Tag: opera recital

Snell, Castle and Bryony Williams in opera recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St. Andrew’s Season of Concerts and the New Zealand Opera Society

Sarah Castle (mezzo), Martin Snell (bass), Bryony Williams (soprano), Bruce Greenfield (accompanist)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace,

Thursday, 17 March, 7.30pm

A well-filled church greeted the performers; it was necessary for the latter to introduce the items, since programmes had run out. This introduced a level of informality as well as information.

Martin Snell opened the evening’s opera excerpts; his resonant speaking voice made a memorable introduction to the first aria, ‘Sorge infausta una procella’, sung by Zoroastro in Handel’s Orlando of 1733. Hearing the singer in this resonant church the night after having heard him in Xerxes made me realise how much we miss in a large theatre, even in a good seat and in the relatively good acoustics of the St. James Theatre (Rodney Macann says that the best sound is in the upper gallery there).

Enunciation of consonants really tells in this acoustic, as did the marvellous runs and plangent, characterful low notes the singer executed in this robust aria, and elsewhere. Snell did not use a score for this or any of the arias; only in the final item, the trio from Così fan Tutte, did he require the printed music. Neither of the women used a score at all.

It was grand to have Bruce Greenfield accompanying – the man who can sound like an orchestra. It was a hugely taxing programme for him, which he carried off with his usual assurance and brilliance; his technique, flair, and expressive powers are just astonishing.

The Opera Society and the St Andrew’s Season of Concerts organisers are to be thanked for getting such an outstanding concert together, to be performed while Martin Snell was in his homeland to sing in Xerxes. They are to be thanked, too, for providing printed translations of the arias, with titles and brief summaries of the situations in the operas giving rise to the arias.

Sarah Castle followed with one of Sesto’s arias from Giulio Cesare, an earlier Handel opera than the previous one. This was a trouser role – Sarah Castle explained the variety of roles which a mezzo could be called upon to fill. This aria was very fast – perhaps a little too fast. Castle proved to have a fine, rich, well-modulated mezzo voice, considerably developed from when I last heard her sing.

Snell returned to sing a lovely, lilting rendition of ‘Vi ravviso’ from La sonnambula by Bellini, in which he aroused, through the voice as well as the words, the feelings of longing that Count Rodolfo was experiencing.

‘Acerba volutta’ from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvrer was next, from Sarah Castle, who managed to portray a woman this time. This was powerful singing – and an accompaniment so full of notes that it was a spectacle to watch Greenfield play!

Snell’s next role was as a doctor, in ‘O tu Palermo, terra adorata’ from I vespri siciliani, by Verdi. This long aria demonstrated the singer’s excellent breath control. Unfortunately, a beeping watch (the audience had been asked to turn off such devices) distracted the singer, and he repeated the aria, looking over Greenfield’s shoulder towards the end. However, he was now too far from the microphones for the recording for Radio New Zealand Concert to be successful for this particular number.

We now moved from Italian to French, when Bryony Williams sang ‘Le coeur d’Hélène’ from the earlier French version of the same opera by Verdi: Les vêpres siciliennes. Williams’s soprano sometimes has a rather metallic sound, especially in the upper register. She needs to open the throat and air passage more; the sound sometimes seemed stuck behind her teeth. Note: we never saw Martin Snell’s teeth! However, in all her items, Williams’s phrasing and characterisation were very good.

Verdi’s aria ‘Infelice, e tu credevi’ from Ernani gave Snell another opportunity to characterise the role of someone who was not just a black and white personality (should that be black or white?).

Sarah Castle returned to sing a lengthy Wagner aria (if those two words can be put together): Fricka challenging Wotan in no uncertain terms in ‘So ist denn aus’ from Die Walküre. The power and strength of Castle’s singing fully met the considerable demands of words and music.

Wagner was the composer of Martin Snell’s next effort, too: ‘Gar viel und schön’ from Tannhäuser. Snell explained that the story of this music drama was based on historical fact. It was sung in a powerful and noble manner, as befitted an aria in a singing contest. The richness of Snell’s voice is more apparent (naturally, perhaps) in the slower arias. There was another aberration here, between pianist and singer, but all was resolved. A tiny flaw was a slightly sharp final note to this stirring aria. His German was impeccable.

