View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (June 1999, week 2) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 00:58:19 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Alastair Miles, St John's, Smith Square, 10Jun99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Alastair Miles' first recital, accompanied by Roger Vignoles, is presumably connected with a forthcoming solo CD on Chandos. Miles is established as a Handel and Verdi bass whose performances are characterized by authority and restraint -- he didn't quite have the theatrical excess for Boioto's Mephisto in the recent ENO production. Miles has a superb, medium sized but intensely focussed, voice which elicits the response "phwoargh" from some listeners. He sings the same repertoire, and some of the same roles, as the slightly younger Bryn Terfel, but they are about as similar as Pavarotti and Ian Bostridge. St John's must have been less than a quarter full this evening. I suppose there are better things to do than listen to a Lieder recital by a bass on a beautiful summer evening. But the performance turned out to work pretty well, with a major contribution from Vignoles, who as usual accompanied sympathetically and also delivered every detail of the music impeccably. Miles looked nervous. He pulled at his nose, grasped his elbows, and hung on to the piano lid for grim death while he was singing. There were times when the tension clearly damaged his voice production. It's amazing that someone who sings at La Scala could be nervous in St John's, in front of an audience consisting mainly of friends and relations. Of course, you don't have a costume or direction for a recital, and you have to be yourself alone for the audience. The programme consisted of five sets of songs. Schubert's Songs on texts by Metastasio are rhetorical set-pieces composed in classical Italian style, somewhat Mozartian. L'incanto degli occhi is a conventional love-poem, Il traditor deluso a brief scena depicting the terror and despair, and Il modo di prender moglie a comic routine somewhere between Leporello's list and I've come to wife it wealthily in Padua. Miles had a lot of fun with the last of these, and generally dealt easily with both text and music. A second Schubert set consisted of lugubrious settings of poems related to works of art and art itself, with mainly classical themes: souls in Hades, Memnon the doomed lover of the dawn, Sunset, and the lyre which ought to sing of tragedy and heroism but will only sing of love. The musis and themes suited Miles' imposing voice, but he was stronger on the big gestures -- he hit the spot with Ewigkeit schwingt ueber ihnen Kreise/Bricht die Sense des Saturns entzwei -- than on the complex expressive detail of the text and music. Wolf's Three poems of Michelangelo was the weakest set. Miles' nervousness, or perhaps just his lack of sympathy for the musical idiom, left exposed and squirming passages that need beautful singing. Although Michelangelo's text is rhetorical in a similar way to Metastasio's, Wolf's music often doesn't support the text in the same way as Schubert's does. Miles couldn't find the missing substance in his singing tonight. The second part of the recital got closer to Miles' strengths. Ravel's Don Quichotte a Dulcinee is a contrasted set of songs, in conventional forms with Spanish musical decor, ending in a bumptious drinking song which again Miles had a great time with. And Tchaikovsky's Tolstoy settings, with None but the lonely heart thrown in for luck, turned out to be perfect for Miles' voice and style. Their content is roughly the same as a bereft-lover Lieder cycle, but the poetry and music deliver sweeping gestures rather than knotted despair and (in this selection at least) a final outburst of brio in Don Juan's Serenade, which converts the sense of loss back into desire. The encores were even better. There were two sea songs by a composer whose name I didn't catch. The second of these, Mother Carey, was a splendid energetic piece of mythological grotesquerie. The final encore was a trans-Tyrrhenian, testosterone-loaded version of O sole mio, O cara Palermo, terr'adorata. Miles has a long way to go as a Lieder singer. He gets into the words only in obvious ways, and he's happier with music that does most of the expressive work for him. But his voice is incredible, and his singing is superbly musical. If he lets go of the piano, his future recitals might well be as packed as Bryn Terfel's. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.