PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Antonín Dvořák – RUSALKA (J. El-Khoury, R. Thomas, M. Gawrysiak, H. Melton, T. Fox; North Carolina Opera; 30 March 2014)

Soprano Joyce El-Khoury in the title rôle of Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka at North Carolina Opera, 30 March 2014 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © 2014 by North Carolina Opera]

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841 – 1904): Rusalka, Opus 114—Joyce El-Khoury (Rusalka), Russell Thomas (Princ), Margaret Gawrysiak (Ježibaba), Heidi Melton (Cizí kněžna), Tom Fox (Vodník), Rachel E. Copeland (Lesní žínka), Kristin Schwecke (Jiná žínka), Jami Rhodes (Třeti žínka), Donald Hartmann (Hajný), Shannon French (Kuchtík), Scott MacLeod (Lovec); Chorus and Orchestra of North Carolina Opera; Timothy Myers, conductor [Directed by Crystal Manich; lighting designed by Ross Kolman; costumes designed by Amanda Seymour; North Carolina Opera, Meymandi Concert Hall, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina; Sunday, 30 March 2014]

In most performances, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka is an opera that impresses the ears far more readily than it moves the heart. Premièred in Prague in 1901, the opera is a setting of a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil that deals with a variation of a familiar fairy tale that is both endearingly timeless and surprisingly modern. Though hers is the title rôle, Rusalka is, like the Färberin in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, denied an identity of her own: in Czech, the word ‘rusalka’ denotes any nymph or sprite, so Dvořák’s heroine is a generality; or, as the text of the opera suggests, a figure whose existence spans two worlds without truly belonging to either of them. Among the characters in Rusalka, only the sorceress Ježibaba can claim any sort of legitimate individuality, though she, too, is ultimately an archetype. In this sense, Rusalka could be argued to be the most ‘operatic’ of operas, the characters who populate it symbolizing the ambiguities that define the genre: the heroine who both is and is not what she seems, willing to suffer the consequences of her dream of love rather than relinquishing it; the hero whose sincerity is undermined by doubt and manipulation; the quintessential ‘other woman,’ not so much a rival to be hated as a representation of the conventionally sensual aspect of the eternal feminine; the stern father whose worldview compels him to condemn what he cannot control; the good-natured sisters whose simplicity causes them to reject what they cannot understand. Dvořák brought these figures to life with greater alacrity than most composers might have managed, tingeing the opera with the understated melancholy and fantastically original response to nature that pervade much of Czech art and music, but the very impersonality of the principal characters can hold an audience at arm’s length. Every barrier between Dvořák’s score and the audience was torn down by North Carolina Opera’s inspiring semi-staged performance in Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall. Directed by Crystal Manich, the staging made no attempt at giving the opera any sort of artificial ‘relevance.’ Rather, all efforts were focused on giving Dvořák’s score the best performance possible. The talented, unusually homologous cast having achieved this rivetingly, often unforgettably, the opera spoke for itself. More than four thousand miles from Prague, Rusalka came to life in Raleigh with unmistakable significance and boundless beauty. The ears of the capacity audience were undoubtedly impressed, and the enthusiasm of the ovations asserted that Dvořák’s ‘poor, lost Rusalka’ sank as surely into the hearts of those who heard her sad tale as into the depths from which she emerged.

Both musically and dramatically, Dvořák’s score has many similarities with the operas of Richard Wagner. Rusalka and the Foreign Princess (Cizí knĕžna) are close cousins of Elisabeth and Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, and the Prince (Princ) bears passing resemblances to Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Siegfried, and Parsifal. Though Vodník is a Wotan-like figure, not least in his resigned renunciation of his beloved daughter, the opening scene of Rusalka inhabits the world of Das Rheingold, Dvořák’s Wood Sprites’ taunting of Vodník paralleling Wagner’s Rhinemaidens’ playful rejection of Alberich. North Carolina Opera’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Timothy Myers left no Wagnerian nuance of Dvořák’s score unexplored, his expansive but always controlled conducting spurring the North Carolina Opera Orchestra to playing that combined fortifying explosions of sound where appropriate with moments of exquisite delicacy. Owing to the rich resources of musical talent that have been lured to central North Carolina in recent years, the NC Opera Orchestra is a far finer ensemble than a visitor to Raleigh might expect it to be, and the instrumentalists displayed great refinement and virtuosity in their execution of Dvořák’s score. In particular, the demanding brass and woodwind parts were superbly played, with almost none of the flubbed notes and missed entries that affect the playing of many regional ensembles. Harpist Jacqueline Barlett proved herself to be a consummate mistress of her instrument, playing the critical passages of her part with rhythmic vitality and tenacious artistry. Though they never appeared on stage, the North Carolina Opera Chorus sang vibrantly, with only notes at the tops of their ranges challenging the singers. The blend among voices was masterfully achieved, and the singers—numbering fourteen ladies and eleven gentlemen—held their own against Dvořák’s orchestra in full cry. In a performance in which many passages were delivered by chorus, horn, and soloists from off stage, balances and tautness of ensemble were maintained with admirable consistency. Maestro Myers’s baton technique and faculty for cueing singers are noticeably superior to those of many young conductors (and, indeed, those of many older, more established conductors, as well) and he is obviously comfortable leading opera. His mastery of Rusalka was evident, and under his direction the performance had both the sweep and the subtlety that the music deserves.

In his brief appearance on stage and, especially, in his lines sung from the wings, baritone Scott MacLeod—also the Chorus Master—was a strong, resonant Huntsman (Lovec), his singing of ‘Jel mladý lovec, jel a jel, laň bilou vlese uvidĕl’ jovial but vaguely mysterious and grandly masculine. Also ringing of voice and charismatic of demeanor was bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as the Gamekeeper (Hajný), whose scenes with his nephew—the Turnspit (Kuchtík), sung with wide-eyed humor by mezzo-soprano Shannon French—were engaging and genuinely funny. The genial comedy of Mr. Hartmann’s and Ms. French’s fear of Ježibaba, not played too broadly, provided welcome levity in the otherwise bleak course of the drama. Soprano Rachel E. Copeland and mezzo-sopranos Kristin Schwecke and Jami Rhodes sang lustrously as the trio of Wood Sprites. Ms. Copeland’s singing of the First Sprite’s song of admiration for her beautiful hair, ‘Mám zlaté vlásky mám,’ was appropriately luminous, and when Ms. Schwecke’s Second Sprite and Ms. Rhodes’s Third Sprite joined her to complete the trio in praise of their youthful enticements the close harmonies were sung with accuracy but every appearance of spontaneity. In the opera’s first scene, the three ladies’ singing glowed with gaiety, and Ms. Copeland’s technique proved equal to the First Sprite’s long-sustained trill and top As. All of America’s regional opera companies should aspire to the high standard of casting of secondary rôles achieved by North Carolina Opera in this performance.