The last aria before the Interval was ‘Sein wir wieder gut’ from Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. It was sung by Sarah Castle, whose voice was very flexible and dramatic in this demanding aria.

The second half of the concert featured several ensembles, the first of which was the opening duet of Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss, for Octavian (sung by Sarah Castle, as a boy) and the Marschallin (Bryony Williams, as a much older woman). A little acting, using a stately chair as a prop (and subsequently used by Martin Snell several times), added to the drama and helped this conversational duet along.

Another duet from the same opera followed, with Octavian again being sung by Sarah Castle, and Baron Ochs by Martin Snell. In this, Octavian is in disguise as a maid; thus Castle, a woman, is playing a man playing a woman. The interchange was very funny, with lots of facial expression from Snell. The duet ends with a waltz, tastefully danced by the pair.

The aria ‘Ebben? Ne andro lontana’ from La Wally by Alfredo Catalani (which I had heard on radio that very morning) was sung by Bryony Williams. Again the quality of her sound was variable.

For me, the high point of the performance was Martin Snell’s rendition of King Phillip’s aria in Verdi’s Don Carlos: ‘Ella giammai m’amo’ The tragic utterance of the King when he says that his wife does not love him, was the richest plum in a programme full of sweetmeats. Greenfield’s accompaniment was absolutely remarkable, almost orchestral, while Snell, seated in the kingly chair, gave us cavernous low notes in a superb portrayal of the tragic king. Every note was beautifully moulded and placed, while the words were enunciated flawlessly.

This was a hard act to follow; Kurt Weill’s Nanna’s Lied was characterfully presented by Sarah Castle, with an appropriate level of irony for Brecht’s words.

She continued with the English song ‘Here I’ll stay’ from Love Life by Weill, and then his French song ‘Je ne t’aime pas’. This one was extremely well portrayed through facial expression and the voice.

Bryony Williams sang ‘Ain’t it a pretty night’ from Susanna by Carlisle Floyd. This was effective and touching, but the voice changed its quality too much through its range.

Martin Snell followed with the aria that won him the Mobil Song Quest, back in 1993, and which he sang in the Opera New Zealand production of the opera in 2009: Prince Gremin’s aria from Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. Sung in Russian, this was a delight.

The concert ended with the well-known trio from Così fan Tutte, ‘Soave sia il vento’. While it is always worth hearing this beautiful music, the trio was not very well matched or blended. It may have been that there was not much time for rehearsal, but this finale was disappointing.

The concert was a rare treat, celebrating the singers’ art, the accompanist’s versatility and expertise, and the opera composers’ brilliance and inventiveness. The singers were thanked with applause and flowers; the professional singers especially were generous for giving their time and talents free for this evening.

VECTOR WELLINGTON ORCHESTRA – whatever the weather……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Vector Wellington Orchestra Summer Concert

Soloists: Aivale Cole (soprano) / Benjamin Makisi (tenor)

Footnote Dance Company

Kate Mead (Radio New Zealand Concert) – presenter

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 6th March, 2011

As comedian Michael Flanders, of “At the Drop of a Hat” fame, might have said, “If the gods had intended us to listen to music outdoors, they would never have given us weather!”. Such was the case on the weekend, when, to the intense disappointment of all concerned, the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s annual family concert sortie to the grounds of Government House had to be relocated to the Michael Fowler Centre. The smaller indoor venue meant that many ticketholders had to get their money refunded, although those of us who were lucky enough to have a transferable seat found ourselves still able to collect our picnic hamper, whose contents we sampled while pretending to be enjoying a beautiful day, sitting on dry grass, in the sun or under trees, watching the rest of the company doing the same. The ritual enabled something of the occasion to be salvaged (everything incredibly well-organised, I thought), while the wonderful music-making generated by singers, orchestra and conductor did the rest. So, despite the privations, it was a great success.

