DREAMS, PASSIONS AND LOVE / YEE EE-PING Vocal Recital / Review

DREAMS, PASSIONS AND LOVE

YEE EE-PING Vocal Recital

with Pauline Lee (Piano)

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (6 April 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 April 2017 with the title "Opera singer's daughter almost steals the show".

The London-based soprano Yee Ee-Ping is one of finest opera singers to come out of Singapore. The former Young Artist Award receipient's appearances here have been all too few. Yet who could forget her unforgettable portrayal of Puccini's Manon Lescaut with the Singapore Lyric Opera in 2012 or her debut as Micaela in Bizet's Carmen way back in 1998?

It has been three years since her last recital here, so this evening's offering was well-attended despite the scant publicity. There was hardly any opera, instead she sang art songs grouped according to the sung language. Italian came first, with Pergolesi's Se tu m'ami (If You Love Me) which sounded too Romantic to be actually baroque.

The work was actually composed by one Alessandro Parisotti, an 19^th century composer and editor. Yee filled the love song with so much longing and depth of feeling that it did not matter, and she did the same for Tosti's Ideale and de Curtis' well-known Neapolitan song Torna a Surriento (Come Back To Sorrento).

German lieder was next, with best-known numbers by Schubert (An die Musik), Schumann (Widmung) and Richard Strauss (Morgen!) characterised by clear diction, enunciation and perfect intonation. In the Strauss, the beautiful violin obbligato part which opened was played by her daughter 8-year-old Kiara Taylor with so much conviction that she almost stole the show.

  

Taylor had two other solos, performing Elgar's Salut d'amour and Monti's Csardas with some self-consciousness while accompanied by pianist Pauline Lee. The audience was in titters as Taylor had to shyly hand her instrument to Lee to have it tuned, but rewarded her pluck with hearty applause.

Yee's French group of melodies included Chausson and Poulenc, the latter who could never write a poor tune. In C and Les chemins d'amour (The Paths of Love) by Poulenc, wistfulness and nostalgia were lovingly captured. Yee was totally at home with mother-tongue Chinese, in Yanzi (Swallow Dear) and Hong Dou Chi (Red Bean Lament) from Dream of the Red Chamber, the tragic qualities coming through with much vividness.

Perhaps the trickiest songs to pull off were the ones sung in English. One could barely catch the words to Samuel Barber's St. Ita's Vision, Nocturne and O Boundless, Boundless Evening, but their darkly hued Romantic sensibilities were nonetheless assiduously honed to hit ecstatic highs and pluck at heart-strings.

Yee reserved some of the most breathtaking moments for her last two songs, both by Franz Lehar. It was scarcely believable to witness the degree of breath control she displayed in the Vilja-Lied from The Merry Widow, the sort which could make or break a performance.

Then she became all amorous, flirting with gentlemen and tossing flowers into the audience while singing Meine lippen sie kussen so heiss from Giuditta. After the loud applause had settled, her favourite encore, Puccini's O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi reminded us again what a fine opera singer she is.

AN EVENING OF SONGS AND ARIAS FROM AROUND THE WORLD / YEE EE-PING Vocal Recital / Review

AN EVENING OF SONGS AND ARIAS

FROM AROUND THE WORLD

YEE EE-PING, Soprano

with SIM YI KAI,  Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (3 August 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 August 2014 with the title "Soulful and exquisite singing".

For all the major roles soprano Yee Ee-Ping has sung with the Singapore Lyric Opera, including Manon Lescaut, Donna Elvira, Despina, Pamina and Micaela, the 2001 Young Artist Award recipient has never performed a solo recital here. That is until this evening. Her exquisite selection of art songs was long overdue, and showed why she remains one of Singapore’s finest ever sopranos.

Yee, who goes by her stage name Ee-Ping, is now a fully mature artist, for whom all the excuses and excesses of youth no longer apply. Over the years, she has kept her vocal apparatus well oiled, commanding an astonishing range of nuances and possessing a voluminous heft fully capable of singing a house down. Her acting and communicative skills remain strong points, and she connects immediately with her audience.

The moment she strode in with an Amazing Grace one will not hear in any local church, it was a breathtaking foretaste of things to come. Her diction and phrasing was close to perfection in three songs by Roger Quilter, the dreamy and wistful emotions enclosed within coming to the fore.

Even more demanding were four Lieder by Richard Strauss, which expressed the full gamut of love in all its guises. The Wiegenlied (Cradle Song) was caressed with a mother and lover’s tenderness, and O Süsser Mai! (Oh Sweet May!) burst forth with unbridled joy.

Nostalgia and longing were the colours of the first two French songs, Duparc’s Chanson triste (Sad Song) and Chausson’s Les temps des lilacs (The Time of Lilacs), while Delibes’s Les filles des Cadix (The Girls of Cadiz) was infused with an infectious theatricality that would not have looked out of place in Bizet’s Carmen.

