San Francisco Classical Voice

Not enough can be said in praise of the orchestra, under the direction of Bernard Labadie. Sadly sweet-toned and hungrily incisive in turn, accomplishing rapid passages with precision and dexterity, they played as one. There were many delectable touches. The combination of flutes and violins — not an unusual partnership — nevertheless at times made for a strange sonority in Jean-Féry Rebel's Les élémens (The Elements), as if some exotic jungle birds had wandered into Zellerbach with something very important to say. The strings had a star turn in a movement from the same piece, depicting the element of fire by means of astonishingly rapid runs and swoops. In La Chasse (The Hunt), two horns thumped away like good-natured elephants, depicting a hunt. The whole piece, while not as polished as those of Rebel's contemporaries, Rameau and Lully, was, as the first representation of “choreographic and programmatic symphony,” wildly imaginative and great fun, from the opening extended attack on every note of the D-minor scale (Chaos), to the final virtuosic Caprice.

Two sections of orchestral movements from Rameau's opera Dardanus swept the listener, with their rollicking yet stately dances, back into the pomp of the 18th century French court. Castanets were featured in a “Loure pour les Phrygiens.” (A loure is a kind of dance emphasizing a strong first beat.) An enormous drum, played by an agile, expressive percussionist, served as thunder machine for the “Bruit de guerre pour l'entr'acte” (noise of battle for the interlude), the sounds waxing and waning convincingly. Tambourins — two sets of dances in the Rameau pieces, one in the Rebel — stirred the blood and set the foot tapping.

Then there was the orchestra's second personification, that of accompaniment to Kozená's singing of arias by Gluck and Rameau. Singer and orchestra were excellently matched, playing off each other like improvisatory jazz musicians. Under Labadie's expert direction, the sensitive musicians followed the singer's rapid changes of expression perfectly. However, the sameness of her bodily posture — the stiffly spread fingers and rigid elbows, the jutting chin — influenced the way I heard the arias, infecting them with a similar sameness. Only after I had closed my eyes was I able to focus on and appreciate the dexterity of her singing and the expert way she molded the sinuous lines.

As there was no softness to her posture and gestures, neither was there “softness” in her singing. But the pieces required none; they were as angular and anguished as her delivery. Armide, in the eponymous opera by Gluck, has fallen in love with her sworn enemy, Renaud. She sings of her tormented state in “Ah, si la liberté me doit 'tre ravie” (Ah, if I must be ravished of my liberty). Clytemnestra, in Iphigénie en Aulide (Iphigenia in Aulos) sees a vision of her daughter Iphigenia about to be sacrificed by Agamemnon, the girl's father. Phaedra, in Rameau's first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, lusts after her step-son Hippolytus, desperately but vainly struggling against succumbing. These are not happy women, and it can be argued that Kozená's contorted bodily movements, as well as her tendency to flatten the ends of long-held notes so that they lost resonance and became piercing, perfectly suited the material she was presenting.

Outstanding among the arias was a breathtaking “Tristes appr'ts” (Mournful preparations), from Rameau's Castor et Pollux, with its beautiful bassoon introduction and restrained, measured playing by the orchestra. No less outstanding was “Cruelle mère des amours,” from Hippolyte et Aricie, Phaedra's anguished prayer to Venus to make Hippolytus respond to her love. One after another, barely heard suspensions in the gorgeously weaving orchestral lines grew to a crescendo, hung there in dissonance, then melted into resolution. Kozená, too, leaned on her dissonant cadential appoggiaturas before releasing them into the tonic, wonderfully exaggerating the short, half-step distance between the two notes.

Both Gluck and Rameau encased the emotions of their afflicted women within beautifully shaped lines, but Kozená fully exploited those lines and the emotional material in them without exceeding the limits of the style. The photograph of the singer in the program, showing a smooth, unlined, beatific visage surrounded by flowing blonde hair, as in a pre-Raphaelite painting, belies the passion and torment this mezzo is capable of communicating. And thank goodness for that. A pre-Raphaelite maiden would not have had the energy or the will, perhaps, to pierce the heart of these pieces and stir the emotions of the grateful, responsive audience.

As encore, Kozená, along with flutes and continuo, presented another aria from Dardanus, “Ah! que vôtre sort est charmant” (Ah, how charming is your state).