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RECITAL REVIEW
October 3, 2004
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By Stephanie Friedman
Kiri Te Kanawa's recital at Davies Symphony Hall Sunday was not a
concert by a great artist, but an opportunity for the adoring public who
have loved her performances at the Opera House over the years to express
their adoration to their hearts' content. True, there was still much to
admire in the voice and person of this diva, verging on her seventh
decade: the vibrancy of her upper-middle vocal range, her calm,
comfortable stage presence and her surefooted negotiation through a
startling assortment of Handel, Berlioz, Poulenc, Strauss, Wolf-Ferrari
and Puccini, with splashes of Vivaldi, Debussy, Hahn, and Fauré.
The piebald program held together quite well, with Te Kanawa, beautiful,
charming and funny, resplendent in a dress encrusted with multicolored
sequins, holding court in the center of it, and the excellent pianist
Warren Jones supplying nuance and expressiveness.
But there was little beauty in the once-ravishing voice. The creamy
quality has roughened, the once-seamless legato has fragmented, and the
dynamic range often jumped from an almost inaudible softness to an
orchestra-piercing top volume and back again. And one of the reasons the
program may have cohered so well was that everything was delivered in
much the same manner. Sad, humorous, thoughtful, or exuberant, it didn't
matter the mood or style of the song; no apparent intent and little
attempt at interpretation guided the performances.
Te Kanawa has never been known as an especially sensitive musician or a
great interpreter, though (for my money) a performance here as Arabella
in Strauss' eponymous opera could not have been bettered; and certainly
others will have their favorites. But the heartbreakingly lovely aria,
“Piangeró la sorte mia” (I shall lament my fate) from Handel's
Giulio Cesare received the same offhand treatment as the more
rapid and joyful “Bel piacere” (Great pleasure) from his Agrippina.
Te Kanawa was as agile as a gazelle in Vivaldi's “Io son quel gelsomino” (I am that jasmine) from Vivaldi's Arsilda Regina di Ponto, but it was Warren Jones who brought the suavity to the song that the singer's performance lacked. In Reynaldo Hahn's meticulous and antiquely charming “À Cloris” (To Cloris), Te Kanawa was not too particular about her pitches, which tended to flatten, and her soft singing often faded into near-inaudibility. Once again, in what is surely one of the most beautiful and nearly- perfect songs in the French repertoire, Fauré's “Après un r've” (After a dream), it was not clear whether the singer knew or cared what she was singing. An example: the melisma on the word “mensonges” (lies) could (and should) have been a piteous outpouring, if only she had cared to give thought to the phrase. And the dynamic palette, which should have been carefully modulated, seemed arbitrary and fitful. The best artistic partnership of the evening between singer and pianist came in Richard Strauss' “Morgen” (Tomorrow). The beautifully descending word “wogenblauen” (wave-blue) was exquisite, and the final two lines, beginning with a breathless “stumm” (silent) were beautifully sung, as they needed to be. Though she inexplicably garbled many of the words, Te Kanawa showed that she was still master of the overarching Straussian line. At the conclusion of the song, Jones' hands remained on the keys so long that it appeared he hd been overcome by this magnificent song and needed time to recover.
Three of Berlioz' songs from “Nuits d'été” (Summer nights) had a few good moments. “Villanelle” was sprightly, yet words were often detached, as if the singer's motor were sputtering. Her turns in “Le spectre de la rose” (The specter of the rose) were deliciously precise, but the opening line, “Soulève ta paupière close” (Open your closed eyelid) lacked the needed strong descending drive; the singer chose instead a swooping crescendo on the succeeding octave. She gave a mere ghost of the gripping rallentando on “O toi qui de ma mort fut cause” (Oh you who caused my death), yet sang a perfect “Car sur ton sein j'ai mon tombeau” (For on your breast I have my tomb.) As for the billowing final song “L'île inconnue” (The unknown isle), it skittered by with scarcely a nod at the words; and Te Kanawa ignored all opportunities for characterizing both the bombastic lover and the romantic girl — a strange omission for an opera singer. Speaking of theatricality, in the second half Te Kanawa delivered a long monologue on her security ordeals at American airports that had the audience in fits. Curiously, it had all the verve, wit and feeling missing from her musical performance. The Poulenc cabaret songs, however, were well-suited to her temperament. She tossed off “Voyage à Paris” (Voyage to Paris) and “Hôtel” with aplomb. The wayward pitches and capricious delivery, annoying earlier, were perfectly suited to these songs. Te Kanawa explained, disarmingly, that she would change the final word of “Hôtel,” “fumer” (to smoke), to “manger” (to eat), because she doesn't smoke —”It's not good for me; it's not good for anyone!” — but she loves chocolate. So the diva changed the word, pace Apollinaire! Two charming, well-sung songs by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and a couple of recognizably Puccinian songs ended the program. The first encore, “Hine e hine,” a Maori folk-song, occasioned the most committed singing of the evening, and the Puccini aria from La rondine, “Ch'il bel sogno di Doretta,” brought the house down with a volley of audible adoration.
(Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, is retired from more than three decades of
singing in opera and concert, here and abroad.)
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Kiri Te Kanawa