Clayton’s tones ring out magnificently, his commands of dynamics and tonal shading enlivening every bar of the music. The same is true of his performance—and, make no mistake, it is a wholly thought-out performance, not a strictly-for-the-microphone studio run-through—of the air ‘Hide thou thy hated beams, O sun, in clouds,’ the stirring accompagnato ‘A father, off’ring up his only child,’ and the grandiloquent air ‘Waft her, angels, through the skies’ from Jephtha. The many wonders of these pieces and the sublime air and chorus ‘Happy pair’ from Alexander’s Feast pour forth from Clayton and his Classical Opera colleagues with boundless finesse.

Jupiter’s ‘Where’re you walk’ from Händel’s Semele is surely the best-qualified candidate for the dubious distinction of being the Baroque aria for tenor as hackneyed as the Duca di Mantova’s ‘La donna è mobile’ from Verdi’s Rigoletto and Calàf’s ‘Nessun dorma’ from Puccini’s Turandot. Like those later tunes, it has been sung by virtually every tenor of the past three centuries, regardless of familiarity with the requisite style. Beard sang Jupiter in Semele’s 1744 première, but the rôle might have been tailor-made for Clayton. As the younger tenor sings it on this disc, the aria is wholly the amorous, hypnotic number that Händel clearly intended it to be, an oasis amidst Semele’s calamities, conflicts, and conniving. Framing the air with a pointed reading of the recitative ‘See, she appears,’ Clayton devotes an appealing lightness to the familiar music. Throughout this recital, Clayton honors traditions by looking beyond them, honoring Beard by singing music familiar to him with precisely the commitment and adroitness that surely endeared the illustrious tenor to Händel.

In the three centuries since the birth of John Beard, Britain has produced a number of fine tenors, among whom Gervase Elwes, Heddle Nash, Alexander Young, Richard Lewis, John Mitchinson, Stuart Burrows, Ian Partridge, and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson have been some of the most renowned. The rightly-lamented Rolfe-Johnson finds in Allan Clayton’s lustrous, lyrical vocalism a legitimate heir, but these discs confirm that, artistically, Clayton is his own man. Nearly fifty years ago, Mama Cass Elliot entreated us to ‘make your own kind of music,’ to find our own ways even among the too-trodden ways of the past. How much there is to enjoy in these recorded products of Allan Clayton having taken that advice to heart!

Man with a Händel on Britten: Tenor Allan Clayton [Photo by Laura Harling, © by Allan Clayton/Maestro Arts]