OPERA
Summer Nights
At Bard, Santa Fe, Susan Graham, Marjorie Owens star
BY DAVID SHENGOLD
Those attending summer operatic festivals
sometimes have a menu of
chamber music or jazz or world music
to sample, as well. The Spoleto USA
in Charleston and Santa Fe are probably the
industry leaders in this regard. Locally, Bard
always presents a staged opera at the end of
July and then hosts two weeks of orchestral
and chamber concerts, plus some semi-staged
opera or music theater, in mid-August. A wide
palate of different music can keep couples and
families with varying levels of interest in vocal
music content.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival utilizes
performance spaces in the city’s historic
downtown, meaning that good food and museums
(including the splendid Georgia O’Keeffe)
are close by. The charming, intimate theater at
the New Mexico Museum of Art is one of two
venues that hosts pianists, chamber groups,
and singers — next year, more of the latter than
usual. August 7 witnessed a noon recital by a
local resident, international mezzo Susan Graham.
Fourteen years ago at this venue, I heard
her sing a terrifi c rendition of Ravel’s tricky
“Chansons madécasses” — the only occasion
on which I ever heard my father declare that
a singer was as good in any piece as his idol,
Jennie Tourel.
Time has not stood still for Graham, but she
retains a good portion of the sound and all of
the forthright, “down home” charm that made
her so popular. Singing in public at noon is a
tricky business for singers of any age, however,
and the program’s fi rst work, Mahler’s “Rueckert
Lieder,” did not fi nd in her a particularly
prepared or sung-in interpreter. Other than
Strauss’ Octavian, she’s rarely shone in German
repertory as much as in French works,
and Mahler demands a particular sensibility.
Like Elina Garanca in the same cycle at Carnegie
this season, Graham used a music stand
and did not seem inside the fi rst few songs. She
fought off coughs and sometimes had to break
up phrases for extra breaths. “Um Mitternacht”
showed more commitment but tested her stamina.
The sublime fi nal “Ich bin der Welt abhanden
gekommen” suited her best temperamentally
and vocally.
Graham was on much happier and familiar
terms with the program’s second portion,
Berlioz’s exquisite cycle “Les nuits d’été,” set to
arch-Romantic poems by Théophile Gautier.
Berlioz has been good turf for Graham. My fi rst
Met exposure to her was as Ascagne — Énée’s
adolescent son — in the dispiriting 1993 revival
of “Les troyens,” in which she and Thomas
SIMON PAULY
Marjorie Owens brought her strength as a Strauss soprano to her
singing of “Four Last Songs” at Bard.
Hampson’s Chorèbe were about the only truly
bright spots. I have yet to hear a better Ascagne,
and Graham also made the move up to Didon
with considerable grace, in London, Chicago,
and San Francisco as well as New York. Early
on, she recorded Berlioz’s Béatrice in “Béatrice
et Bénédict” memorably, and her disc of
the Gautier cycle with John Nelson is — while
not one of the most profound readings — highly
creditable.
And so it proved on this occasion. Style and
gallic utterance remained in good balance, her
expressiveness only occasionally undercut by
over-literal gestures (like hands held in prayer
at “Ni messe, ni De Profundis”). She varied the
intention and attitude of her singing to match
the six varied song personas. As on her recording,
she took the exciting octave drop on
“linceul” in “Sur les lagunes” that many elide.
Jon Kimura Parker provided sensitive, insightful
support. This “Nuits d’été” was well worth
hearing, and suggested that Graham could
with success still take on another, slightly less
rangy Berlioz assignment: Marie in his remarkable,
too-little played “L’enfance du Christ.” The
recital concluded nicely with a favorite Graham
encore, Reynaldo Hahn’s archaizing 1907 “À
Chloris.”
Next summer’s festival boasts — along with
stellar instrumentalists like Richard Goode,
Leila Josefowicz, and Ida Kavafi an — many fi ne
singers worth catching, including Sasha Cooke,
Michelle DeYoung, Kelley O’Connor, and the
ballyhooed breakdancing countertenor Jakub
Józef Orlinski.
As part of Bard’s “Korngold and His World”
festival, its ambitious impresario and mastermind
Leon Botstein put on a concert entitled
“Art During and After the Catastrophe.” The
“catastrophe” here was the Holocaust, which
sent Korngold into American exile and Hollywood
prominence. Some of his Hollywood
scores haunt the Third Movement of his 1947
“Symphony in F-sharp,” an Adagio that also
recalls the funeral march aspects of the Allegretto
in Beethoven’s “Seventh.” This movement
— at least until it turned too nakedly into a Big
Statement — was, along with a marked channeling
of Mahler (whose work Korngold probably
got to know better during his American
years than before), for me the only interesting
features of a well orchestrated but ponderous
and way-overlong work.
The American Symphony, as a whole and in
its instrumental solos, furnished great clarity
throughout, as it did for Paul Hindemith’s subsequent
“Symphonia Serena.” Also overlong and
ponderous, this notably academic exercise at
least featured more compellingly varied instrumental
texture than the Korngold; again, the
third movement — featuring cadenzas in dialogue
from the two lead violinists and violists,
separated spatially — held the most interest.
It was a relief to turn to Richard Strauss’
autumnal 1948 “Four Last Songs,” an exquisite
work that — with “Les nuits d’été,” in fact
— would rank among many vocal music partisans’
favorite pieces. Botstein led in rather
foursquare fashion, but again the playing per
se was impressive. The fi ne Strauss soprano
Marjorie Owens, underutilized in this country,
supplied a wealth of soaring, cushioned vocalism
and the seemingly endless breath control
these songs need. She sang with feeling and
sympathy but did not dig deeply into the texts
— though the last song’s climactic phrase “So
tief im Abendrot” lingers in my memory.
Owens made a more-than-estimable Met
2015 debut as Aida. Why hasn’t she returned?
I’d love to hear her sing Strauss’ Ariadne (a signature
role) and Daphne — as well as Wagner’s
Elisabeth and Britten’s Ellen Orford — before
she embarks on the heavier roles (Turandot,
Elektra) she’s announced.
In all three works, concertmaster Cyrus Beroukhim
dazzled with his musical concentration
and ethereal tone.
David Shengold ( shengold@yahoo.com ) writes
about opera for many venues.
August 29 - September 11, 34 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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