Ee-Ping emerged in a glittering gown for the second half, beginning with Gershwin’s Summertime (from Porgy and Bess) and the old American hymn Shenandoah, the purity of her delivery was simply touching.  Three Chinese songs, My Homeland, Merry Lady and Mountain Song (Yan Kou Di Shui)  reacquainted her with her Mandarin-speaking roots, and these were much enjoyed by the older members in the audience.

Pianist Sim Yi Kai was more than mere accompanist, meticulously partnering singer through ever breath and step. Other than a hatful of missed notes in the Chinese songs, he was alert and sensitive throughout the 90-minute programme.

The recital closed with two contrasting operatic arias. There are few moments as spine-tingling as Dvorak’s Song To The Moon (Rusalka), which Ee-Ping commanded with disarming ease. And then she brought out the coloratura fireworks in Rossini’s Una voce poco fa (The Barber of Seville), an imperious show that was greeted with loud cheers. Her encore, O Mio Babbino Caro (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi), was no less ecstatically received. It is hoped that her second vocal recital here will not be a long time in coming.

Photographs by the kind permission of Yee Ee-Ping and Sim Yi Kai.

MOZART'S COSI FAN TUTTE / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

MOZART’S COSI FAN TUTTE

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Friday (28 February 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 March 2014 with the title "Comedic plot and witty lines make for a likeable Cosi offering."

With Cosi Fan Tutte, the Singapore Lyric Opera has completed the trilogy of great operas Mozart composed with the Italian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The first two were The Marriage Of Figaro and Don Giovanni, premiered in 1786 and 1787, which are more popular than the 1790 offering. Although Cosi does not have the show-stopping arias and melodies of its predecessors, the comedic plot and witty lines make it lighter-going and instantly likeable.

Even its misogynist premise and social commentary, shocking at the time, still resonate amid the liberal mores of the 21^st century. Ferrando and Guglielmo subject their fiancees, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, to a test of fidelity by way of a farcical experiment. They pretend to go to war, but return in disguise to woo each other’s amore, while watching the results unravel.    

Veteran British director Tom Hawkes chose early 20^th century Southeast Asia as its setting, with a Somerset Maugham-like atmosphere in a quasi-Raffles hotel designed by Christopher Chua. A combo of local and Western period costumes by Moe Kasim added to the exoticism of the production that was wholly appropriate.

The main cast members, just six in total, complemented each other well. Tenor Raffaele d’Ascanio’s Ferrando was nursing a bad throat, which was raspy and strained on the evening, but one would not fault his chemistry with baritone Park Byeong-in’s Guglielmo, Du Qin’s Dorabella and Rachelle Gerodias’s Fiordiligi. The trio Soave sia il vento (Act I) and duet Il core vi dono (Act II) were memorable for the singers’ sensitivity and the rapport developed between their characters.

Bass David Hibbard’s Don Alfonso playing the cynical devil’s advocate for the men and Yee Ee-Ping’s Despina, fanning the flames of passion for the confused women, were excellent in their roles. In addition, Yee’s caricatured portrayals of a traditional Chinese physician and bewigged lawyer were totally hilarious.

The Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra, conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan, was not always immaculate but assiduously kept up with the onstage action. The small chorus, also serving as extras, had small parts and added to the visual interest on a whole.

People accustomed to television sitcoms, in which everything is wrapped up within the half-hour, might baulk at Cosi’s simple tale which ran for the best part of three hours. Even in poetic Italian, some sections did drag a little, but one needs to look beyond the unfolding narrative and savour the opera’s various nuances, which were plentiful and entertaining­­.

As the misunderstandings and women’s red faces cleared up in the final scene, when common sense is lauded above all in the trials and tribulations of life, director Hawkes did leave some elbow room for dissent. Those who caught Guglielmo and Dorabella’s body language as the final curtain fell might agree that not everybody gets to live happily ever after.

SING MESSIAH! / Review

SING MESSIAH!

Celebration Chorus, Messiah Singers

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall  

Sunday (22 December 2013)                                           

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 December 2013 with title "Sing-along success of Yuletide season".

The performance of Handel’s oratorio Messiah has been synonymous with the Yuletide season such that the Christian celebration seems incomplete without it. It had been a staple of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and its choruses, but the ritual was taken up this year by the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Celebration Chorus and Messiah Singers led by charismatic young conductor Adrian Tan (below).

Another difference was the element of mass audience participation in the spirit of those sing-along Messiahs so popular in England and USA. But are reticent Singaporean audiences ready for such an undertaking?

It helped that hopefuls were primed weeks before with rehearsals led by Greg Petersen and Tom Anderson, with the help of downloadable scores. On the day, audience members in the stalls were armed with choral albums, tablets and iPads to do their part. Conductor Tan cajoled with good humoured needling and the stage was set.

