Published Tuesdays

June 19, 2001

Reviews

OPERA REVIEW

Simon Boccanegra Climaxes Verdi Celebration

By Tom Grey
San Francisco Opera
(6/16/01)

RECITAL REVIEW

Adler Fellows Sing Italian Songs

By Anna Carol Dudley
San Francisco Opera
(6/13/01)

OPERA REVIEW

A Fresh Falstaff Worth the Price
By Heuwell Tircuit
Pocket Opera
(6/17/01)

FESTIVAL REVIEW

Piercing the Gloom

By Alan Rich
Ojai Music Festival
(6/2-3/01)

MUSIC NEWS

Rosenberg's "Singer of the World"

By Janos Gereben

Robert P. Commanday, Editor

Na Mele — Singing from the Heart

By Janos Gereben

On a visit to Hawaii last month, I realized that my precious memories of Nina Keali'iwahamana are now a matter of public record — recorded, that is, by public television. Nina means as much to music lovers in Hawaii as Callas or Rysanek to most opera fans. It's obvious that they inhabit different worlds (besides the happy fact that Nina is very much alive), but I don't understand why there have to be barriers between those artificial domains. The meditations of Ali Akbar Khan, the ecstatic singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or the Ali Sabri Brothers come from the same place, create the same joy for me as Plácido Domingo's arias, Yo Yo Ma's cello, or Simon Rattle's conducting.

I cannot believe that, regardless of experience with "ethnic music," anyone who loves music would not immediately and completely fall under the spell of Nina, a luminous singer of clarity, sincerity, kind and nourishing humor, deep and affecting emotions. And the good news is that now she and real Hawaiian music will be much more accessible via a series of programs from Hawaii Public Television. It is called Na Mele, meaning music or song, but with the same kind of additional connotation as "lieder" — not just any song, but the music of a specific and special kind.

OK, OK, some say, but do we really want to deal with "Hawaiian music" when the subject is a great singer? Look at it this way: "Gypsy music" is fine, but don't confuse it with Hungarian music. Bartok and Kodály didn't, at a time when the rest of the world did, and we are all the richer for it.

A Great Discovery

The late, somewhat lamented Kodak Hula Show was fine (although too close for comfort to the Kapiolani tennis courts I used), but if you think it's the same as the "music of Hawaii," you have a great discovery to make. Don Ho is to Nina as Rent is to La Bohème, Rice's Aida is to Verdi's. (Why not include everything in "music"? Hey, I'm broadminded but not tin-eared.)

The traditions of Hawaiian music in Stuart Yamane's Na Mele encompass sacred ancient rituals, the "art songs" of kupuna (the passing of knowledge from generation to generation), Leo ki'e ki'e (the uniquely Hawaiian but more contemporary male falsetto sound), the jazz equivalent of Hawaiian nightclub music at its best, and many other categories of the genre.

If you see only one program in the Na Mele series, which began last year, try for the one with Nina, Mahi Beamer, and Robert Cazimero (of the Cazimero Brothers) — three singers passionate about the music but also completely at ease with the material, with each other. If you come to this performance from opera or lieder, you will instantly recognize excellence in phrasing and diction, effortless, elegant projection of the very essence of music. Go ahead and cross over. What do you have to lose, other than little boxes of artificial categories?

Other outstanding Na Mele programs feature many of the great Beamer clan (Keola, Nola, Moana among them), Genoa Keawe, Jerry Santos and Olomana, Byron Yasui, Bill Kaiwa, and so on. Don't let the name Keali'iwahamana bother you. This week's San Francisco Opera Aida had Diadkova, Burchuladze, and Pyatnychko in the cast, and they were all excellent. Those of us embracing Tatar, Bulgarian, Armenian, and other exotic divas, as long as they sing well, can certainly accept and relish Nina K.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. You can contact him at janos451@earthlink.net.)

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Elliot Simon, Michelle Dulak, Associate Editors

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