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All-American Songstress

Georgia Rowe on March 3, 2009

The American song repertoire is often an afterthought for recital singers, but soprano Nicole Cabell made it the centerpiece of her program Sunday afternoon at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. It was a wise choice, one that showed the young artist’s voice to better advantage than the more traditional repertoire that comprised the balance of the program.

Nicole Cabell

Presented by Cal Performances, Cabell sang American songs by Leonard Bernstein and Ricky Ian Gordon and a selection of American spirituals, as well as works by Franz Liszt, Fernando Obradors, and Carlos Guastavino, and, as encores, music by Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss. Pianist Spencer Myer was the accompanist.

Advance word had expectations running high for Cabell, a rising star in the opera world whose debut recording, Soprano, was released in 2007. The California-born artist, who comes from a family of law enforcers (her grandfather was the first African-American police chief in Los Angeles), won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2005 and has been on a clear trajectory ever since. She seems to be everywhere these days — making her Metropolitan Opera debut as Pamina in The Magic Flute, expanding her repertoire with roles including Adina in L’Elisir d’amore (at the Met) and Leila in Les Pecheurs de perles (at Chicago Lyric Opera, her home company.) She appears on recordings of La Bohème (as Musetta) and Porgy and Bess (Clara).

Sunday’s recital introduced an artist of considerable promise. It also raised questions about the future. To be sure, Cabell boasts a secure, flexible soprano instrument, one she deploys with laser-beam accuracy. The sound is warm and full in the lower and middle registers, crystalline at the top. Her lithe figure and poised stage presence are assets, too; making her entrance in a flattering flounced silk gown in a lovely shade of indigo, Cabell looked beautiful, classy, and appropriate.

Yet, at least as a recitalist, Cabell seems to be still finding her way. Her singing was either soft, loud, or louder, with limited color and expressive range, and her glossy readings were like a reflective pool: pretty on the surface, without much depth. Throughout the afternoon, much of what she was singing came across sounding the same.

Cabell got off to an uneven start with four Liszt songs: Es muss ein Wunderbares sein; Die Lorelei; Oh! quand je dors; and Enfant, si j’etais. The first two, sung in German, sounded fine, with Die Lorelei — a gripping setting of Heine’s text about a sea nymph who lures boatmen to their watery graves — sounding artfully shaped, with secure idiomatic phrasing. The two settings that followed (both featuring texts by Victor Hugo) didn’t fare as well; Cabell was ill-at-ease in the French, and her voice took on a reedy quality at the top.

Her vocal limitations were even more evident in the songs by Obradors and Guastavino. The warmth and dynamism we associate with this music’s best interpreters was in short supply; Cabell sounded especially wan in Obradors’ Al Amour and Corazon, porque pasais. The composer’s Del cabello mas sutil and La mi sola, Laureola represented a slight improvement; here, with Myer supplying gentle piano parts, Cabell caressed the vocal line and invested the texts with feeling. Chiquitita la novia, a witty setting about a tiny bride, capped the set on a zesty note. Of the four songs by Guastavino, only La rosa y el sauce registered as a statement of palpable emotion.

Bernstein and Gordon Bring on a Bloom

Things improved after intermission. Cabell returned visibly relaxed and sounding energized for Bernstein’s five-song cycle, I Hate Music. The settings —”My Name Is Barbara,” “Jupiter Has Seven Moons,” “I Hate Music,” “A Big Indian and a Little Indian,” and “I’m a Person Too” — are witty and wordy, and she struck the right note of glib charm in each.

Seven songs from Gordon’s Genius Child marked the afternoon’s high point. Written for soprano Harolyn Blackwell on texts by the great African-American poet Langston Hughes, they are lilting, pensive, poignant, and exuberant, and Cabell, with excellent support from Myer, sang them with ease and fluidity.

That ease extended to the spirituals — Oh, What a Beautiful City; My Lord, What a Morning; and Ride On, King Jesus — that closed the second half. Cabell’s voice bloomed in these moving, quintessentially American works. Here, at last, was the sense of heat and commitment that had eluded the singer throughout much of the afternoon.

Cabell gave two lustrous encores: O Mio Babbino Caro from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Cacelie by Richard Strauss.