Again the Wellington orchestra’s management was able to demonstrate that, when something special was required to fit an occasion, it was delivered with aplomb (by contrast with some of the promotional efforts from the “other” orchestra in town, whose energies seem hardly to spill over from concert platform activities), inviting the Governor-General and the Wellington Mayor to speak at the concert, and properly “place” the event , albeit in its amended form. There might, actually, have been one speech too many, at the start, with the event’s raison d’être – the music – being, as it were, kept waiting in the wings a little too long. But the show’s compere, Kate Mead, of Radio New Zealand Concert, quickly put us at our ease and prepared each item with whimsical descriptions of the music’s contexts, and “humanizing” figures like the all-too-fallible Antonio Vivaldi of the “Four Seasons” fame, with stories of his being censored by his superiors for his “unpriestly” activities (some things never change…..).

Concerts such as these tend to go for the “instant appeal” repertoire, of which, naturally, there’s a marvellous store, especially in opera – interesting, really, that so many people regard the latter as a relatively “closed-book” kind of art-form, yet hugely enjoy the “great moments” upon contact. But also, making a world of difference here, were the singers, soprano Aivale Cole and tenor Benjamin Makisi, both in fine voice and having a wonderful theatrical ease and spontaneity on the stage, separately and together. As for the support from orchestra and conductor, the accompaniments were of a piece, by turns full-throated and exquisitely atmospheric – a particular joy was Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma”, with Makisi’s nicely-focused tones borne aloft on diaphanous veils of floating instrumental sound, everything deliciously delicate and wind-blown. Perhaps the orchestra’s reduced numbers helped, here (I counted just four ‘cellists, for example), of a scale comparable with that of the average orchestral band in the “pit” of an opera house. What these players achieved with conductor Marc Taddei in places was spell-binding, considering they were in the same space as the singers, rather than in the recesses of “the womb of Gaia” (as Wagner called the orchestral pit). Admittedly, the reduced sound-scale didn’t help things like Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”, which seriously lacked “grunt” during the final Galop, but fortunately this wasn’t typical.

It was a nice idea to run the three “La Boheme” exerpts together from Act One (again, the “big moments” – two arias and a duet, with the only unimportant casualties being the interjections of the offstage Bohemians), allowing Cole and Makisi plenty of theatrical as well as musical expression – while they were both impressive, I thought Cole freer, more easeful vocally, and still with something in reserve, even with the cries of “Amor!” at the end – fortunately, the largely non-opera-going audience broke off their premature applause to allow the singers these final off-stage vocal ecstasies! Earlier, Aivale Cole had demonstrated her versatility in Gareth Farr’s “Aoraki”, contributing a soaring vocal line to the largely traditional ambiences of karanga, were and putatara, supported by a typically rhythmic orchestral background. Apart from one audible Michael Laws-like comment from an audience member at the very end, not far from where I was sitting, this work got an enthusiastic reception, as did the same composer’s “Sea Gongs”, later in the program. Well, as American baseball coach Connie Mack once said, “You can’t win ’em all!”.

Dancers from the Footnote Dance Company contributed to two items. They performed rather more effectively to Tchaikovsky’s lovely Waltz from the opera “Eugen Onegin”, where the ‘ballroom swirling” was nicely captured, than for Vivaldi’s “Summer” from the “Four Seasons” (a brilliantly-played solo from concertmaster Matthew Ross), their movements I thought somewhat out-of-sync. with the music in places. The orchestra generated much more fire with Berlioz’s “Le Carnival Romain” (a nicely-phrased cor-anglais solo) than with Ponchielli, the players inspired by Taddei to produce surges of tone and flashes of brilliance as required. Again, the singers shone, Aivale Cole capturing the magic of a couple more famous operatic moments, Catalani’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from “La Wally”,  and “Vissi d’arte” from Puccini’s “Tosca”; while Benjamin Makisi brought the caddish aspect of the Duke of Mantua from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” to life, tickling the sensibilities of the audience to perfection with his insinuations. And if Cole didn’t quite “nail” the fiendishly difficult penultimate note of the same composer’s “Sempre libera” from “La Traviata”, she could take comfort from knowing that many famous sopranos have also failed to totally convince at that point.  The “Brindisi” (Drinking Song) from the same opera brought the full-throated best out of both singers, a few impromptu waltz-steps from Cole and Makisi throughout the “chorus bits” again delighting the audience, and bringing an immediacy to the music’s context.

