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RECITAL REVIEW
Berkeley Symphony Robert Cole
September 17, 2006
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Vocal Ravishment By Heuwell Tircuit
On Sunday afternoon in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, soprano Nuccia Focile sang something akin to an operatic pops concert of famous Italian arias, sauced with a few French songs, and garnished with a Mozart. For support, Robert Cole, director of the University’s Cal Performances since 1986, conducted the Berkeley Symphony, and added a pair of orchestral lollipops as intermezzos. (Curiously, those did not include an introductory prelude or overture.)
Instead, Focile opened with “Porgi Amor” from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, followed by "Marguerite’s Jewel Song" from Gounod’s Faust, after which Cole led some of the ballet music from the same opera. Next came “Si mi chiamano Mimi” from Puccini’s La Bohème and “Stridono lassł” from Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. After intermission, Focile began with “Lo con l’umile ancella” from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, then “Sola perduta abbandonata” from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the orchestral intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Massenet’s “Adieu notre petite table” from Manon, and a whopper performance of “Pace, pace mio Dio” from Verdi’s La forza del destino to round it off.
Focile has been making a name for herself in the major international opera houses and she can boast a diverse repertory, ranging from Mozart to Janácek. She gave an excellent performance of Gounod’s "Jewel Song." And Massenet’s farewell arias to her little table in Manon were as musical and tender as they were touching. But, it was obvious that her forte is the big Italian-Romantic repertory.
Verdi’s prayerful “Pace, pace” was ravishing and dramatic, yet within tasteful bounds. While that proved to be the peak of the performance, her Adrianna excerpt was wonderfully apt, save for a slight tendency toward the singer's curse: an exaggerated blasting out at full voice. It is a curious thing and common in vocal soloists, this embedded belief that loud equates to good. It's the “Anything you can sing, I can sing louder” syndrome. In a 3,000-seat opera house that can be useful, even necessary. But in a rather small, acoustically live hall like Hertz, it’s simply vulgar and a distortion of the music’s worth. Focile can sing delicately, and she often did. Her light touch for Nedda’s aria praising birds, from I Pagliacci, glittered and sparkled like little fireflies in the night. This was aided by an equal twitter from the orchestral winds. In general, both Puccini excerpts went well, although Focile showed a slight tendency to oversell emotionally. After all, both Mimi and Manon are supposed to be fragile characters, not Greek heroines. There, again, climaxes were overdone, and volume levels were laid on with a trowel. It should be noted that her French elocution was quite good, which is not a common virtue among sopranos. An odd overuse of vibrato, which was a little wide and too slow, pockmarked the opening Mozart. But the vibrato problem did not show up again, so I can only assume it was due to nerves, or perhaps an insufficient warm-up. If the Verdi and Leoncavallo were peaks in the concert, the Mozart was the pit. Of course, her youth may account for the occasional misjudgment. Cole supported the performance with good tempos, enough flexibility for Focile’s rubato, and the occasional elongated high note. The ballet music was salt-of-the-earth basic, with the orchestra in sterling form. But Cole went a bit overboard for Leoncavallo’s too-famous intermezzo. It was slow of gait and so throbbingly emotionalist that you might have wondered if there had been a recent death in the family. I found myself remembering a tale about Strauss rehearsing his Salome with a soprano who was chewing up the stage. He stopped the rehearsal and said, “Please madam, the music is vulgar enough.”
(Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.)
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Nuccia Focile
