San Francisco Classical Voice

The Schwabacher Debut Recital Series concluded its current season Sunday with a south of the border repertory tour, showcasing three gifted San Francisco Opera Center Singers. Joining forces at the Old First Church in San Francisco, soprano Elizabeth Caballero, tenor Jeffrey Picón and baritone Hugh Russell served up a fervid Latin flavored recital. Their pianist, Steven Blier, also unearthed and arranged many of the selections that included seldom-performed by composers from Brazil, Argentina and Cuba.

Among the songs by Brazil's Francisco Braga, Pixinguinha, Camargo Guarnieri, Ernesto de Nazareth and Villa-Lobos, to Argentina's Carlos Guastavino, Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzollo, and Cuba's Alejandro Garc“a Cartula and Gonzalo Roig, many were vigorous and impassioned in character, with bubbling emotions boiling just beneath the skin. That the trio of young singers were able to sustain such intensity through the course of a nearly three hour long recital was a testament to their skill and promise. Many of these songs, composed as popular music, were never meant to be performed in a recital setting by singers with trained operatic voices.

While Guastavino and Villa-Lobos are well-known mainstream composers, songs such as Pixinguinha's early radio hit "Carinhoso" ("Tenderly"), Piazzola's "Los pájaros perdidos" ("The Lost Birds") or Ernesto de Nazareth's "Odeon" (the name of a popular movie palace) were originally performed at parlors, nightclubs and tea salons. Characteristic of Latin America's post-colonial bohemian belle époque era, they epitomize the stylistic maturation of the cross-pollination between nostalgic, old-world romance with the vibrant regionalism and folk influences, while anticipating the carefree sophistication of the modern Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz.

Pianist and arranger Steven Blier, the co-founder and artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, championed these works. The opportunity to hear them was welcomed, even though the hybridized setting meant that much of these songs' tender, nuanced and beautifully colloquial poetry was often lost in the explosive, zarzuela-like delivery of trained lyrical singers.

The results were still exciting to hear, offering formidable vocal showcases for the featured singers. Soprano Elizabeth Caballero offered Guastavino's "El Clavel del aire blanco" ("The Tree Carnation") with an exceptionally beautiful tone and satiny vowels, as well as a bubbly and playful "Engenho novo" ("A New Machine") by Francisco Braga, one of Bidú Sayão's favorite encores. She crowned Gozarlo Roig's mini-scena from Cecilia Valdés with a thrilling sustained high C and lived up to the lavish critical praises she received last summer as a participant of the Merola Opera Program

A Merola participant from the class of '94, tenor Jeffrey Picón made a homecoming appearance as refined and intense interpreter. His compelling, beautifully polished lyric tenor produced top notes that were not only secure and unforced, but also retained a pleasant, mellifluous quality. "Los Pájaros Perdidos" proved to be ideal for a singer of Picón's temperament. He successfully captured the soulful undercurrents of Piazzolla's music, indulging the ending with a brilliantly sustained high A. His mastery of Brazilian Portuguese was impressive, particularly in Pixinguinha's "Carinhoso" and Villa-Lobos "Evocação" ("Evocation"). A greater distinction, though, might have been made between the erudite Portuguese texts and the variations in earthy peasant dialect in the poetry from Northeast Brazil in "Viola Quebrada" ("Broken guitar").

Replacing baritone Armando Gama on short notice, Canadian baritone Hugh Russell learned a large amount of music to a impressive degree of refinement in the week preceding this event. Currently an Adler Fellow at the SF Opera, his rendition of Guastavino's "Pampamapa" ("Song of the Pampas") was a taut and emotionally tense Gaucho lament of lost love. Russell's attention to detail extended to the proper enunciation of the modified diphthongs in Argentinian Spanish. His resounding, overtone-rich baritone also served him well in the several memorable ensemble assignments.

(Ching Chang is a columnist for the SF Gate, and contributes regularly on opera and classical music to both local and national publications. His recent interview with soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs can be read at www.usoperaweb.com/2002/april/ .)

©2002 Ching Chang, all rights reserved