It remained for the old warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s Overture “1812”, to round the music off, which was done in quite spectacular, if unintentional fashion, when the second bass-drum player (brought in to simulate the cannon-fire at the piece’s climax) lost his grip on the drumstick at his first thunderous whack, sending it spinning across the back of the orchestral platform, to the risible delight of the audience! Wisely, I think, Marc Taddei had removed the repetitions of some of the music’s material in the middle of the piece, so that the actual battle came sooner than was expected. What astonished me was the weight of tone that the orchestra produced in places, so that nowhere did we feel sonically compromised or sold short in excitement. And the hapless percussionist who had lost his stick made up for the couple of entries he had missed while retrieving his implement by thundering away with extra vim and vigor at the height of the victory celebrations, earning himself a special accolade for his efforts at the music’s conclusion!

Brio Vocal Ensemble imports the USA for a St Andrew’s lunchtime.

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and items from Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) and Candide (Bernstein)

Brio: Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Jody Orgias (mezzo), John Beaglehole (tenor), Justin Pearce (baritone) and guest singer Michel Alkhouri (bass baritone)
Piano: Robyn Jaquiery

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 2 March, 12.15pm

This was my first lunchtime concert for the year. It was a good start with a moderate sized audience. The performances were well presented and conveyed their dramatic qualities as well as is possible in a well-lit church with the sanctuary as backdrop and religious symbols as props.

Usually St Andrew’s is an acoustically friendly place, for chamber music by both strings and winds. Often, the piano is treated well though on occasions when a mat of some sort has been put beneath it, the sound has been less clangorous that when it is played with the lid fully up and standing on polished timber. Robyn Jaquiery’s playing of the accompaniments was admirable, though there were times when the sound lay too heavily on the singers.

I sat downstairs during the Sweeney Todd pieces and found it hard to catch words and was uncomfortable with the combination of voices and piano, so I went upstairs for the rest of the concert. There, voices were clearer and the words a little more understandable, but the hard reverberation was still troublesome.

Five very contrasted voices were involved: Janey MacKenzie’s soprano is agile and warmly lyrical, and she gave one of the few agreeable items in Sondheim’s opera a fine showing, and she was charming as Cunegonde in the happy waltz duet in Candide; as her partner, John Beaglehole portrayed the naive Candide with comparable affection and warmth.

Jody Orgias has an unusual voice which I happen to like but its heavy texture does have its limits in the interpretation of some characters. But she acts splendidly and she had a good deal of convincing work as Sally in A Hand of Bridge and in ‘We are easily assimilated’ from Candide. Justin Pearce too has a voice with certain limitations, and they made for a properly disturbing Sweeney, as well as good contributions in ensembles in Candide.

The guest artist was Michel Alkhouri (of Arab descent, growing up in Marseille) who had made his mark at Baron Trombonok in Il viaggio a Reims in the Opera in a Days Bay Garden last December. He opened with a striking scene-setting role in the Ballad of Sweeney Todd and was perfectly cast at Dr Pangloss in Candide.

I have to say that I find Sweeney Todd the most disagreeable theatrical piece I have ever seen and never want to be exposed to it again; it is currently fashionable to allow Sondheim as the Broadway composer most accepted by the classical world, perhaps because of the paucity of his melodic invention; I am not among his fans.

The other two works, however, are most worthy. A Hand of Bridge was interestingly done by the erstwhile Wellington Polytechnic Conservatorium of Music a couple of decades ago; though very short and very slender in content, it works musically and dramatically. And Candide is simply a brilliant, musically rich little masterpiece which deserves a full production in Wellington.

Oh, for our own professional opera company!

