Songs by Rossini, Head, Fauré, Hahn and Handel
Recorded: 16 January 2006
Joyce DiDonato consistently earns ecstatic reviews wherever she sings. Among the world’s most charismatic performers, honours bestowed upon Joyce DiDonato include the Met’s Beverly Sills Award, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year, the Richard Tucker Award – given to a single American singer annually, second place in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, and prizes from the George London Foundation, the ARIA Award Foundation and the Sullivan Foundation.
A favourite with Wigmore Hall audiences, Joyce DiDonato opened the 2008/9 season with a programme which included a selection of songs by Fauré, Head and Hahn, and arias by Rossini and Handel.
Performer: Joyce DiDonato (mezzo)Julius Drake (piano)
Tracklisting:
Rossini
1. Anzoleta avanti la regata – 3.22
2. Anzoleta co’ passa la regata – 2.21
3. Anzoleta dopo la regata – 3.59
Head
4. The Gondolier – 5.10
5. St Mark’s Square – 2.36
6. Rainstorm – 4.20
Fauré
7. Mandoline – 1.51
8. En sourdine – 3.30
9. Green – 1.43
10. À Clymène – 3.12
11. C’est l’extase – 3.09
Hahn
12. Sopra l’acque indormenzada – 3.16
13. La barcheta – 3.52
14. L’avertimento – 1.32
15. La biondina in gondoleta – 3.46
16. Che pecà – 2.13
17. La primavera (arr. J. Drake) – 2.12
ENCOCRES
Handel
18. Cara speme (from Giulio Cesare) – 5.38
Rossini
19. Non più mesta (from La Cenerentola) – 7.31
Reviews
“DiDonato radiates not just the serene and sinister side of Venice but its romantic melancholy, as depicted in six songs by Reynaldo Hahn. Rossini’s La regatta veneziana showcases the American’s florid brilliance, Fauré’s Cing Mélodies her seductive sense of line” Financial Times
“The purity and lightness of her tone are enchanting” Sunday Telegraph
“Such force, such lustre! Joyce DiDonato’s mezzo-soprano is very impressive … over the 66 minutes there’s enough quiet silky legato and subtle phrasing to delight lovers of the intimate. The jewel is the Venezia set by Reynaldo Hahn. And Julius Drake at the piano spins his own magic” The Times
“Everybody’s talking about mezzo Joyce DiDonato these days. This star product of Houston Opera Studio has been conquering opera houses around the world. If you wonder what all the fuss is about, listen to this live recital from London earlier this year. The voice has a gorgeous silvery sheen in its higher registers, seamlessly changing to molten gold as it descends” The Dallas News
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 16 June 2006
4 stars
Joyce DiDonato’s latest disc was recorded at one of the Wigmore Hall’s BBC lunchtime concerts earlier this year. The bulk of the programme consists of songs about Venice by 19th- and 20th-century composers, a difficult choice of material, largely because the three central cycles – Michael Head’s Songs of Venice, Fauré’s Cinq Mélodies de Venise and Reynaldo Hahn’s Venezia – all depict the decadent city of the late-Romantic imagination and are consequently similar in mood, though not in style.
There’s plenty of erotic languor in DiDonato’s singing, above all in Head’s cycle, with its furtive musings about “our silent coming on”, while the Hahn is delivered with such passion that the audience interrupts at one point with spontaneous applause. The three cycles are preceded by a very raunchy performance of Rossini’s La Regata Veneziana, while the closing encores consist of one of Sesto’s arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare and the final rondo from Rossini’s La Cenerentola: the latter is dazzling, though it doesn’t ideally work with piano accompaniment, despite the panache of Julius Drake’s playing.
John T. Hughes/www.classicalsource.com
The theme of this recital is Venice. One might expect Rossini’s boat race, even the Fauré pieces, but songs by Michael Head are infrequently encountered in recitals, whether they refer to Venice, the road to Bethlehem or Wapping Old Stairs, and the six items that comprise Hahn’s “Venezia” are not often heard. For this balancing of the known with the unhackneyed, Joyce DiDonato and Julius Drake must be congratulated, then given more approbation for their performance.
The first of the Head threesome is ‘The Gondolier’, a song in languorous mood: calm, drifting until the gondolier cries “Ohé”, which echoes from the looming walls. DiDonato slightly withdraws her tone on each call, disturbing the preceding gentleness of her phrasing: very effective. More dramatic is the last song, ‘Rain Storm’, in which Venice lies under a grey pall, as it will look when summer and visitors have left and winter threatens floods. Much of this song lies in the lower part of the voice, which contrasts markedly with DiDonato’s free upper notes. (The songs were written for Janet Baker, who gave the first performance, in the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1977.)