Heidi Melton’s Foreign Princess was a portrayal of Wagnerian amplitude and bel canto poise. The Princess’s vocal line rises to top B♭ within six bars of her entrance, followed in short order by a top C in duet with the Prince over the full power of Dvořák’s orchestration. It is not an extensive rôle, but every phrase that the Princess is given to sing is important and vocally dangerous. If Ms. Melton was daunted by a single note of her part, it could not be heard in her singing. The power and security of her vocalism across the wide range of her music were wonderful, and the insouciant glamour of her performance was seductive. The suggestiveness with which Ms. Melton sang ‘Ó, vystrojte se v šaty přebohaté: mám dvornost jeho vy však srdce máte,’ in which the Princess tells the mute Rusalka that even without words she has captivated the Prince’s heart, was illustrative of the presiding enigma of her performance as a whole. While there was no doubt that this Princess was a serious suitor for the Prince’s affections and a powerfully alluring woman, her reactions to Rusalka seemed more mystified than mean-spirited. Indeed, the only real derision in her performance was leveled at the Prince when, in the final moments of Act Two, she spurned his attention, as much horrified by the Prince’s rejection of Rusalka as by the sudden appearance of Vodník. A less insightful singer might well have made the Princess a mindless, unfeeling virago, but Ms. Melton lent the character a dignity that, in additional to befitting a princess, heightened the sense of isolation that drives the Prince to madness. Ms. Melton’s voice is one of true Hochdramatische proportions, but she encountered no problems with the tessitura of the Princess’s music. The uniqueness of her dramatic portrait was enhanced by the pleasure of hearing the part’s top notes sung so felicitously and forcefully.

Droll, peculiar, and credibly threatening in turn, mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak’s Ježibaba was a quirky creation, and, like her colleagues, Ms. Gawrysiak sang the rôle with confidence and vocal authority. Ms. Gawrysiak punched out the repeated low B♭s in her opening music with columnar strength, but the frequent ascents to E♭ and F at the top of the staff also held no terrors for her. The climactic top G♯s, A and B♭ of her music in Act One were delivered with panache. In Ježibaba’s scene with Rusalka in Act Three, Ms. Gawrysiak brought startling venom to her declarations that the only possible atonement for Rusalka’s misbegotten assumption of human form was the spilling of human blood. Dvořák and Kvapil offer no explicit explanation for Ježibaba’s hatred for humanity, but the passion of Ms. Gawrysiak’s performance suggested that there was some intensely painful history at the core of her abhorrence. In her final appearance, when the Gamekeeper and his nephew consult her for advice in curing the Prince’s increasing malcontent, Ježibaba seems converted into the twin sister of the Knusperhexe in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, and Ms. Gawrysiak clearly savored the transformation. A woman was always perceptible beneath the witch’s exterior in Ms. Gawrysiak’s performance, and the music was sung athletically but attractively.

An accomplished Wagnerian, baritone Tom Fox brought the weight, intelligence, and world-weariness of an important Wotan to his performance as Vodník. In his opening scene with the Wood Sprites, Mr. Fox sang and acted with whimsy, but the tone of his performance—and the coloration of his timbre—changed immediately upon Rusalka’s entrance. The sinewy earthiness of Mr. Fox’s voice was tremendously effective in Vodník’s music, and the exasperation, vexation, and indignation that flooded the voice as he recognized that Rusalka was not to be dissuaded from her quest to become human were bracing. The resonance and security of Mr. Fox’s lower register were telling throughout the performance, and he approached all of his high Es and Fs without hesitation. A few of the part’s highest notes stretched Mr. Fox’s resources, but he maintained an appreciable accuracy of pitch even on tones sustained by sheer will. The tenderness with which Mr. Fox’s Vodník received the despondent Rusalka in Act Two was palpably conveyed, and the visceral impact of his singing of ‘V jinou spĕš náruč, spĕš a spĕš, objetí jejímu neujdeš,’ his denunciation of the Prince for having discarded Rusalka for the arms of another woman, was engrossing. In Act Three, Mr. Fox reached grandiose peaks of dramatic expression, infusing his performance with every changing emotion of Vodník’s predicament. His singing in the scene in which he hurls out to the Gamekeeper and Turnspit that the Prince has betrayed Rusalka’s love rather than falling victim to her pulsed with sorrow and paternal umbrage. After singing to the Wood Sprites that the innocence and light-hearted joy of their lake were destroyed by Rusalka’s fate, the solemnity with which Mr. Fox left the stage was heartbreaking. Like Oroveso in Bellini’s Norma, Vodník is ultimately unable to reconcile himself with his daughter’s betrayal, and his offstage singing of ‘Nadarmo v loktech zemře ti, marny jsou všechny obĕti’ (‘Sacrifices are in vain, his dying is no salvation’) as the Prince dies in Rusalka’s embrace was devastating. Musically and dramatically, Vodník is a grueling rôle, one which many singers are grateful merely to survive. Mr. Fox gave his all in a performance that did not merely survive but wholly conquered the part.

Tenor Russell Thomas worked diligently to make the Prince an agreeable character, and fine as his uncomplicated acting was throughout the performance it was the polish and basic loveliness of his singing that compelled affection. The wide-eyed wonder of his first encounter with the newly-human Rusalka was touching, and the assurance with which he took the Prince’s many top A♭s and pair of B♭♭s in the final moments of Act One was spine-tingling. His frustration with the still-silent Rusalka in Act Two was expressive of true passion, and though his acting convincingly depicted both the unhinged desperation of his longing for Rusalka and the reluctant distraction of his attention, Mr. Thomas’s Prince’s wooing of the Foreign Princess was never more than half-hearted. When asked by the Foreign Princess in the closing pages of Act Two where Rusalka had gone, Mr. Thomas’s singing of ‘Kam prchla? Milý Bůh to ví’ (‘Where have you gone? Only God knows’) was suffused with emotion. When the Prince entered in search of Rusalka in Act Three, his desolation was that of a man mad with grief and guilt, and the eloquence of Mr. Thomas’s singing, again making light of the high tessitura, was wrenching. When Rusalka appeared at last and sang ‘Miláčku, znáš mne, znáš’ (‘Do you still recognize me, my love?’), the agony in Mr. Thomas’s singing was calmed, and he accepted at once that the only liberation possible for him was death in the throes of Rusalka’s kiss. His cries of ‘Líbej mne, líbej, mír mi přej’ (‘Kiss me, kiss me, set me free’) were piercing and all the more crushing for being so resplendently sung, the rise to top C managed without strain. The ease with which Mr. Thomas mastered the range of his music throughout the performance was awesome, and his thoughtful acting was crowned by an understated, sensual account of the Prince’s death scene.

The assumption of the title rôle by soprano Joyce El-Khoury belied that the part is new to her repertoire, her first performances of Rusalka having been in San Antonio earlier this year. [She will reprise the rôle in a concert performance in Amsterdam’s storied Concertgebouw on Saturday, 17 May.] Dramatically, perhaps the greatest challenges for a Rusalka are the scenes in Acts One and Two in which she must essentially take part in duets with the Prince without singing, her ability to speak having been sacrificed in her bargain with Ježibaba. Upon becoming human, the fascination with which Ms. El-Khoury’s Rusalka contemplated her newly-functional feet was fetching. In Act Two, her interaction with the Prince was delectable but troubling, her mimicking of his actions and expressions conveying her overwhelming desire to please him. Her increasing confusion at his violence was shattering, and the muted comeliness of her movements proved immensely effective. The rapt concentration with which she shrouded the Prince’s corpse in her veil and slowly left the stage in the opera’s last bars was acutely poignant. The unerring accomplishment of her acting was enhanced by the purity and stability of her singing. At her first entrance in Act One, it was apparent that Ms. El-Khoury had the music in both her voice and her heart, and her longing to be freed from the confines of her watery realm was the sentiment of poetry, not petulance. ‘Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém,’ the celebrated ‘Song to the Moon,’ was ravishingly sung, the voice seeming to take on the silvery light of the moon to which Rusalka was singing and the fearsomely exposed rise to top B♭ negotiated with ardor and perfect intonation. In the scene with Ježibaba, the sincerity of Ms. El-Khoury’s singing—and the biting brilliance of her top A♯—might have convinced a less thorny sorceress to grant her every wish without stipulations. When Rusalka’s reunion with her father in Act Two restored her ability to speak, the tone poured out of Ms. El-Khoury as though a dam had burst: the top Gs and fortissimo top A that she produced as Rusalka sang of her shame had the force of thunderbolts. The richness of Ms. El-Khoury’s timbre enabled her to glide over Dvořák’s often dense orchestrations without forcing the voice, and even in moments of greatest dramatic duress she maintained her technical deportment. Her singing in the opening scene of Act Three, in which the vocal line often centers in the lower octave of the voice, was communicative of very personal feelings of loss and hopelessness, and her resolve in refusing Ježibaba’s suggestions of murder as the penance for her mistakes was imparted by her pair of flashing top B♭s. Near the end of the opera, her top B as she sang to the Prince that her only possible intervention in his life could be to end it bore the energy of all of the character’s suppressed emotions, and Rusalka’s repeated questions of why the Prince betrayed her—questions to which he never responded—were voiced with profound sadness but no bitterness. Though a young singer, Ms. El-Khoury brought an erudite sensitivity to her performance, and her fresh, golden-toned singing proffered an earnest, recondite portrait of Dvořák’s elusive heroine.