A complete Messiah would have taken two and a half hours, so selections of arias and choruses from all three parts made up a quite digestible 90 minutes for the capacity house. In the less familiar and more difficult fugal choruses like And He Shall Purify, the audience was predictably quiet, but it warmed up considerably for the popular For Unto Us A Child Is Born.

The large chorus on stage projected strength in numbers even if it does not match the finesse of the much smaller Singapore Symphony Chorus which has made a habit of performing from memory. The orchestral accompaniment was more than acceptable even when perfection in cues and execution could be found wanting at times.

The soloists was an A-list of Singaporean (no foreign talents here) singers led by soprano Yee Ee-Ping whose aria Rejoice was an imperious show of coloratura prowess. Mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah projected gravitas in He Was Despised while baritone William Lim was rock-like and unshakeable in the dramatic Why Do The Nations. Tenor Reuben Lai had a pleasant ring to his voice but struggled to hit the highest notes in Comfort Ye and Ev’ry Valley.

The perennial question as to whether one should stand for the Hallelujah Chorus was unequivocally decided by the conductor. Like King George II who did so more than 270 years ago, there were to be no sitters and the effect was quite stunning. Not only did the audience erupt in full voice, the visual spectacle of seeing Esplanaders on their feet was one not easily forgotten.

The ploy was a canny one, as after the final choruses Worthy Is The Lamb and Amen were concluded, there was a spontaneous standing ovation. Whether this was self-congratulatory or not is debatable, but there looks like more D-I-Y Messiahs to come in the near future. 

PUCCINI'S MANON LESCAUT / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

 

PUCCINI’S MANON LESCAUT

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Friday (31 August 2012)

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 September 2012 with the title "Outstanding opera deserves more audiences".

 

First things first, for congratulations is due to Singapore Lyric Opera (SLO) for producing a Puccini opera that is not La Boheme, Tosca, Madam Butterfly or Turandot. Manon Lescaut, Puccini’s third opera and first outright hit, is part of the standard repertory but has never been staged in Singapore. It does not boast of the hit arias that made Puccini so popular, but it nonetheless possesses the drama, sumptuous music with a touch of Wagner, and the characters to make it memorable.

 

For a first production of something unfamiliar, SLO pooled its strongest resources together to make it one of its best productions to date. Director E. Loren Meeker chose to update the tragedy to the modern day without the gimmickry that usually accompanies such attempts. All the singers were dressed in Orchard Road day clothes, which made the verismo cautionary tale of confused woman-child Manon Lescaut, torn between virtue and vice, all the more topical given the ongoing underage sex scandal occupying local tabloids today.  

 

Singaporean soprano Yee Ee-Ping’s elevation to status of prima donna in the titular role was an unqualified triumph. Not only does she have the vocal apparatus and pulmonary capacity to pull it off musically, her acting with a panoply of facial expressions and bodily feints was totally believable; even sympathetic, despite being blinded by bling.

 

Opposite her, Korean tenor Lee Jae Wook as student-in-love Des Grieux was up to his usual heroics. He nailed his aria Donna Non Vidi Mai with much earnest zest, and their duets together were easily the opera’s high points. The supporting cast led by Andrew Fernando (Manon’s brother), William Lim (Geronte) and Melvin Tan (Edmondo) were excellent for fleshing out the action and drama.

 

The musical theatre moved between seriousness and plain silliness so naturally, which will become a hallmark of Puccini. Witness the comical Dancing Master scene, with tenor Lemuel de la Cruz totally hamming up the gay role without so many words, before transitioning into pure sobriety as if with a flick of a switch.

 

Set designer Christopher Chua’s work was stark and effective, especially in the bleak Fourth Act in the arid Louisiana desert. The blood-red backdrop served to represent undying love and the scorching wilderness, and as the sun set on the affair of Manon and Des Grieux, a pall of grey descended agonisingly like a guillotine’s blade. The final duet was exactly as it was depicted - a slow and painful death.       

 

The SLO Orchestra led by conductor Joshua Kangming Tan gave one of its best showings in a highly detailed score, the poignantly moving Intermezzo leading into Act Three was enthusiastically applauded. The marvellous chorus, augmented by 17 Filipino vocal talents (where would Singapore opera be without them?), also lent their collective weight to the proceedings.

 

On a worrying note, this third opera to be staged in Singapore within six weeks, was greeted with many empty seats on opening night. With Donizetti’s L’Elisir D’Amore and John Sharpley’s Fences also playing to small houses, one ponders the future for classical opera in Singapore.

 

There are two more shows of Manon Lescaut on Monday and Tuesday. The quality and effort of all the artists involved should not go unrewarded.