The traditional opera
recital has existed since the beginning
of the 1950s, i e when the LP first
appeared. It has also been criticized
for more than fifty years, the main
criticism being that few, if any singers
are able to hold the listeners’ interest
for such a long time-span. With the
advent of the CD, when playing time
could approach or even exceed 70 minutes,
the need for more variety grew even
stronger. Naxos have come up with a
good alternative, not completely new
but still very rarely encountered: take
five fairly young but promising singers,
match them with a world-class symphony
orchestra conducted by an experienced
maestro. Then choose a programme that
is a mix of solo arias, duets and a
couple of larger ensembles and, voilá!
Here is a concept that overcomes the
weaknesses of the "old" recital
format! If the mix, as here, consists
of a handful of old warhorses plus some
items that you don’t meet in every other
recital – so much the better. What else
do we need for total success? Good singing,
of course, and that is something you
can’t always take for granted.
So let us sit down
in our most comfortable armchair, put
the CD in the player, a quick look at
the CD-cover. Ah! The Rigoletto
quartet, and not just the quartet proper
but also the preceding tenor-mezzo duet.
Press START and lean back. Here comes
the little intro, as the teens say today,
the acoustics sound good, space around
the instruments, tempo right, forward
moving and here comes the Duke of Mantua
... And suddenly we sit up! Now listen!
That’s a voice! Flexible, beautiful,
rounded tone, well-equalized and phrasing
so naturally, a seductive timbre (yes
of course, he is a skirt-chaser)
– my, who is he? We reach for the cover
again – Matthew Polenzani! Have to make
a note about him. Oh, and here comes
the mezzo: not alto-ish in timbre, rather
soprano-ish. But good diction, good
voice, not the seducing type, though,
which she should be – after all she
is the sister of Sparafucile, the murderer,
and her task it is to charm the men
that are supposed to be slaughtered.
Kristine Jepson, the cover tells us.
Yes, we heard her in Paris a couple
of years ago, singing the trouser-role
of Siebel in Faust. But, listen – now
we are approaching the quartet. There
is a glimpse of the soprano, Gilda.
Light, agile she should be, but she
isn’t. This is a dark, dramatic voice,
as if Tosca or even Turandot had walked
into the wrong opera. And there is Rigoletto
himself and he has weight, the
authority, all that you require from
a true Verdian baritone. But, listen
again to that tenor, how he floats his
voice, how he caresses Maddalena, with
vocal means alone, and the voice is
absolutely even from bottom to a very
considerable top. We have to hear more
of him. A look at the cover again –
yes indeed, he sings the Faust Cavatina.
And again, it is an
exceptional voice, so unforced, so natural,
so ... We almost run out of words while
we follow him through this taxing aria.
It isn’t just a voice – there is a mind
behind it, one that knows how to inflect
a phrase, who knows the importance of
light and shade. And listen now how
he builds up towards the climax, and
there it flashes out in the air, fills
the room: that feared high C, maybe
a notch too loud in relation to the
preceding notes, but it is a true high
C – and still – almost – unforced! And
listen – how he shades it down, almost
imperceptibly to a golden thread of
a pianissimo! And the timbre is absolutely
right for this, the Frenchest of arias.
Please, Naxos, let us have a complete
Faust with him! And please, Mr Polenzani,
don’t venture, at this stage of your
career anyway, into the heavier roles
of Cavaradossi and Calaf and Radamès
– remember what happened to the marvellous
voice José Carreras once had!
There are enough Fausts, and Dukes of
Mantua and Alfredos to be sung with
this voice – maybe the best since Gedda’s
heydays.
He sings the Pearlfishers’
duet as to the manner born, and his
baritone partner, Mariusz Kwiecien,
evokes memories of Robert Merrill in
the famous recording of the duet with
Jussi Björling. On his own again
Polenzani sings the little tenor aria
from Gianni Schicchi, and it is good
to have it on a recital disc, so well
sung. We even get a glimpse of the
well-known piece from this opera, O
mio babbino caro, in the little orchestral
interlude.
And what about the
rest? High quality indeed!
Miss Jepson sings a
very good Parto, parto from La clemenza
di Tito, a trouser role like the Siebel
we saw in Paris, remember? And the obbligato
basset clarinet solo is beautifully
played by the unnamed soloist. Near
the end of the recital she returns in
still a trouser role, The Composer in
Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Very well
indeed. This is also someone to watch,
and hopefully the little tendency to
a widening vibrato will not develop
to a wobble. The final trio from Faust,
following directly after the Cavatina
on this disc, introduces us to another
remarkable voice, the bass-baritone
Valerian Ruminski. He may not be as
smooth as some of the legendary basses,
but, on the other hand, what could you
expect from someone playing the Devil?