DiDonato and Drake actually begin with the Rossini regatta trio, in which Anzoleta encourages her lover Momolo to win the race, which he does, of course, before being smothered by her kisses. Again DiDonato presents contrast: Anzoleta before, during and after the race.
Fauré’s Verlaine settings are generally calm affairs, especially ‘En sourdine’, with DiDonato following a smooth contour against the busier piano line: elegance from both singer and pianist. They catch too the more overt emotion of ‘Green’ and shape ‘A Clymène’ sensitively as the quiet opening yields to a fuller outpouring before the song is gradually refined to a thread. ‘C’est l’extase’, with the pianist again playing far more notes than the vocalist sings, closes this short cycle. Both artists perform with taste and feeling: nothing overdone but nothing undone.
Ten years after the Fauré set came Hahn’s six songs in Venetian dialect. The intimacy of ‘La barcheta’ draws attractive, quiet singing matched by subtle, restrained playing from Drake. This is delightful. The following ‘L’avertimento’ gives DiDonato the chance to open out more, with her tone firm and strong. We share with her and Drake the fun of ‘Che pecà‘ (What a shame), as the pianist dances through the lilting accompaniment and the singer rings the changes on her vocal colouring, with a humorously raucous touch at the end of each stanza.
Two encores are included, neither concerning Venice. ‘Cara speme’, a lovely aria for Sesto from “Giulio Cesare”, receives a beautifully sculpted, deeply felt interpretation, to remind us what a fine singer of Handel Joyce DiDonato is. Then it’s foot-tapping time as the duo end with Cenerentola’s final rondo. Note the delicious trills in the recitative, the easy surmounting of the ornate scales, the flexibility in rapid passages and the focus and beauty of the tone.
This fine recital, well recorded (and with a booklet that contains all the texts), is most welcome, for both DiDonato and Drake are in good form.
…Joyce DiDonato, mezzo à l’aube de sa gloire en ce soir de janvier 2006, s’associe à Julius Drake pour un récital Rossini, Fauré, Hahn et Michael Head autour de mélodies évoquant Venise. Programme intelligent, charme vocal, simplicité interprétative et franche recommandation. …
Fred Cohn, Operanews.com, Oct 2006
To call an American singer “well-schooled” can be a way of praising with faint damns, the implication being that vocal proficiency has taken the place of individuality of expression. That is not the case here. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato is definitely a well-schooled singer, able to tackle the wide-ranging program presented here, comfortable in its three-and-a-half languages, undaunted by even the most stringent technical demands. For all that, though, it’s her distinctive timbre that most recommends her – sweetly lyrical, with a fine-grained legato and a touch of smokiness. In the vocalise that punctuates Reynaldo Hahn’s “La barcheta,” the sheer sound is utterly bewitching. Not every grouping is a complete success in this Venetian-themed recital, recorded earlier this year at London’s Wigmore Hall. But DiDonato shows an admirable ability to shift her interpretive demeanor to answer the very different demands of each.
With its breathless young heroine, Rossini’s familiar La Regata Veneziano, the disc’s opening set, can easily descend into audience-pleasing cutesiness. But even as her singing evokes youthful ardor, DiDonato maintains her backbone as a performer; she knows the difference between depicting an adorable character and begging to be adored. Three “Songs of Venice” by twentieth-century British composer Michael Head follow. These are an odd choice: even Stephen Pettitt’s liner notes admit Head’s failure to “explore the deepest or sublest emotions.” Here, DiDonato and her accompanist, Julius Drake, are unable to unearth musical interest where none is to be found.
Fauré’s Cinq Mélodies de Venise offer more substantial fare, but DiDonato’s conscientious readings here just miss enchantment. The climactic “L’extase” stays stubbornly earthbound, partly because the mezzo and her accompanist don’t employ ample enough rubato, imposing an unwelcome measure of rhythmic regularity. But Hahn’s Venezia, the final grouping in the “printed program,” proves a thoroughgoing delight. In this set of six songs in Venetian dialect, Hahn conjures a world of sensuality and high spirits, and DiDonato responds with unbuttoned, unfailingly communicative renditions.
DiDonato abandons the Venetian theme in her two encores. The first is a noble reading of Sesto’s “Cara speme” from Giulio Cesare, sung simply and quietly but with completely supported tone, its long line firmly drawn from beginning to end. The disc’s closer is DiDonato’s calling-card number, the rondo-finale from La Cenerentola - an infectious reading, striking the essential Rossinian balance between warmth and brilliance.