Shirley Verrett is a true artist, always dedicated
to the cause of the music she performs, whether it be in the opera house
or the concert hall. This recital presents her in both capacities, though
the operatic extracts are studio performances and therefore taken out
of their real context.
The recording captures her in good vocal form, particularly
in the group of Massenet pieces from three of his operas. The perspective
tends to favour her at the expense of the orchestra, but in this music
much of the interest lies in the vocal line and there is little damage
to the musical experience. She makes a beguiling heroine in the two
pieces from Manon, always sensitive to the text and the character.
Not that the English speaking, no-linguist listener need worry too much
about the details of this, since the texts and translations offer only
French and Italian. The booklet notes, however, do have a translation
into English.
Charlotte's recitative and aria from Act III of Werther
is delivered with great feeling, and Verrett's grading and shaping of
phrases makes telling use of dynamic control. So too the extract from
the less famous opera, Hérodiade, in which her portrayal
of the princess Salomé is sensitively and dramatically drawn
from the earlier stages of the opera, before the tragic events unfold.
If Verrett's artistry carries the day in the Massenet
items, the major work recorded here remains Chausson's extended symphonic
poem for voice and orchestra, the Poème de l'amour et de la
mer. Again there is much to be said in praise of the vocal quality
of the performance, although the subtleties of the text are not always
so convincingly conveyed. This may reflect the problems of the recording,
however, since the perspective so favours the voice that Chausson's
sensitively drawn and beautifully coloured orchestral writing frequently
makes little or no effect. For this reason alone the performance ranks
as a disappointment when matched against some particularly distinguished
competition, for example the recordings by Victoria de los Angeles (EMI),
Linda Finnie (Chandos) and Jessye Norman (Erato). The original Turin
recording was remastered in 2002, but presumably little could be done
to redress the balance.
Terry Barfoot
Shirley Verrett (mezzo-soprano)