OPERA AT ARATOI with Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Songs, opera and zarzuela arias

Anna Pierard (mezzo-soprano) and Jose Aparicio (tenor and flute) with David Harper (piano)

Auditorium of Aratoi Art and History Museum, Masterton

Wednesday 14th January 2009

Trying to write about such a joyous affair as the first 2009 Aratoi Art and History Museum concert in Masterton seems to produce such a prosaic effect compared with the sheer pleasure savoured in the music-making of singers Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio, and pianist David Harper on a warm January evening in the Wairarapa. For many people, myself included, this would have been the New Year’s very first concert outing, and one couldn’t imagine a more life-enhancing musical experience than what we were given by these world-class artists.

Their programme was an attractive mixture of the familiar (for example, “La donna e mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto), the darkly exotic (two Rachmaninov songs, including Oh, never sing to me, again), and the colourfully unfamiliar (Zarzuela arias by various Spanish composers), and delivered with all the engagement, skill and musicality we’ve come to expect from the trio. An unexpected but exhilarating bonus was the performance by Jose Aparicio playing the flute (his first musical instrument) of Francois Borne’s challenging Fantasie Brilliante on Carmen – no mere novelty, this, but an exhilarating display of virtuosity worthy of its place in the programme.

As with the Zarzuela programme which this trio brought to these performances something of the dramatic flavour of the stage, the singers using movement and gesture to bring a theatrical touch to the items from the opera or operetta stage. The opening duet from Bellini’s La Sonnambula, which involved the exchange of a ring between lovers, showcased the kind of teamwork these singers bring to their work together, breathing, phrasing and emoting as one. Again, in Vives’ Escuchame from Dona Francisquita, reckoned by some as the greatest of all Zarzuela works, the performers created a real “frisson” of interchange between wounded lover and coquettish sweetheart, redolent with teasing deception and inflamed jealousy, which made for great entertainment, David Harper’s responsive playing in colourful accord with the “stage” action throughout. As a bonus, we got the famous Cherry Duet from Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz, whose piquant presentation most fittingly left each of us audience members with a smile to take away from the concert.

Both singers presented their solo items with theatrical gesture and movement rather than with a more formal recital platform manner, which gave their performances a bit extra thrust and colour appropriate to the occasion. Anna Pierard brought plenty of dramatic power to Rossini’s ‘Cruda sorte’ from L’Italiana in Algeri, and displayed a real feeling for Rachmaninov’s darkly throbbing realizations of youthful emotion, such as the alarmingly precocious ‘In The Silence Of The Secret Night’, written when the composer was just seventeen. Occasionally I felt the voice over-modulated in our small listening-space, as if the singer was pushing things too hard, or was finding her tones difficult to pitch evenly, as with an admittedly treacherous chromatic descent towards the end of the second Rachmaninov song ‘O Never Sing to Me Again’. But the beautifully exotic Borodin-like arabesques earlier in the song, with their melismatic vocal lines, were delivered with remarkable control and a real sense of atmosphere, which carried the day.

As much visceral intensity was in evidence with Jose Aparicio’s solo singing also, who gave us a lyrically ardent Mattinata by Leoncavallo, and an impassioned, verismo-like delivery of the insistent ‘No puede ser’ of Sorozabal which brought forth marvellously ringing, heroic tones at the end. Also, we enjoyed a properly cavalier ‘La donna e mobile’ despite a minor impromptu rearrangement of the lines in the first verse, a case of “where have we heard that before?” when the second verse came around. One of the highlights of the concert was Jose Aparicio’s rendition of Lara’s Granada, a favourite of mine, I must admit, and here realized with considerable physical élan, and pictorial immediacy.

At the concert’s beginning, Marcus Buroughs, the director of Aratoi, welcomed us most warmly to the museum and to the concert, before paying tribute to one of the patrons of the enterprise, Dr. Ian Prior, of Wellington, long-time supporter of the museum and of the careers of both Anna Pierard and Jose Aparicio. Unfortunately, Dr.Prior could not be at the concert, but he would have been thrilled by the evening’s performances and the warm reception accorded to the performers by an enthusiastic audience.