With so many opera companies on the brink of financial and artistic collapse, it is easy to lose sight of the perceptive, wonderfully satisfying music-making that continues to enliven concert halls and opera houses throughout the United States. Opera is an expensive enterprise, perhaps more ridiculously so now than ever before, but, like so many other aspects of life and Art, those events and institutions with the greatest financial backing are not always those that are the most artistically successful. Money attracts familiar names but not necessarily important voices, and the voices that North Carolina Opera engaged for this performance of Rusalka were not just important but ideal for the music. Above all, however, what this performance reaffirmed is that not even the most prodigious resources can buy heart. The heart of this Rusalka throbbed with yearning and dismay, and every tear in the theatre will be a cherished memory in the souls of those who were fortunate enough to witness it.

CD REVIEW: Gaetano Donizetti – RITA (DEUX HOMMES ET UNE FEMME) [K. Karnéus, B. Banks, C. Maltman; Opera Rara ORC50]

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Rita (Deux Hommes et une Femme)—Katarina Karnéus (Rita), Barry Banks (Pepé), Christopher Maltman (Gasparo); The Hallé; Sir Mark Elder, conductor [Recorded at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK, in September 2012; Opera Rara ORC50; 1CD, 63:43; Available from Opera Rara, Amazon, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

The history of Gaetano Donizetti’s Rita is a cautionary tale of the myriad of non-musical machinations that can keep an opera from the stage despite its merits. Poor Rita fell victim to perhaps the most ferocious circumstances imaginable, those of quarrelling relatives. In fact, the manic tribulations endured by Rita in the two decades between its completion in 1841 and its first performance in 1860 could almost have been the inspiration for the libretto of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi! The product at least in part of a chance encounter with Gilbert Vaëz, who contributed to the French libretti of Lucie de Lammermoor and La favorite, Rita provided Donizetti with a stopgap to distract him from the anxiety created by the wait for delivery of a long-awaited libretto for a commission from La Scala. It may have been a short-lived diversion: Vaëz contended that the famously prodigious composer toiled over the opera for eight whole days, and Donizetti’s correspondence—excerpted in the informative liner notes by Francesco Bellotto, who collaborated on the critical edition of the score—hints that Rita’s gestational period may indeed have been brief, though precisely when in his creative chronology that period may have occurred remains open to interpretation. At any rate, with the completion of the score began a path to performance that stumbled over obstacles of opera house politics, competing interests, and feuding heirs. When Rita finally reached the stage of Paris’s Opéra-Comique in 1860, it was not in Donizetti’s and Vaëz’s original form, Deux hommes et une femme, but with the subtitle Le mari battu, and after the traumatic journey the score endured it may well have felt like a ‘beaten husband.’ The handful of performances of the opera in the years since its première have mostly offered the public bowdlerizations of the Italian translation that Donizetti prepared for a production at Naples’s Teatro del Fondo that never came to fruition. At long last, Opera Rara—ever a source of innovative efforts at revisiting rather than revising overlooked gems of bel canto—have given Rita an opportunity to parade before the footlights in the clothes her composer cut for her, and what a chic lass she proves to be!

The authentic Rita has the Gallic tartness of citron pressé and much in common with the spirit of Auber’s Le toréador and even Ravel’s L’heure espagnole. Believing that her rightful husband Gasparo has been drowned at sea (and wasting no effort on mourning the loss), Rita has married the ne’er-do-well Pepé, who suffers every sort of indignity at her hands. Denied his presumed watery escape from Rita, Gasparo returns to his wife’s inn, fired by hope, to verify the veracity of a rumor that she has died. Pepé may not be the brightest stella in the cielo, but when he recognizes the name on Gasparo’s passport he concocts a plan: how better to unload an unwanted wife than by a timely reunion with her miraculously restored-to-life husband? The problem is that Gasparo already has designs on a Canadian girl. When the matter is not resolved via gaming and drawing straws, Gasparo provokes a fight he knows he cannot and does not want to win. Having beaten one lout of a husband and been beaten by the other (abuse begets abuse, after all), Rita is beguiled by what she perceives as Pepé’s sudden burst of macchismo, and thus reconciled with the lesser of two evils she is content to allow Gasparo to stay dead, married—unhappily, it seems certain—under the Maple Leaf. All’s well that ends well, then; not so well, perhaps, but quiet for a while, at least. In the hands of many composers, this story might well have inspired a tedious, heartless farce, but Donizetti crafted a delicious romp filled with music of top quality that makes the score a worthy little sister of La fille du régiment.

