San Francisco Classical Voice

May 23, 1999

Casting aside all those tiresome dumb tenor jokes, a skilled tenor is a rare bird indeed, and a pricelessly valuable asset to any operatic enterprise. If anything, Norman Shankle's Schwabacher Debut Recital this past Sunday afternoon, May 23, at Old First Church, made a convincing reaffirmation of this point, besides showcasing this singer's considerable gifts.

It wasn't, strictly speaking, a local debut for this second-year Adler fellow. His talents have been generously employed both at the Opera Center and the main company. SF Opera audiences have heard Shankle on several occasions since his auspicious debut as Valetto, in Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea during the summer, 1998, cheesily themed "Femmes Fatales" Festival. At the time, the tenor's youthful, spirited account of the erotically charged duet with Peggy Kriha Dye's Damigella was as memorable as anything provided by the rest of star-studded cast. Later assignments with the Opera Center as Pylade in Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride and Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte further evidenced the singer's promise.

A Virginia native, Norman Shankle possesses a beautifully lyrical instrument, with distinctive individual qualities -- qualities of the type one fears might be lost by excessive or misapplied operatic training. Shankle's technique is not sufficiently secure yet, but at its best, the voice pours out in elegant fluidity, displaying a soothing, organic timbre reminiscent of a young Peter Schreier.

With Mark Morash as pianist, Sunday's recital opened with Schubert's sweeping "Auf dem Strom"; William Klingelhoffer (the SF Opera Orchestra's principal horn) aptly provided the horn solos. This demanding piece found Shankle at his most vulnerable. The wide, far-ranging epic scope of the piece proved a bit unwieldy in his approach, and many of the various nuances were lost.

Shankle recaptured some control in the gorgeous Gabriel Fauré song cycle, "La bonne chanson," set to poems by Paul Verlaine. Though his singing was a bit heavy and sometimes uncertain in pitch, the tenor convincingly depicted the cycle's ecstatic, interior immensity. "Une Sainte son aureole," the first setting, was excessively open-toned, but Shankle's interpretive sincerity was evident. The marvelous blossoming one feels in the ascending phrases of "Puisque l'aube grandit" was effectively rendered, as was the entrancing and hypnotic imagery delicately landscaped in Verlaine's poems.

After intermission, the tenor offered Britten's remarkable Canticle III, Op. 55, set to Edith Sitwellâs poem "Still Falls the Rain," with the dramatic horn obbligati sections executed vividly by Klingelhoffer. This setting is built upon a series of sequential, melismatic declamations, which Shankle delivered with a poignant, locutory eloquence.

A short set of Richard Strauss songs from Op. 21 ("Du meines Herzens Kronelein"; "Ach Lieb, ich muss nun scheiden!"; and "All mein Gedanken") followed, with Shankle performing as well as any current vocal recitalist. In contrast to the earlier Schubert, the refined delivery of these entries offered unmistakable evidence of Shankle's credentials in lieder repertoire.

The closing set, in English -- subtitled Four Songs About Love -- was well performed, with clear and detailed skill, but was less purposeful than what had come before. Variously sentimental or operatic, the four disparaging selections -- one each by Amy Beach, Virgil Thomson, Richard Hundley, and Frank Bridge -- were problematically conceived in their assemblage, and their being placed together didn't seem to reveal anything in particular.

(Ching Chang is a regular contributor to the SF Bay Times and The SF Gate.)

©1999 Ching Chang, all rights reserved