Time and adversity have not been kind to Barbara Bonney, once the possessor of a silvery, clear soprano that responded to her every musical intention. After time off for personal reasons, she has been attempting to place her voice once again on its former secure plane. But the voice will not cooperate: It is unresponsive and unyielding. Gone is the pliability, the suavity, the subtlety — and with them, the artistry.
“Sad,” commented a colleague to me. Oh, worse than that. This was a voice that could stir the hardest heart, and now that heart remains unmoved. There are singers whose voices have suffered the ravages of time, who nevertheless show artistry despite many vocal faults. Bonney is not, alas, one of them. Those of us who came, full of hope, to hear and cheer her Wednesday night at Herbst Theatre, under the auspices of San Francisco Performances, heard, instead of the gleaming artist of former times, a brassy version of what once was, painful to the ear and heart.
At times during the concert, the voice failed to sound at all, so relentlessly was it pushed. The high notes were almost invariably loud, though some softer high tones were better formed and quite lovely. But the lower head tones were often inaudible, and an unfortunate break existed between the head and chest registers.
Bonney began with a group of graceful, sometimes dramatic songs by Mendelssohn, which were not well-served by the singer’s effort to simply get the voice out. Three songs by André Previn followed, to poems of Emily Dickinson, who manages, in her artful way, to triumph over almost any composer who seeks to pin her down in music. Perhaps Bonney might have mined such deceptively simple lines as “You are not so fair, midnight/I chose day/But please take a little girl/He turned away!” But her voice no longer has the refinement and suppleness with which to address them. Dickinson, stalwart in her deceptive simplicity, eluded this composer, too — except, perhaps, for one stanza, which was well-set for both voice and piano: “Oh, some scholar, Oh, some sailor!/Oh, some wise man from the skies!/Please to tell a little pilgrim/Where the place called morning lies!” A tempting bit to set to music, and the composer did it well, following the word-rhythms.
Previn himself was to have accompanied Bonney but was prevented from traveling by a recurrent back injury. His place was ably filled by Fernando Araujo, a colleague of Bonney’s from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where the singer is currently a professor.
Better Days Passing By
Besides the Emily Dickinson songs, the program also featured Previn’s Sallie Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid, an overlong monologue of little character, unredeemed by the tantalizing information in the program notes that Bonney and Billy — also known at times as William H. Bonney — might be related; and Sieben Lieder (Seven songs), settings of the German poet Theodor Storm. Of these last, in which occasional flashes of something Straussian glinted, the repeated phrases of “Oktoberlied” particularly seemed to inspire Previn: “vergolden, ja vergolden,” and a splendid final stanza, containing the joyous “Geniessen, ja geniessen!” in which the poet asks his “wackrer Freund” (worthy friend) to join him in “drinking in” the “days of blue” before they pass.
Concluding the recital were Richard Strauss’ inspired “Vier letzte Lieder” (Four last songs), so-called because they were, indeed, not only his last songs but the last pieces he would compose. Any soprano with the powerfully soaring gifts that Strauss demands aches to perform them. At one time, Bonney was among those blessed singers, but she is no longer. She has performed these songs many times, as well as recorded them; they are in her voice. But her voice is no longer in them. Listeners could hear that they are beautifully written, and just to hear them is wonderful. But Bonney’s vocal muscles continued to betray her: pitches sagged, arching lines were broken too often by breaths, and too many words and vowels were disfigured (an odd mannerism). Above all, though, she doesn’t seem to have anything to say anymore with the songs. Her performance sounded old and was, unforgivably, unmoving.
Bonney’s single encore was Strauss’s rapturous Zueignung. Usually translated as “dedication,” its alternative meaning, “appreciation,” might be more accurate, since the theme of the song is “Habe Dank!” — “I am grateful.” Only in this piece, and only in one line, did I hear the masterful singer Bonney once was. She can do it! Singing “Und du segnetest den Trank” (and you blessed the drink), Bonney reared back (vocally) and took her own sweet time delivering the heartfelt line. And oh, it was sweet. But where, oh, where is there a voice shop, like a violin shop, where a singer can take a voice to be retooled to its former glory?