Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work.
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.
Recorded on 5 and 6 May 2008 and 17 and 18 January 2009 at the Lisztzentrum (Raiding, Austria), this recent Bridge release makes available the piano-vocal versions of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder performed by mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck, accompanied by Russell Ryan.
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
Eternal Echoes is an album of khazones [Jewish cantorial music] for cantorial soloist, solo violin and a blended instrumental ensemble comprising a small orchestra and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
Oliver Knussen burst into British music with an unprecedented flourish. In 1967, the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Knussen’s First Symphony, with István Kertész scheduled to conduct.
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865).
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs.
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD.
Released in late 2011, Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the new staging of Berg’s Lulu at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona is an excellent contribution to the discography of this fascinating opera.
A recent release by the Metropolitan Opera, this two-disc set makes available on DVD the famous performance of Berg’s Lulu that was broadcast on 20 December 1980 as part of the PBS series “Live from the Met.”
The novels of Sinclair Lewis once shot across the American literary skies like comets, alarming and fascinating readers of that era, but their tails didn’t extend far behind them.
Once the province of only the most dedicated opera fanatics, mid-20th century recordings of privately taped live performances have become more widely available.
Flute players in opera orchestra around the world must look forward to the frequent appearances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, knowing that while the stage spotlight in the mad scene will be on the soprano, the orchestral spotlight will be on their instrument.
“In choosing the program for a debut recital disc, perhaps an artist should be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task: how in the world do I begin to sort through the wealth of masterpieces at my fingertips, daring to stamp a select few with my voice?”
So writes Joyce DiDonato in her personal introduction to The Deepest Desire, a title that names the theme of the recital as she sees it. I also see in her allusion to “stamping a select few songs with my voice” a secondary theme of personal identity that resonates throughout the songs as well.
The five songs by Leonard Bernstein that energetically open the recital include Two Love Songs, written in 1960, and three songs from Songfest, a project setting texts by a variety of American poets that was originally a commission for the Bicentenniel celebration in 1976 but was not completed in time. According to Bernstein, even when the commission was withdrawn, he completed the project, which had taken on great meaning to him as a way, in Bernstein’s words, to “reflect the experience of the American artist.” DiDonato sees in Bernstein’s life story a “torment” resulting from his desire to be recognized as a serious composer, and in the songs that she has chosen a “haunting desire for something unreachable.” Indeed, the Two Love Songs set Rilke poems in which love’s desire is so strong as to erase the boundaries of identity. In the first of the Songfest songs, “Music I heard with you” the intense closeness is only remembered after the affair has ended, and next, in “What lips my lips have kissed,” a succession of past loves have been forgotten individually, but live on in the poet’s sense of having been enlarged by past love. This set ends with “A Julia de Burgos,” a setting of a Spanish-language poem by the Puerto Rican poet of that name to what one might call her social self. In pianist David Zobel’s energetic presentation of the rhythmic accompaniment we hear the galloping “runaway Rosinante” metaphor for the artist’s inner fire.
The best-known repertoire in the recital is Aaron Copland’s Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. While “desire” may not be the first theme that comes to mind when thinking of this poet, DiDonato is correct in seeing in her poetry a desire for answers, and I would specifically point to the poet’s desire to find her place in the cosmos, her identity as a saint, sinner, or simply a seeker within the Calvinist world-view that surrounded her. DiDonato characterizes the music of Copland’s Dickinson settings as “sometimes stark, sometimes assaulting,” and she can certainly further these effects with her voice, although her tone is also quite beautiful in the gentler moments of “Nature, the gentlest mother”, “The World Feels Dusty”, “Heart we will forget him”, and the final note of “The Chariot”, in which the speaker rides into eternity with her gentleman caller Death.
The Deepest Desire is the title of the closing set of songs, settings by Jake Heggie of texts he requested from Sister Helen Préjean (the model for the character of Sister Helen in Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking), describing the source of her spirituality in “the deepest desire of her heart”. Here the piano and voice are joined by the flute of Frances Shelly, which has a lengthy solo at the opening, reminding me of the flute solo I heard at the beginning of a Whirling Dervish ceremony in Turkey, where the improvisation of the flute represented the soul’s desire for the ultimate. This ushers in a Prelude followed by “Four Meditations on Love”, in which Sister Helen describes her experience of love as “the pure energy of God” and how it led her away from her original desire to “be with God in Heaven” and instead to “loose yourself!” and work with all her being to realize “the deepest desire,” that for justice on earth. The songs, while not exceptionally melodic, are varied, expressive, and listenable, particularly when presented by a singer as thoughtful, communicative, and vocally endowed as DiDonato.
Indeed, there is another “deepest desire” present in this recital, that of Joyce DiDonato to communicate. She has given a great deal of thought to the texts, the music, and to her own relationship to them, and, when she speaks of “stamping [them] with my voice” it is a voice of considerable strength and range that she uses to produce a wide variety of vocal colors, from meltingly beautiful to hard and edgy. While this tonal variety brings the songs’ details into high relief, I personally found the many color changes rather distracting in some places, detracting from the clarity of the words in others. On the other hand, in the phrases of “Extinguish my eyes” that are essentially vocalises on an “oo” vowel, and in the playful nonsense syllables of the Bernstein “Piccola Serenata” that acts as an encore “bonus track”, her sound can be fascinating and ravishing. Overall, this is a recital to hear when one is willing to be energized and challenged to think by the music, rather than in the car on the way home from an intense meeting (as I first tried it, quickly putting it aside for a time when I was better able to receive it). Listeners desiring to hear DiDonato’s considerable artistry in the service of an interesting but more relaxing set of songs will be pleased to know that her Wigmore Hall recital of songs themed around the city of Venice has also been released by the BBC this year (under the Wigmore Hall Live imprint). In the Rossini, Michael Head, Fauré, and Hahn songs that make up the program (as well as in the Handel and Rossini arias that act as encores) we are treated to a very satisfying dose of the beautiful singing that has justly earned her a position among the exciting young bel canto singers.
I find it interesting that The Deepest Desire, a debut recital exploring the theme of personal identity, begins with a set of songs written for a mezzo-soprano of several generations ago, Jennie Tourel, and ends with a set written for another mezzo who is still very active, Susan Graham, who created the role of Sister Helen in the original production of Dead Man Walking, a role that DiDonato went on to perform with the New York City Opera. In light of the intelligence, artistry, and sheer vocal talent that she brings to these songs, I would not be surprised at all if her recitals in the not-too-distant future include songs written for her as well.
Reflecting this disc’s production in France, where it won the Diapason d’or de l’année, the notes (both DiDonato’s personal introduction, and the notes on the songs by Benjamin Sosland) and artist biographies, as well as the texts of the songs, are presented in both English and French (“A Julia de Burgos” is, of course, also in Spanish).
Barbara Miller