​Having set about the business of righting the wrongs to which Rita was subjected during the past 160 years, Opera Rara sealed the deal by recording a performance in which every piece of the musical puzzle falls into place with naturalness and rollicking high spirits. Under the confident, consistently stylish leadership of Sir Mark Elder, the impeccably-trained musicians of The Hallé play with such sheer fun that they might be mistaken for the residents of an Italian opera house pit—except, that is, for the indefatigable accuracy of their playing. Nothing that Donizetti asks of them is an insurmountable challenge, and Maestro Elder makes no demand that they do not meet as though it were as easy as playing scales. Owing to the dedication of both orchestra and conductor, a thoroughly engaging atmosphere is established: the piquant aromas and clinking glasses of a roadside inn ripple through the performance. Maestro Elder conducts with an easy grasp of Donizetti’s style, and the dependable sophistication of his pacing of the performance enables the cast to focus on getting inside their rôles. Rita was created by Constance-Caroline Fauré-Lefèbvre, who sang the old woman Taven and the trousers part of the shepherd Andreloun in the première of Gounod’s Mireille and was a veteran of Opéra-Comique productions of operas by Adam, Auber, and Meyerbeer. A more suitable 21st-Century stand-in for Fauré-Lefèbvre than Swedish mezzo-soprano Katarina Karnéus could not have been found. In her opening number, ‘De mon auberge ainsi,’ Ms. Karnéus sets the tone of the performance at once: mastering every technical aspect of her music, she portrays a stern but not unfeeling woman very much in full governance of her own fate. Dramatically, if there is a defect in her performance it is that it seems unlikely that any man would have given this Rita a beating without receiving a trouncing in return. Most importantly, Ms. Karnéus meets every requirement of Rita’s music and does so with technique, charisma, and vocal beauty to spare. Seagoing Husband Number One, Gasparo, is sung with zest and a healthy dose of philandering swagger by baritone Christopher Maltman. Through vocal means alone, he creates a character who seems sure to have tormented poor Rita and given her a few blows for her trouble. Mr. Maltman’s vibrato sounds looser than in past, perhaps a result of microphone placement, but the muscular magnetism of his singing is unimpeded. His account of Gasparo’s Couplets, ‘Mon ménage pour modèle,’ a statement of his credo on the ‘appropriate’ treatment of women (beat them if they need it, but never knock them out), is sung with snarling good humor and ringing conviction. Husband Number Two, the pushover Pepé, is cannily sung by tenor Barry Banks, whose slender and slightly nasal but hearty voice rockets through Donizetti’s vocal lines with sparkle and wit. He sings Pepé’s air ‘Tra la la la la la la la la la…Je suis joyeux comme un pinçon’ with exuberance that he can barely contain, his delivery of the lines ‘Moi je suis veuf…sans que ma femme ait rendu l’âme’ (‘I am a widower…though my wife has not yet given up the ghost’) bursting with bumptious self-satisfaction. Mr. Banks remains one of the finest exponents of high-flying bel canto tenor rôles, and his Pepé is far more than a weak-willed sap. All three principals display admirable diction, spoken and sung, and there is none of the shameless mugging in their delivery of the dialogue that can cheapen comedy. It is in the ensembles that the cast sing most persuasively. Rita’s duet with Pepé, ‘C’est elle, je frémis,’ simmers with bumbling panic, annoyance, and exasperation, and both Ms. Karnéus and Mr. Banks exhibit perfect comic timing. The duets for Pepé and Gasparo, ‘Il me vient une idée’ and ‘Ô chère âme! Chère femme,’ bristle with subtly menacing sparring, but there can only be so much mettle in a fight in which neither combatant wants to prevail. The facility with which Mr. Banks and Mr. Maltman blend their very different voices is a testament to both gentlemen’s artistry. The centerpiece of the opera is the trio in which each character’s schemes are unveiled, ‘Il est manchot,’ and the singers relish the opportunity to trade vocal barbs with the jocularity of Savoyards. The curtain is brought down handily with ‘Mais il faut à mon programme,’ in which Gasparo and Pepé resolve their dispute—to their satisfaction, at least, if not quite to Rita’s. In comparison with Donizetti’s great masterpieces, this is an insubstantial entertainment, but the singing of these two men and one woman gives substantial pleasure.

Whatever the dimensions of its score, no opera by Donizetti thrives without excellent singing, and Katarina Karnéus, Barry Banks, and Christopher Maltman give Rita a performance that finally gives the opera the unblemished outing it deserves. They even manage to make of a free-willed harridan, a pusillanimous idiot, and a intemperate womanizer interesting, three-dimensional, and affable characters. In the end, this is a performance in which it seems that each character gets what she or he deserves: laudably, so, too, do Donizetti and his long-suffering Rita.

CD REVIEW: VERDI – Opera Arias (Krassimira Stoyanova, soprano; ORFEO C 885 141 A)

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Verdi – Arias from Aida, Il trovatore, Giovanna d’Arco, Un ballo in maschera, Luisa Miller, La traviata, Don Carlo, La forza del destino, and Otello—Krassimira Stoyanova, soprano; Münchner Rundfunkorchester; Pavel Baleff, conductor [Recorded in Studio 1, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, Germany, 1 – 6 July 2013; ORFEO C 885 141 A; 1CD, 74:12; Available from Amazon, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

Violetta in La traviata, Liù in Turandot, Nedda in Pagliacci, Micaëla in Carmen, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Mimì in La bohème, and Desdemona in Otello: for the few sopranos capable of singing such varied music at all, this array of rôles might reasonably represent the span of an entire career. For the remarkable Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, however, this is merely the measure of a dozen years’ work at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Her 2003 performance of the title rôle in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena with Opera Orchestra of New York was described in the New York Times as ‘consistent and deeply felt,’ and her portrayal of the wronged queen at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2013 revealed that neither the consistency of her vocalism nor the deep feeling of her singing has been at all diminished by the intervening decade. Her uncompromising singing and searing dramatic energy in Covent Garden’s 2012 production of Yevgeny Onegin left no doubt that Tchaikovsky’s genius was fired in a very personal way by Tatyana’s innocence, sexual awakening, and ultimate dedication to duty. In Vienna, where she is as much prima donna assoluta as any soprano in the past quarter-century has had any legitimate claim to be at any opera house in the world, she recently sang Dvořák’s Rusalka with fulsome tone that summoned memories of Gabriela Beňačková. Whether singing the title rôle in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Rachel in Halévy’s La Juive, Alice Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff, or Richard Strauss’s Ariadne, she finds within her voice the unique sounds that each composer’s music requires. In her quest to seek the inspiration for her performances of such a broad repertory in the scores and her individual responses to them, she is an old-fashioned soprano in the very best sense: she identifies the emotional core of a character and trusts her technique to provide a musical foundation upon which a moving theatrical experience can be built. The nine rôles sampled on Verdi are approached with all the hallmarks of this fascinating singer’s artistry: technical acumen, dramatic poise, and emotional directness. In comparison with singers of past generations, this is not a conventional Verdi soprano voice, but, in comparison with today’s singers, who sings Verdi’s soprano rôles more satisfyingly?

Enjoyment of even a magnificent vocal recital disc is undermined by lifeless accompaniment and conducting, and Ms. Stoyanova is fortunate to enjoy the accompaniment of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester and the conducting of Pavel Baleff. The Rundfunkorchester players consistently produce stirring sounds, their command of the shifting idioms of Verdi’s music, spanning forty-two years of his long career, proving so natural that it seems that the current of Verdian style flows as perceptibly in the Isar as in the Po or the Tevere. Sonorities are matched to the sound world conjured by each aria, and the accuracy of intonation displayed by all sections of the orchestra provides ideal support for Ms. Stoyanova’s singing. Maestro Baleff achieves the delicate balance of shaping each aria with attention both to its specific musical requirements and to the broader context of its operatic setting and avoiding the generalization that thwarts the dramatic aspirations of many recital discs. In a great performance, a great singer can rise above catastrophes in the orchestra pit, but Ms. Stoyanova has the good fortune on this disc to have an orchestra and conductor who complement the substantial felicities of her singing rather than distracting from them.

