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SYMPHONY REVIEW
October 2, 2005
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By James Keolker
‘Tis the season for mezzo-sopranos in the Bay Area, what with Vivica Genaux at the San Francisco Opera, Cecilia Bartoli at UC Berkeley, Frederica von Stade in San Francisco at mid-month, and Jennifer Larmore in great voice Sunday with the Napa Valley Symphony in Yountville.
Larmore has never looked more glamorous or sounded fresher, presenting her audience with a bouquet of florid Rossini and Donizetti arias, with colorful bits of Bizet and Victor Herbert thrown in.
She opened, however, with a reserved approach to Arsace's aria, “Eccomi alfine in Babilonia,” (Here I am at last in Babylon) from Rossini's Semiramide. But she soon hit her stride in the contrasting cabaletta “Oh! come da quel dì” (Oh! since that day how all has changed!), easily voicing the multiple melismas, rapid ascending and descending scales, and concluding flourishes in chest voice. Maestro Asher Raboy and the members of the Napa Valley Symphony had begun with Rossini's Overture to the same opera, the introductory horn passages especially well played.
Larmore was even more commanding in Isabella's wry “Cruda sorte! Amor tirrano!” (Cruel fate! Tyrannical love!) from Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri. She deftly caught the heroine's comic duality, longing for her lover in “Per te solo, o mio Lindoro” (I am doing this only for you, my Lindoro) while attracting the Bey of Algiers in “So a domar gli uomini come si fa,” (I know how to tame men). The mezzo then humorously exaggerated the concluding, “da vaga femmina felicità!” (and from a pretty woman!). Larmore's passage work throughout was quick and clean, the staccati precise, the voice rich and resonant. Isabella's romantic and alluring “Per lui che adoro” (This for the one I adore) followed. Larmore used her voice sensuously to emphasize “questo velo è troppo basso” (this veil is too low) and “oi m'inquietate” (now you're ruffling me). Her phrasing was delicate and tender, purposefully lingering over the many rubati. Raboy opened the set with Rossini's Overture, evoking the requisite light-heartedness from the strings with a haunting sound of melancholy from the woodwinds. The combination of Larmore's deft vocal characterization and the musical selections made this listener wish that recent performances at the San Francisco Opera had matched this level of interpretation.
It was Larmore's singing of Bizet's Habañera from Carmen that allowed the audience to hear her lushest timbre, however. She couched the nuances of the French text with luxuriant sound, and easily caught the Gypsy's insouciance with “L'oiseau que tu croyais surprende” (The bird you thought caught has now spread its wings). Eschewing the cliché of hands-on-hips to signal sensuality, she was especially effective while standing still and letting her voice convey the message. Not taking herself too seriously, however, the mezzo concluded with Victor Herbert's comic “I Want to Be a Prima Donna” from his 1911 musical, The Enchantress, slyly adding the opening phrases from Rossini's “Una voce poco fa” from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, a Larmore specialty. Her encore was the brindisi from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, tossed off with trills, roulades, and high notes while she held aloft a glass of Napa Valley wine. If only those other mezzos had as much fun.
(Dr. James Keolker is a frequent writer and lecturer on opera, as well as a professor of opera studies at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco.)
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Jennifer Larmore
