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RECITAL REVIEW
October 16, 2005
Photo by Harry Heliotis
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By Anna Carol Dudley
Fresh from her triumph as San Francisco Opera's Italian girl,
Vivica Genaux made her San Francisco Performances recital debut Sunday night
in Herbst Theatre. Not surprisingly, the mezzo-soprano was at her best
singing Rossini — three of his songs set to Spanish texts, expressing the
longing of a waiting lover, the grief of a sailor's widow and the
intransigence of an artist's muse — all with Rossinian grace and
embellishment wedded to Spanish dance rhythms and the occasional outburst of
"ay!" or "O Dios!"
Genaux also sang four songs by the remarkable 19th century composer
Pauline Viardot, an accomplished singer and pianist acquainted
with many of the most notable composers and poets of her time. In addition
to singing repertoire written for her, she wrote a number of vocal works,
including settings of Russian poems which Genaux sang in German
translations. She was ably partnered by pianist Craig Rutenberg, who found
just the right tone in each song, successively peaceful, stormy, starlit and
eerie. It would be nice to hear these songs in the original Russian,
especially Viardot's setting of Pushkin.
The recital began with Haydn's dramatic scena, "Arianna a Naxos" — not perhaps an ideal opener. Since there are long stretches of recitative, it takes a while before we really hear the singer's voice in the full bloom
of an aria. Genaux ran a limited gamut of emotions, from intense to more
intense, in rather strident sound. Ariadne wakes up to find that Theseus is
missing, but it should take a while for her to come to the full realization
that he has sailed off and left her marooned on Naxos. Haydn never got
around to scoring the piece for orchestra; and though Rutenberg played with
impressive variety of sound and timing, an orchestra would help.
Genaux chose the Carl Loewe song cycle on the German poet Adalbert von Chamisso's Frauenliebe, written four years before Schumann made his famous setting of the same text. Balladeer that Loewe was, he mostly stuck with Chamisso's verse structure, making it imperative — and difficult — for the singer to differentiate verses. Eight poems progress from the woman's first love, courtship, marriage and motherhood to her husband's death, and Chamisso added a ninth poem for the woman in old age advising her granddaughter. Loewe set this last poem, and Schumann omitted it, ending with the husband's death and a piano reprise of the first song, the first dawning of her love. Genaux and Rutenberg found ways of varying dynamics, tempo and color from verse to verse, notably in "Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan" (This is the first pain you have dealt me), the poem following upon the death of the husband. But in the end the effect was to make every singer in the audience admire more than ever Schumann's emotional understanding and musical genius. The concert ended with songs from early 20th century zarzuelas — Spanish operettas — in which Genaux displayed a strong affinity for the Spanish language, a gift for story-telling and a brilliant command of rapid-fire patter. In these songs and in the Rossini, there was enough evidence of serious jaw tension to raise doubts as to how long her career will last. For now, she is pleasing many audiences, and her encore — "I come from the town of Mira," from the musical Carnival — was a natural segue from the zarzuela pieces, showing that she is capable of communicating exceedingly well in her native English. Every word was crystal clear.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University, lecturer emerita and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Vivica Genaux