From the first notes of her soaring account of ‘Ritorna vincitor,’ Ms. Stoyanova creates an Aida who is alluringly feminine but not to be trifled with. The bassoon’s support of the vocal line highlights the burnished quality of Ms. Stoyanova’s lower register, which she manages throughout the performances on this disc with admirable evenness that is maintained by a general avoidance of chest register. The fortissimo top B♭ is sung with impressive freedom, but the pinnacle of Ms. Stoyanova’s performance is her command of line in ‘Numi, pietà,’ in which she delivers the climactic ascent to top A♭, the triplet figurations, and the turn with complete mastery of Verdian style. Both of Leonora’s arias from Il trovatore are included, and Ms. Stoyanova’s technical aplomb in the dramatic coloratura requirements of the music proves very enjoyable. Trills do not come naturally to her, but she makes credible efforts at producing the sustained trills in ‘D’amor sull’ali rosee.’ She wisely prefers the oppure in the aria’s closing bars, taking the ascent to top C with distinction but eschewing Verdi’s written phrase cresting on D♭. The singing of the ascending chromatic scale in the cadenza is slightly pedestrian, but the loveliness of the top B♭s counts for much. The gloomy atmosphere of ‘Tacea la notte’ suits Ms. Stoyanova’s basic tonal color, and she infuses her performance of the aria with a sense of breathless tension that never undermines her superb breath control. Neither she nor the orchestra observe Verdi’s pianissimo marking on the phrase beginning with ‘e versi melanconici,’ undermining the effectiveness of the indicated crescendo on the phrase leading to the top B♭, but the unease of the music is compellingly conveyed. The top C in the cadenza is slightly wiry but secure and accurate of pitch. The cabaletta ‘Di tale amor’ is sung with power and grace, the staccati spot on and integrated into the vocal line with consummate skill. The repeated trills on F at the top of the staff are only sketched, however, and here Ms. Stoyanova’s generally clear diction noticeably falters. Nevertheless, both of Leonora’s arias are given effective performances that are far superior to the singing of most sopranos active in Verdi repertory today.

‘O fatidica foresta’ from Giovanna d’Arco, a bucolic piece in which Giovanna reminisces about the former simplicity of her life, is beautifully sung by Ms. Stoyanova, her performance crowned with a ravishing top A♭. Contemplation is central to the pair of arias from Don Carlo, as well, and Elisabetta’s ‘Non pianger, mia compagna, sung to the Countess of Aremberg after Filippo has banished her from court for having left his consort unattended, is one of the most radiantly-sung selections on the disc. The sadness in Ms. Stoyanova’s singing is tempered by a visionary sense of Elisabetta returning vicariously to her native France through her exiled lady-in-waiting. Elisabetta’s monologue ‘Tu che la vanità conosce,’ perhaps Verdi’s single most inspired scene for soprano, is sung with apt majesty, Ms. Stoyanova reaching great heights of dramatic expression with her confident negotiations of the music’s mood changes. She is given an exceptional orchestral setting from which to emerge, the mysterious, slightly menacing tones of the horns seeming almost like primordial sounds borrowed from the opening pages of Das Rheingold. From the opening F♯ at the top of the staff, the soprano phrases with natural understanding of the ways in which Verdi employed vocal intervals to increase dramatic momentum. The phrases in the middle of the voice in which Elisabetta sings of her elicit love for Carlo, her stepson, are injected with warmth and tenderness, and the restatement of the principal theme in the aria’s final section builds to ringing top A♯s in the coda. Nuanced realization of changes of emotional pace also renders Ms. Stoyanova’s performance of ‘Pace, pace, mio dio’ from La forza del destino an eminently satisfying experience. Here, the flute, harp, and cellos build an eloquent foundation upon which the singer unfurls long-breathed melodic lines of great beauty. If there is not quite enough dynamic contrast in the long-held opening ‘pace,’ it is sung with an absolute steadiness that compensates. The critical pianissimo top notes are unerringly placed, and the cries of ‘fatalità’ are voiced with credible trepidation. The concluding top B♭ is a brilliant tone, perfectly produced.

The sustained dramatic expression that Ms. Stoyanova brings to Desdemona’s ‘Canzone del salice’ (‘Willow Song’) and ‘Ave Maria’ from Otello is arresting, the tone at once tragic and gleaming, and the contrast with the equal dramatic impetus that she lends to the title heroine’s ‘Tu puniscimi, o Signore’ from Luisa Miller is telling. Ms. Stoyanova’s adherence to Verdi’s rhythms—a sole fermata on a top A where none exists in the score notwithstanding—reveals the intelligence with which Verdi retooled traditional elements of bel canto for new dramatic purposes. Only the approach to the top B in the aria’s cadenza is ungainly, and for this the composer must share the blame. Amelia’s ‘Morrò, ma prima in grazia’ is gorgeously sung, the singer managing to convey in the aria’s four minutes so much of the character’s misfortune. The solo cello ‘duets’ with Ms. Stoyanova to heartrending effect, and the darkness of the singer’s timbre is again matched by the orchestral playing. The aria’s top C♭ is powerfully but gracefully voiced.

If none of the other selections on this disc passed muster, Ms. Stoyanova’s exquisite performance of Violetta’s ‘Addio del passato’ from La traviata would ensure her legacy as one of the 21st Century’s finest Verdi singers. Preceded by as effective a reading of Germont’s letter as has ever been recorded, with no stagey melodrama marring the simplicity of the letter’s text, she sings the aria in a voice already touched by death but also suffused with unaffected resilience and hope. From Germont’s letter she has received what she theretofore lacked—a reason to live. Few singers convey this shift in Violetta’s will as palpably as Ms. Stoyanova does on this disc. The poignant repetitions in the melodic line are employed as indications of Violetta’s strengthening resolve, but the exhaustion that Ms. Stoyanova portrays in the dramatically desperate but vocally assured top As at the ends of both stanzas leaves no doubt that Violetta’s renewed desire for life has come too late. Strangely, though, there is something enormously comforting in Ms. Stoyanova’s singing: hers is neither a fatalistic nor a delusional Violetta clinging to hopeless joy. Rather, she is a good-hearted woman seeking happiness wherever she can find it and accepting sadness as the price that sometimes must be paid for carefree moments. In many performances of La traviata, ‘Addio del passato’ goes for nothing because Violettas either lack the vocal resources to sing the music with the understated intensity that it demands or choke the scene with contrived efforts at manufacturing tragedy. Ms. Stoyanova’s luminous, uncomplicated singing finds the tragedy that already exists in the music. Nothing more is required.

When the fortunes of many of the world’s opera houses rely so heavily upon the operas of Verdi, it seems counterintuitive that the first fourteen years of the 21st Century have been populated by so few singers capable of doing the composer’s soprano heroines justice. Perhaps Verdi’s operas have in recent years become like Shakespeare’s plays: modern audiences acknowledge them as important works of art without truly understanding the qualities that contribute to their greatness. Versatility among modern singers has often produced artists of basic competence but no true individuality or identification with a particular repertory. The versatility that Krassimira Stoyanova has been displayed in her international career to date is little short of miraculous, but her singing on Verdi verifies what audiences throughout the world have observed: hers is not the lush voice of a Muzio, Ponselle, Tebaldi, or Arroyo, but it is an instrument of great quality over which she exercises near-perfect control. These technical qualities to her credit, she is an artist who finds in Verdi’s heroines women with whom she connects with personality and passion. A soprano can hardly be a prima donna assoluta without a few Verdian arrows in her quiver, and those that Krassimira Stoyanova fires at listeners both in opera houses and on this disc are sharpened by incisive singing and reliably find their targets, whether launched from Joan of Arc’s France or Desdemona’s Venice.

