KINGS & QUEENS OF OPERA / Diana Damrau, Nicolas Teste & Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

KINGS & QUEENS OF OPERA

Diana Damrau (Soprano) 

& Nicolas Testé (Bass)

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (5 May 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 May 2023 with the title "Soprano Diana Damrau dazzles with technical prowess and emotional depth".

 

Opera singing is not just about beautiful voices and pretty faces, but much more than that. It involves the faithful and vivid transcendance of personal experiences, and those of legends and fictional characters, to relatable personalities onstage. Dramatic feeling and good acting play big parts but great opera singers possess qualities that draw listeners into innermost thoughts and secrets, making them feel totally involved.   

 

German soprano Diana Damrau is blessed with that X-factor, and her return to Singapore’s stage after a magnificent 2017 showing could not have been more welcome. The same forces that spelt success also came with her, including husband, French bass-baritone Nicolas Testé, and Bulgarian conductor Pavel Baleff, who led the Singapore Symphony from the podium.

 

This year’s programme, themed around royal subjects, was less popularist than the last. Focused on Italian bel canto and 19^th century French opera traditions, nothing was more apt than Damrau opening with Bel Raggio Lusinghier (Alluring Ray Of Light) from Rossini’s Semiramide. Her command and control of tricky running notes seemed effortless, with thrilling flights in high registers negotiated with stunning aplomb.   

 

More importantly was her expression of joy and love, with lyricism and theatricality indelibly captured in a perfect aria that belied the opera’s convoluted and violent narrative. This queen would later be slayed by her lover, who turned out to be her “long-lost” son. More pathos was mined in the Cavatine and Aria from Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, where another queen pondered last moments before her impending execution. Damrau’s portrayal of anguish amid vertiginous highs passages was palpable and real.  

 

One absolute rarity was the Prayer, Veliki Bozhe, Chui Moiata Molba (Great Lord, Hear My Prayer), from 20^th century Bulgarian composer Parashkev Hadjiev’s Maria Desislava. Another queen is betrothed to marry a king she neither knows nor loves, and her beautifully seamless lines reflected both solemnity and deep contemplation.  

 

Damrau’s partner-in-life Testé also had moments in the spotlight. His richly burnished and stentorian voice shone in portrayals of Claudius (Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet), Solomon (Charles Gounod’s  Queen Of Sheba), Don Carlo (Verdi’s opera of the same title) and Prince Gremin (Tchaikovsky’s  Eugene Onegin), demonstrating that his was no undercard act.

 

As there are not so many famous duets for soprano and bass (as opposed to the more glamourous soprano-tenor tandem), the audience had to be satisfied with just one. Donizetti’s Recitative & Duet from Maria Stuarda, Oh Mio Buon Talbot! (Oh My Faithful Talbot!), proved the evening’s highlight, as Damrau’s ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots found solace and peace in the comforting arms of Testé’s Talbot, her keeper.

 

Opening each set of arias were well-selected orchestral overtures and excerpts from stage composers including Rossini, Adolphe Adam, Leo Delibes, Vincenzo Bellini and Tchaikovsky. The relative unfamiliarity of these, wholly compatible with sung numbers, provided an added allure.

 

There had to be one absolute showstopper, and Damrau got the final word in Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma. Has there been a more powerfully emotive aria than this in all of opera? Smoothness and suppleness of delivery were the rule, and despite two well-received encores, one suspects this to be the most abiding memory of an unforgettable evening of opera.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2012)

BUSONI Piano Concerto

ROBERTO CAPPELLO, Piano

Rome Symphony / Francesco La Vecchia

Naxos 8.572523 / ****1/2

The sole Piano Concerto of Italian pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) has the honour of being designated the longest piano concerto in the standard classical repertory. There are probably longer concertos (possibly by the British Parsi eccentric K.S.Sorabji) but this behemoth, which plays for 70 to 80 minutes, has garnered a respectable number of recordings, including those by pianistic heavyweights John Ogdon, Garrick Ohlsson, Peter Donohoe and Marc-André Hamelin. Concert performances are understandably rare, not least because of its dense monolithic writing in five movements, including a finale with an unseen male chorus singing from Oehlenschläger’s Alladin. 

This is a true epic, with a universality akin to Haydn’s The Creation or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but in this case the ode is, “Feel Allah close to you, and observe His works.” The gargantuan piano part is a tribute to Lisztian virtuosity. The fourth movement All’Italiana is a furious Tarantella that sweeps everything before it, and the music is possessed with a monumentality that can now only be referred to as Busonian. Veteran Italian pianist Roberto Cappello, a former winner of the Busoni Piano Competition, copes admirably with the outsized demands, and the Italian orchestral forces are anything but overawed. This ambitious newcomer shares a common advantage with the legendary Ogdon recording (EMI Classics); both retail at super-budget price. 

LISZT Lieder

DIANA DAMRAU, Soprano

With Helmut Deutsch, Piano

Virgin Classics 0709282 / ****1/2

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) wrote so much for the piano that one may excused for forgetting he was also a very fine composer for the voice. This collection of German and Italian songs by the marvellous German soprano Diana Damrau should go some way to dispel the myth that he was “all fingers”.  Nevertheless, his Lieder require a vocal range, technical adroitness and interpretive ability that are beyond all but the most virtuosic of singers. Damrau has all of these. There is an epic quality to Die Loreley, arguably his best known song, about the Rhine maiden who lures sailors to a watery grave, or a free-spirited and almost defiant stance in Die Drei Zigeuner (The Three Gypsies). Simple and plain Hungarian folk music it is not.

Pianists will recognise O Lieb, so lang lieben kennst (O Love, As long as you can), which is the original sung version of the famous Liebesträume No.3, or the three sonnets in Italian after Petrarch, which are better known in the Italian book of Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). There are some differences in the melody of Pace non trovo (I Find No Peace) when heard alongside the familiar Sonetto No.104. The piano accompaniment parts for all of the songs are not for amateurs either, and veteran pianist Helmut Deutsch sensitively brings out all the details in tandem with Damrau’s passionate issues. Liszt’s Lieder are more exhausting to listen to than Schubert’s, and understandably so.