He manages to sound really menacing
and seems to be a good actor, too. It
is a pity he isn’t allowed at least
one of Mephistopheles’ arias, so our
next plea has to be: Please, Naxos,
when you record that Faust we talked
about, do engage this man, too! For
he shows amazing things when we continue
our listening: the Coat-aria from Bohème
inwardly sung, not the seamless legato
a Siepi or a Tozzi could produce (and
that was long ago) bur very good anyway.
And when we meet him a little later
in the recital, surprisingly in baroque
repertoire, we are quite stunned. Here
he lightens his big voice, not so much
in tone colour – it is still on the
black side – but what seemed a rather
heavy voice in the Faust excerpt, turns
out to be a flexible instrument, executing
the various runs and coloraturas in
both Handel and Purcell with an ease
that calls to mind memories of Ramey
or David Thomas, even if the specific
voice timbre has no similarity to either
of these great predecessors. Good, vigorous,
stylish playing from the orchestra,
too, in these two pieces.
In the Faust trio we
have also encountered the soprano voice
of Indra Thomas. And I am afraid it
isn’t a Marguerite-voice any more than
it is a Gilda. There is no denying the
beauty of it, but it is a bit unwieldy
and the vibrato is too much of a good
thing. Different ears take differently
to vibratos, that is true, and ours
prefer a smoother delivery. She also
appears in the Hoffmann Barcarolle,
and the first thing we notice here is
the orchestral introduction. Here Rosenkrans
finds the right rocking ripple of the
waves in Canal Grande in Venice, where
the so called Giulietta act takes place,
and the woodwind playing is absolutely
ravishing. Jepson, first, in yet another
trouser role, sounds properly manly
in the first solo phrases and then Miss
Thomas joins her and manages to fine
down her voice to match her partner’s.
And, finally, we find her in repertoire
that is her territory: the Verdi heroines.
In this case it is the Trovatore Leonora.
Again the RPO show their credentials
in the beginning of the recitative and
when Leonora enters it is a classy voice
we hear. But it is that vibrato again.
She can sing a piano though,
even a pianissimo. The start
of the aria proper is beautiful indeed,
she has a trill and she phrases convincingly,
in other words, there are many good
things here, but also some "buts".
And so, nearing the
end of a very long review, we are going
to consider the baritone. We have caught
a few glimpses of him, and they have
been positive. But in track 6 we meet
him in a part that really isn’t his
cup of tea. One of the loveliest duets
in all opera, the one where Don Giovanni
tries to convince the innocent Zerlina
that she should follow him to his little
castle and do... we all know what. If
there is a role that requires an intimate,
honeyed delivery, this is it. And what
do we get? Not an alluring Casanova-like
approach (the real Casanova was present
at the premiere of this opera in Prague,
remember?) but a corporal shouting "Attention!"
at a constant forte to the little peasant
girl! No, Mr Kwiecien, this won’t do!
Listen to, say, Håkan Hagegård
in the Östman recording, or Bo
Skovhus on the quite recent Naxos version.
There is a thing or two to be learnt
from them. No, we are not going to listen
to this track in the future, which in
a way is a pity, because Kristine Jepson
is a fine mezzo-Zerlina. But, come to
think of it, mezzo-Zerlinas never sound
as innocent as the soprano-ones!
But Mariusz Kwiecien
makes amend in the two excerpts from
act three of Don Carlo, showing that
he is much better suited to the Verdi-idiom.
After the dark doom-laden introduction
(again showing the RPO in fine fettle)
he sings well, phrasing sensitively,
although his somewhat gritty voice takes
on an unpleasant vibrato when under
pressure. The end of the aria is quite
ugly. It is perhaps unfair to call it
a bleating sound, but it may give an
idea of what to expect. He is much better
in Posa’s Death, which he gives an introverted
reading.
The whole recital is
rounded off by that show-stopper Suoni
la tromba from Bellini’s I Puritani,
the RPO trumpets blaring appropriately
and the whole orchestra having a field
day, bouncing along. The two singers
also seem to enjoy themselves, the bass
rather over-shadowing the baritone.
Let us then briefly
sum up this ‘Night at the Opera’: It
has been a pleasant meeting with some
very good old friends and nice to encounter
a few that we almost had forgotten (we
are of course talking of the music).
As for the performances, almost all
of them are worthy to be in any opera
lover’s collection, and what negative
comments we have made during the course
of this recital are more than compensated
by the many positive ones. And we have
found a tenor that might be the answer
to many opera lovers’ secret dreams.
So go out and buy!
And since Naxos’s CDs are still almost
ridiculously cheap (we are talking of
course of the price, not the quality
– you even get full texts and
English translations!) why not buy two,
or three? There are always good friends
out there who didn’t read this review.
Göran Forsling
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Charles Rosenkrans