CD REVIEW: Johann Sebastian Bach – JOHANNES-PASSION (J. Gilchrist, M. Rose, E. Watts, S. Connolly, A. Kennedy, C. Purvues; AAM Records AAM002)

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Johannes-Passion, BWV 245 (1724 version)—James Gilchrist (Evangelist), Matthew Rose (Christ), Ashley Riches (Pilatus), Elizabeth Watts (soprano soloist), Sarah Connolly (alto soloist), Andrew Kennedy (tenor soloist), Christopher Purves (bass soloist), Philippa Hyde (Ancilla), Richard Latham (Petrus), James Geer (Servus); Choir of the Academy of Ancient Music; Academy of Ancient Music; Richard Egarr, direction and harpsichord [Recorded at Saint Jude-on-the-Hill, London, UK, 1 – 5 April 2013; AAM Records AAM002; 2CD, 104:37; Available from AAM, Amazon, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

​Two of the few things upon which virtually all people with musical inclinations agree are that Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the supreme artistic geniuses of both his own time and all of human history and that his Passions are the monumental foundations upon which the subsequent masterworks of Western choral music were constructed. In the esteem of those for whom Mozart is superfluous, Beethoven bombastic, Brahms uninspired, and Mahler pompous, Bach remains original and undeniably important; a talent slightly too pedagogical, perhaps, but a legitimate and individual one nonetheless. The problem with Bach's Passions is that, since they were rediscovered and returned to circulation by Mendelssohn in the first half of the 19th Century, neither musicians nor musicologists have known quite what to make of them. Just enough details of the circumstances of their genesis are known with relative certainty to empower substantive performances, but the many unanswered questions leave holes in the understanding of these enthralling works that generations of performers and scholars have sought to fill with a dizzying array of ideas. As the catalysts of progress, ideas are invaluable, but in the context of recordings they grow thin upon repeated hearing. The performance nourished by ideas alone is prone to weakness, and the discriminating listener may ultimately prefer robust ignorance to an informed anemia. This recording of Bach's Johannes-Passion by the venerated Academy of Ancient Music thus fills an unspoken need. The project has no shortage of ideas, but the animation and organic flow of the performance liberate the listener to follow the current of the music without feeling compelled to take notes for a quiz on 'authentic' performance practices. There is more to authenticity than gut strings, valveless horns, and unequal temperament. There is authenticity of spirit, of course, and there can be little doubt that Bach's underlying agenda in the Johannes-Passion was to bring the congregations for whom the music was created closer to their faith. The apparent agenda of this recording is to bring the listener closer to Bach, and all of the tools of historically-informed practices are merely the mechanics by which musical wonders are wrought. It is a parable of sorts: filling the mind with the academia of period-appropriate techniques enables commendable stylishness, but only opening the heart to the intricacies of the music beyond key signatures and chord progressions permits the kind of connection between composer and performer than can be discerned by the listener for whom whether the orchestra is tuned to a = 392 Hz or a = 415 Hz is no more significant than the color of the conductor's hair. Few performances and even fewer recordings of Bach's music meaningfully unite ideas and ideals, and in its mastery of this elusive chemistry alone this recording of the Johannes-Passion is an artistic triumph.

Directed from the harpsichord by Richard Egarr, whose mastery of the keyboard music of Bach has been revealed in acclaimed recordings of the great works of that repertoire, the performances of the choristers and instrumentalists confirm that the Academy of Ancient Music’s long-standing adroitness in Bach’s music has only grown more impressive in the forty-one years since the ensemble’s founding. Joining Mr. Egarr, organist Alastair Ross, harpsichordist Jan Waterfield, and lutenist William Carter form a continuo battery that propels the performance from peak to peak without momentum ever being sacrificed to effects imposed upon rather than drawn from the score. The string playing is consistently warm-toned and formidably secure of intonation, the blends achieved among the violins, viola, violone, and cello creating walls of sound in extroverted passages and soulfully delicate sonorities in moments of greatest feeling. Reiko Ichese’s playing of the viola da gamba obbligato in ‘Es ist vollbracht’ is gorgeous, and the viole d’amore are played with eloquent virtuosity by Pavlo Beznosiuk and Jane Rogers. The glowing tone that Joseph Crouch coaxes from his cello in the bass aria ‘Mein teurer Heiland, laß dich fragen’ creates a compelling dialogue with the singer, and the wind players—Rachel Brown on flute, Alfredo Bernardini on oboe and oboe da caccia, Lars Henriksson on oboe and oboe d’amore, and Ursula Leveaux on bassoon—give performances of uncompromising excellence. Despite the presence of many accomplished period-instrument ensembles on today’s Early Music scene, few performances of either of Bach’s canonical Passions enjoy orchestral playing of the unvarying quality offered by the Academy of Ancient Music players, but it is nothing less than the superb choral and solo singing deserve.

One of the most heated debates in Baroque music involves contrasting arguments about the sizes of choirs that are ideal for Bach’s music. In recent years, the prevailing preference in performances (and recordings) of the cantatas and Passions, rooted in aggressive scholarship that has focused on cryptic markings in Bach’s manuscripts and the often extravagant complexities of his contrapuntal writing that are so difficult for larger choirs to articulate cleanly, has been for one-to-a-part or similarly small ensembles. Among the few direct or incidental details of Bach’s professional life that are beyond question are the facts that, during his tenure in Leipzig, Bach significantly expanded the choir school over which he presided [the Thomanerchor, the standing choir of the Thomaskirche—one of the four churches of which he was de facto Music Director in his capacity as Thomaskantor—employed sixteen boy choristers at the time of Bach’s death] and that the spaces for which his Passions were composed were anything but small. Anyone who knows Bach’s Passions and has stood in the Nikolaikirche, where the Johannes-Passion was first performed in 1724, or the Thomaskirche can but marvel at the supposition that, even if supplemented by the soloists, a mere handful of voices filled these sanctuaries with the immense sounds that his orchestrations suggest that Bach wanted in the powerful opening chorus and turba numbers. Sixteen strong for this recording, the dimensions of the AAM Choir incorporate scholarship with a level-headed realization of the needs of the music. The choristers launch the performance with a persuasive account of ‘Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm in allen Landen herrlich ist,’ the bold sounds that they produce filling Bach’s vocal lines excitingly. The cutthroat intensity of their singing of ‘Jesum von Nazareth’ is thrilling. Starting with a poised, credibly congregational account of ‘O große Lieb, o Lieb ohn alle Maße,’ the choristers bring fervor but touching simplicity to the chorales. Their singing of ‘Christus, der uns selig macht’ at the start of Part Two pulses with guilt, and the phrasing in ‘Ach großer König, groß zu allen Zeiten’ underscores the awe of the text. The irony conveyed in ‘Sei gegrüßet, lieber Jüdenkönig’ is bracing, and the sheer brutality of ‘Kreuzige, kreuzige’ creates unnerving tension. In ‘Eilt, ihr angefochtnen Seelen’ and ‘Mein teuer Heiland, laß dich fragen,’ the bass arias with chorus, the Choir’s singing is spellbinding. Ending the performance with the same energy and wide-ranging expressivity with which it began, the choristers sing ‘Ach Herr, laß dein lieb Engelein’ spiritedly. It is not often that a recording of any dramatic work, sacred or secular, plays out with the same impact that it might brandish in a live performance, but it also is not often that a choir sings Bach’s music with the integrity and unpretentious artistry that AAM’s choristers devote to this performance of Johannes-Passion.

