VOICES OF SPLENDOUR / Huayi Festival 2013 / Review

VOICES OF SPLENDOUR

Huayi Festival 2013

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (15 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 February 2013 with the title "Rousing toast to top Chinese voices".

Chinese voices making their names in the world’s major opera houses are no longer a rarity, and this concert was a proud realisation of that fact. No programme was listed prior to the concert, but it turned out to be not far different from the annual galas presented by the Singapore Lyric Opera, but with a generous dose of Chinese art songs in sumptuous orchestrations added into the mix.

The voices were from the top rank of mainland Chinese singers, now plying their trade in western opera houses. Baritone Yuan Chenye (above) is no stranger here, having sung in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony that opened Esplanade Concert Hall at its inauguration in October 2002. He possesses a most expansive and heroic of voices, matched with a theatricality that served Figaro’s aria Largo al factotum from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and the Toreador Aria from Bizet’s Carmen well.

The advertised mezzo-soprano Liang Ning was indisposed on account of a skiing accident, and was replaced at the eleventh hour by Zhu Huiling (above), who was every bit a showstopper. She produced a beautiful tone and oozed dusky sensuality, totally appropriate for the Seguidilla and Habañera from Carmen, no doubt aided by her revealing low-cut black gown. 

Making the biggest impression and vocally most interesting was soprano He Hui (above), who opened with a radiant and nuanced account of Puccini’s Un bel di (Madama Butterfly). Her sense of drama was gripping, exerting a steely control for Verdi’s Ritorna vincitor! (Aida) and tugging the heart-strings in Puccini’s poignant Sola, perduta, abbondonata, from the final act of Manon Lescaut, set in the Louisiana wilderness. Unsurprisingly, she received the most vociferous of applause.

There were two duets with Yuan and the ladies. Mozart’s La ci darem la mano (Don Giovanni) and Verdi’s Ciel, mio padre (Aida) with Zhu and He respectively demonstrated the palpable vocal and physical chemistry between the singers.

The Chinese songs, such as Forever Flows the River, Under The Silver Moonlight, Pamir My Beautiful Homeland and Song of Fishermen, were mostly golden oldies, exercises in nostalgia which provided further opportunities for display of vocal prowess.

The Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan provided excellent accompaniment, and had several pieces on its own. Li Huanzhi’s Spring Festival Overture has become a ubiquitous fixture, and Chen Peixun’s Ode to Snow, exuded a pastoral demeanour that might have been mistaken for Vaughan Williams or Delius.

The concert closed with all three singers united in Gu Jianfen’s life-affirming ode That Is I, which got the audience so excited that an encore was demanded. The bubbly was brought out, with the rousing Brindisi (Drinking Song) from Verdi’s La Traviata – exuberant but sounding somewhat unrehearsed - being their just desserts. 

Photographs courtesy of Esplanade Theatres by the Bay.

RUSSELL WATSON La Voce / Review

RUSSELL WATSON La Voce
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (29 January 2010)

This review was published by The Straits Times

on 31 January 2011 with the title

"Russell Watson's syrupy love-in"

Let’s make one thing clear: Russell Watson, marketed as “The Voice”, is no opera singer. An opera singer learns, internalises and sings full roles, such as Don Jose, Cavaradossi and Calaf, acts and interacts with fellow singers, and projects his voice naturally in a hall without the help of amplification.

Having said that, people come to a Russell Watson gig not to hear a sermon, nor be enlightened, but to be entertained. On that count, his Singapore debut was a massive success. The likeability factor, boosted by good looks, working class background and his recovery from brain tumours, was high, despite being a professed Manchester United fan (who are by and large an annoying, smug and self-congratulatory lot).

The programme was typical of crossover fare - operatic arias and hymns sitting comfortably alongside popular songs and numbers from musicals and movies. His voice heavily amplified until the ears ached, Watson sounded comfortable in standards like O Sole Mio, Franck’s Panis Angelicus and Schubert’s Ave Maria, emoting much in the easy way that Pavarotti and company used to do.

He chatted to the audience casually in between songs, even dedicating to his late grandmother the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, sung to the words of Ave Maria in Italian. Doesn’t everything sound better and more romantic in Italian, a language with many vowels? This was applied brilliantly to Io che non vivo (You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me) and Parla piu piano (Speak Softly Love). “Amore” definitely beats “lurve”.

Watson also got his listeners involved, shaking hands as they chanted the echoes of Volare and clapping along to Denza’s Funiculi Funicula. The charmer also substituted the words of I Left My Heart In San Francisco to that of Sunny Singapore, much to the audience’s delight. This love-in just got even more syrupy as the evening continued, one to send any diabetic into ketoacidotic coma.

Time and space was afforded for the appropriately named young local Melodie Tan, whose slender soprano voice, well-honed for Broadway musicals, joined Watson in David Foster’s The Prayer. She then gingerly brought out O mio babbino caro (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi), clearly a work in progress.

The evening was accompanied by the Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by the highly animated Robert Emery, which filled in with movie music by John Williams and Ennio Morricone amongst others.

Puccini’s Nessun dorma (Turandot) closed the evening, and three encores including Leoncavallo’s La Mattinata and Elvis sent the sold-out hall into a standing frenzy. To say one and all enjoyed themselves, including this crotchety old soul, would be understatement itself. If only one could get the heaving throng into Singapore Lyric Opera productions to witness some real opera.

RUSSELL WATSON La Voce was presented by Esplanade Theatres on the Bay.