Completing the circuit established by the exceptional performances of the orchestra and choir, the solo singing strikes electric sparks that ignite the fuel generated by their colleagues’ probing musicianship. The smaller parts of the Ancilla, Petrus, and the Servus are taken with distinction by soprano Philippa Hyde, baritone Richard Latham, and tenor James Geer, each of whom gives an assured performance of music that is often sung inadequately. Baritone Ashley Riches sings commanding as Pilatus, his firm voice, burly timbre, and broadly-inflected delivery of text ably conveying Pilate’s pride, indignation, exasperation, and ultimate bewilderment in his judgment of Christ. His singing of Pilate’s ‘Nehmet ihr ihn hin und kreuziget ihn; denn ich finde keine Schuld an ihm’ crackles with annoyance with the single-mindedness of the crowd, and the cynicism of ‘Sehet, das ist euer König’ is depicted with a striking darkening of the tone. Christopher Purves artfully adapts his Herculean voice to the scale of Bach’s music, and his technique proves equal to the most strenuous demands of the bass arias. He sings ‘Betrachte, meine Seel, mit ängstlichem Vergnügen’ with dignity, and his performances of both of the arias with chorus are subtle but gratifyingly red-blooded. One of the most elegant young artists of his generation, tenor Andrew Kennedy sings ‘Ach, mein Sinn, wo willt du endlich hin’ with passion that seems to issue directly from a broken heart, his beautiful timbre suffused with torment derived from the text. ‘Erwäge, wie sein blutgefärbter Rücken’ is sung with similar insightfulness, and the arioso ‘Mein Herz, indem die ganze Welt bei Jesu Leiden gleichfalls leidet’ glistens with sadness and shame, Mr. Kennedy cladding the phrase ‘was willst du deines Ortes tun’ in his most incandescent tones. Having devoted much of her creative energy during recent seasons to denser music like that of Mahler and Richard Strauss has only deepened the flair and dramatic concentration with which mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly sings the music of Bach. The naturalness of her phrasing in tandem with the oboes in ‘Von den Stricken meiner Sünden’ is peerless, and she wittily uses the rhythmic figurations to impart a sense of the freedom evoked in the text. The profundity that Ms. Connolly brings to her performance of ‘Es ist vollbracht,’ the weight of feeling never upsetting her preservation of the integrity of the vocal line, is wrenching. The breadth of sorrow is tempered by a captivating element of spiritual victory, communicated by the unsentimental simplicity of Ms. Connolly’s utterance and the unassailable pulchritude of her voice. Soprano Elizabeth Watts aspires to Ms. Connolly’s accomplishments in phrasing with her assured performance of the aria with flute ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls,’ which she manages with bright tone and precision. She sings ‘Zerfließe, mein Herze, in Fluten der Zähren’—one of Bach’s most beautiful arias for soprano—with confidence and commitment, shaping the phrase ‘dein Jesu ist tot’ with poised dignity that reaches the heart without indulging in unseemly sentimentality.

The finest interpreters of the rôles of Christ and the Evangelist have found in Bach’s music the struggles, suffering, and resilience of men, not symbols or archetypes. Among British singers, perhaps no bass has come nearer to perfection in his portrayal of Christ than Gwynne Howell. Making even the somber authority of his singing a component of an affecting vulnerability, bass Matthew Rose rivals Howell’s heroic but refreshingly human performance. Mr. Rose is a Christ who sounds genuinely hurt by the accusations he faces, and there is an acutely emotive suggestion of weariness in his performance. This is a Christ unafraid to express doubt, fear, and uncertainty—and, thus, one of very personal charisma and relevance. In ‘Stecke dein Schwert in die Scheide,’ Mr. Rose’s Christ seems stung by Peter’s violence: his admonishment is disquieted rather than scolding. Throughout the performance, Mr. Rose looks beyond the obvious qualities of Bach’s characterization of Christ, bringing an individual interpretation that proves fascinating. Vocally, not one note of Christ’s music is beyond Mr. Rose’s capacity, and he encounters no technical challenge that he is not capable of meeting. When the voice must move, Mr. Rose reveals considerable flexibility, and his lower register is rich and unforced. Critically, however, he creates a thoughtful, winningly masculine Christ who ultimately is all the more extraordinary for in so many ways being just another man. He is the perfect musical and dramatic partner for the Evangelist of James Gilchrist. The legacy of Sir Peter Pears in the Evangelist’s music retains great influence, and the aristocratic sangfroid and abiding intelligence of Mr. Gilchrist’s singing equal those of Pears. Mr. Gilchrist’s voice is a far more attractive natural instrument, however, with little of the nasality and none of the pinching in the upper register that were heard in Pears’s singing, and Mr. Gilchrist’s performance wholly avoids the prissiness and artifice that, both in performance and on recordings, could keep Pears’s Evangelist at arm’s length. Among many instances of sword’s-edge incisiveness and musical distinction, Mr. Gilchrist’s singing of the phrase ‘Da gedachte Petrus an die Worte Jesu und ging hinaus und weinete bitterlich’ is unforgettable, and the ethereal prescience of his recounting of the events of the Passion is stimulating. There is a hint of detachment, as though the pain that he feels is too great to endure if faced head-on, but this is an effective dramatic device that heightens the understanding of Christ and his destiny being both of and beyond the world of men. Mr. Gilchrist’s singing is flooded with tenderness in the passage in which he describes Christ taking leave of those whom he loves, ‘Es stund aber bei dem Kreuze Jesu seine Mutter.’ The mystery of his singing of ‘diewell das Grab nahe war’ gives way to a glimmer of hope, and throughout the performance Mr. Gilchrist lends his singing a zealous, visionary affection. The voice responds to Bach’s music as though it were composed specially for Mr. Gilchrist, his command of the famously grueling tessitura never faltering. By avoiding an over-reliance on falsetto, Mr. Gilchrist portrays a strong-willed but broken man who witnesses both an unfathomably momentous spiritual event and the death of a man who is not merely his teacher but also his friend.

The Johannes-Passion is not a long work, but a performance in which the artists strive to present the score not as a lofty dogmatic exposition but as a musical depiction of an unique exploration of love, devotion, and the bitterness of betrayal and loss can make it seem shorter still. In this recording featuring the Academy of Ancient Music and a cast that ranks with the best ever assembled for a performance of this work, the pace of tragedy is so inexorably intensified that the Passion prophecies are fulfilled in the blinking of an eye. Still, there are dozens of moments that linger in the ears and in the heart, none more so than those in which Andrew Kennedy asks of contrite humanity, ‘what will you do for your part,’ and Sarah Connolly pronounces, candidly, ‘it is finished.’ These are points at which music and life intersect as meaningfully as Art is able to articulate, and they are rendered on this recording as directly as can be imagined. Leave religion in the pews and conversations about what is an authentic approach to Bach’s music in the lecture halls: these artists mean to tell a story, unexaggerated and impartial, and how puissantly they succeed.

CD REVIEW: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – REQUIEM, K. 626 (Dunedin Consort; Linn Records CKD 449)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Requiem in D minor, K. 626 (Reconstruction of the first public performance using the completion of the score by Franz Xaver Süßmayr), ‘Misericordias domini’ in D minor, K. 222 (‘Offertorium de tempore’)—Joanne Lunn, soprano; Rowan Hellier, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Hobbs, tenor; Matthew Brook, bass-baritone; Dunedin Consort; John Butt, conductor [Recorded at Greyfriar’s Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 15 – 19 September 2013; Linn Records CKD 449; 1 SACD, 61:39; Available from Linn Records, Amazon, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

​Few cornerstone works in the Western choral canon are as frequently mishandled as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem, and few composers of any degree of consequence are as uniformly but unjustly maligned as Franz Xaver Süßmayr. The Requiem has fallen victim to more than two centuries of mystery, misconception, and cinematic flights of fancy, accumulating a trove of traditions that forms a provocative but musically malignant mythology. There is an undeniable Romantic appeal to the almost certainly apocryphal notion of the somewhat delusional, perhaps already terminally ill, and unaccountably destitute Mozart accepting the commission to compose what he perceived as his own Requiem. Perhaps it is the envious pleasure of seeing genius laid low by mediocrity that draws curious minds to the Requiem, or maybe it is the heartening recognition of the triumph of Art over adversity. The impetus for the continuing endeavor to elevate the circumstances of the composition of Mozart's Requiem to heights of Shakespearean tragedy may also arise from the reluctance to concede that the genesis of something so beautiful and enduring could have been ordinary, even commercial, but it should not be overlooked that, to the savvy but struggling Mozart, it was the natural order of things for the creations of masterpieces to be business transactions. Whatever the true nature of its inception, the Requiem was a debt that was never fully paid by the Wunderkind from Salzburg, and where adulation of the departed Mozart ends indictment of the hand that dared to pollute the Master's manuscript with complementary scribbling begins: his long acquaintance with his tutor’s compositional style notwithstanding, Süßmayr's principal crime is not being Mozart. It is a hard thing to forgive, especially when virtually anyone with a modicum of musical training or intuition can with relative ease differentiate the 'authentic' pages from the 'imposter' portions of the Requiem. The conundrum is that composers who fancied themselves far more gifted than Süßmayr have proved less successful than their unassuming forebear in fitting Mozart's torso with Requiem limbs of their own creation. Among a gaggle of Frankenstein's monsters, Süßmayr's musical Prometheus remains the most effective. If not submersed in the tide of genius itself, Süßmayr's completion of the Requiem at least reflects genius upon its surface. The truth that is only reluctantly admitted is that the Requiem is far from Mozart's finest or most coherent work, but, being inseparable from the dolorous legacy of a great artist dying too young, it is a work of rage, resignation, and retribution and a score that has influenced every subsequent generation of composers. Seeking to strip away the grime of all the well-meaning hands that have molested the score since Mozart laid down his pen in 1791, this new recording by Dunedin Consort fascinatingly focuses on presenting the Requiem as it was heard in complete form at its first public performance in Vienna’s Jahn-Saal in January 1793. It is a vindication for Süßmayr, whose devotion to his extraordinary teacher is evident in every bar of his completion of the Requiem. It is also an engrossing opportunity to take a seat in Vienna’s Michaelerkirche in December 1791, when those who loved him said ‘Lebewohl’ to Mozart and ‘Wilkommen’ to the first breaths of his Requiem.

Performances of the Requiem featuring period instruments and smaller choral ensembles have become common during the past quarter-century, but this performance by Dunedin Consort and their Musical Director John Butt cuts a new path through the thicket of theories and customs that has long obscured the genuine spirit of the Requiem. Having proved themselves in performances and recordings of music by Bach and Händel to be virtuosi whose musicality is reliably matched by enthusiasm for the music they play, the instrumentalists of Dunedin Consort exceed their own highest standards with the excellence of their playing in this performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Bolstered by the stylish but never obtrusive keyboard playing of Robert Howarth, the Consort play each movement of the Mass with a tonal blend carefully constructed to match the mood of the text. The twenty string players produce sounds of consistent beauty, complemented by especially fine playing of the basset horns, trumpets, and bassoons. The trombones in ‘Tuba mirum spargens sonum’ are magnificently resonant and secure of intonation, qualities that have been heard in far too few performances of the Requiem. This is not a score of enormous difficulty, but the Dunedin Consort players do not make the mistake made by many ensembles of taking the score’s challenges for granted. Enjoyably accomplished as the Consort’s technical execution of Mozart’s music is, it is the unmistakable emotional connection with the score that is the most exceptional achievement of the Consort’s playing. Responding to Maestro Butt’s unaffected direction, the Consort infuse their playing with a muted sadness that does not prevent sunbeams of humor from emerging from the orchestral textures. The broad intensity of the ‘Dies irae, dies illa,’ ‘Rex tremendae majestatis,’ and ‘Confutatis maledictis’ is stirring, all the more so for the ways in which it contrasts with the majesty of the ‘Tuba mirum spargens sonum’ and the serenity of the ‘Recordare, Jesu pie.’ The radiant solemnity of the ‘Lacrimosa dies illa’ is shaped with inherent grace by Maestro Butt and accompanied with sparkling eloquence. Orchestral doubling of voices in fugal passages is managed with ideal balance, and both Maestro Butt’s leadership and the Consort’s playing are scaled to ensure that Süßmayr’s passages are given the same diligent elegance as Mozart’s. Even in the most expansively-orchestrated passages, Maestro Butt and Dunedin Consort approach the score with the refinement of chamber players, and the resulting fusion of grandeur with intimacy serves the music ideally.

The Dunedin Consort choristers give a performance of their music that is no less ideal than the playing of their instrumentalist colleagues. From the first choral entry in the ‘Requiem aeternam,’ the choristers—sixteen in number, including the four soloists—capture the nuances of every turn of phrase with insightful but never overwrought poignancy. The contrapuntal passages that owe much to the models of Bach and Händel, in performances of whose music these singers excel, are delivered with panache, but it is the spiritual directness of the choral singing that is its most rewarding trait. There is never a sense of a group of singers going through the motions of performing an impersonal musical masterpiece. Rather, the choristers respond to every sentiment in Mozart’s—and Süßmayr’s—music with alertness and obviously genuine affection, lending every passage emotional immediacy that charms and inspires. In a similar vein to Dunedin Consort’s Baroque repertoire, there is ample evidence of historical precedent for the soloists emerging from the choir, and this recording succeeds as few others in recent memory have done by offering a quartet of soloists who are thoroughly involved in the performance rather than an ensemble of busy singers collecting paychecks and padding their discographies between operatic engagements. Praising individual moments in the performances given by soprano Joanne Lunn, mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier, tenor Thomas Hobbs, and bass-baritone Matthew Brook would be to overlook a thousand more. The poise and security of Ms. Lunn’s singing are splendid, and her upper register rings out gorgeously without forcing or operatic preening. Ms. Hellier’s fruity timbre melds well with Ms. Lunn’s, and she, too, sings with superb control and composure. Mr. Hobbs sings with the finesse of the young Schreier and the golden tone of the mature Wunderlich, and he adorns the performance with a standard-setting account of the tenor part. Mr. Brook has the fullness in his lower register to bring true power to his descending phrases in the ‘Tuba mirum spargens sonum,’ and throughout the performance his singing provides an unshakable foundation for the solo quartet. In the Requiem and the ‘Offertorium de tempore,’ Mozart’s 1775 setting of the Psalm text ‘Misericordias domini in aeternum cantabo’ that uncannily prefigures the principal theme of the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the singing is highly cultivated but also lovingly visceral. Rather than merely singing notes, these sixteen individuals give a performance that pulses with timeless humanity.

Hearing this recording of Mozart’s Requiem has the effect of encountering a great work of art for the first time, not from the perspective of history but with the fresh insights of new acquaintance. Mozart’s widow having engaged his pupil Süßmayr in the completion of the Requiem was undoubtedly an effort at finalizing a commercial enterprise, the proceeds from which were likely sorely needed by the composer’s surviving family, but the unflattering portrait that history has painted of Constanze Mozart does not obstruct appreciation of her recognition of her husband’s genius and the lasting importance of his work. It is a lofty goal to which this recording aspires, but the integrity of the artists involved ensures that the performance is never bogged down by scholarship. Musically, this is an incredibly satisfying performance of Mozart’s Requiem. On a deeper level, however, this is a performance that, by returning the work to the contexts of its infancy, reminds the listener why the music of Mozart will be played as long as there are human ears to be enraptured by it.