Diana Damrau / Antonio Pappano / Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia TUDOR QUEENS

TUDOR QUEENS

 

Diana Damrau RICHARD STRAUSS Vier letzte Lieder - Lieder

                                                  VIER LETZTE LIEDER - LIEDER

Diana Damrau / Jonas Kaufmann / Helmut Deutsch ITALIENISCHES LIEDERBUCH

 

Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann, reigning stars of opera, are also consummate interpreters of song. In early 2018, with master pianist Helmut Deutsch, they performed Hugo Wolf’s multi-faceted Italienisches Liederbuch in 12 cities around Europe. “One couldn’t ask for more,” wrote the Telegraph after their London concert, which took place two days before this live recording was made in the German city of Essen.

Diana Damrau MEYERBEER Grand Opera

There’s a great deal to admire in this release, the realisation of a long cherished idea for Diana Damrau. It’s meticulously sung, well researched and beautifully presented. And don’t be fooled by the ‘grand opera’ title: it’s not just a matter of works in the spectacular genre with which Meyerbeer is most closely associated. There’s repertoire in German and Italian as well as from French opéras both grands and comiques, plus plenty of music from before the composer conquered Paris, going back as far as the singspiel Alimelek, oder Die beiden Kalifen (1814).

Damrau’s own enthusiastic note in the booklet emphasises the variety that the programme demonstrates. And, to a certain extent, we hear that as we run the gamut from charming simplicity in the German works, Rossinian fireworks in the Italian ones to, well, Meyerbeerian fireworks in the French.

But having a whole disc of soprano arias by a composer whose major concern never seems to have been three-dimensional characterisation also seems to undermine the very point Damrau is trying to make. A third of the arias feature extensive flute obliggato, for example, others clarinet – or both. Perky coloratura, dispatched with cool aplomb by Damrau, is a standard device. Meyerbeer could certainly string notes (and lots of them) together fluently, but he struggled to hit upon truly memorable melodies.

There’s still plenty of originality, though. Take the mournful, heartfelt cor anglais solo in Isabelle’s ‘Robert, toi que j’aime’, which looks forward to Berlioz’s ‘D’amour l’ardente flamme’ (while also bearing a less fortunate melodic similarity to Monsieur Triquet’s ditty in Eugene Onegin) – and Damrau rises to some exciting drama in its final moments. She’s also outstanding in Palmide’s ‘Con qual gioia’ (from Il crociato), which feels like three virtuoso arias for the price of one, and the extensive vocal fluff of Marguerite’s ‘Ô beau pays de la Touraine’ (Les Huguenots).

The soprano’s technique remains unruffled regardless of what challenges are thrown her way, a tendency to sag on trills notwithstanding. But the voice is not big on colouristic variety and only hints at steely determination rarely, emphasising the somewhat passive, generic nature of many of the women represented here. Sample someone like Natalie Dessay in the ubiquitous ‘Ombre légère’ to hear what more can be done. The scholarly and detailed booklet essay might have helped, too, had it furnished us with dramatic as well as musicological context for the music.

The Lyon Opera forces under Emmanuel Villaume offer fluent, lively support (I hope the flautist got paid overtime), as do the other singers making cameos. This is certainly a useful, generously filled and well-recorded compendium, better for dipping into rather than consuming in one sitting. Whether it will do anything to change your mind on Meyerbeer himself is another matter. (Hugo Shirley / Gramophone)

Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Chamber Orchestra of Europe MOZART Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail

Deutsche Grammophon’s projected cycle of the mature Mozart operas, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is central to Rolando Villazón’s efforts to reinvent himself as a Mozart tenor. Villazón and Nézet-Séguin are the two constant factors in the seven recordings, which are to be based on concert performances given each summer at Baden-Baden. The first set, of Così fan Tutte, appeared two years ago; a Don Giovanni followed last autumn, and the fourth instalment, Le Nozze di Figaro, will be recorded next week.

If the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden, the largest opera house in Germany, seems an odd place to choose for recording Mozart, then on the evidence of this Entführung neither Nézet-Séguin nor Villazón is an obvious point of reference for such a project, either.

The impression of the whole performance is of something old-fashioned which, the odd desultory vocal ornament apart, could have been recorded 40 or 50 years ago. There’s a bouncy enthusiasm to Nézet-Séguin’s approach, with its wide, dynamic contrasts, but not a great deal of subtlety, though the COE is its usual cultivated and alert self. The inclusion of a fortepiano continuo, which can only rarely be heard behind the weight of the modern strings and wind, seems tokenistic, especially with voices placed as far forward in the recording as they are, though the acoustic is consistent, and for once the spoken dialogue seems to belong in the same acoustic as the rest of the performance, with Thomas Quasthoff taking the purely speaking role of the Pasha Selim.

Villazón is Belmonte, but neither his sound nor his style is really plausible. It’s all very generalised, and often he could be singing Verdi rather than Mozart, with coloratura that is laboured, and tone that seems alternately nasal and curdled. The sense of style that’s missing in Villazón’s singing is emphasised by the other tenor, Paul Schweinester as Pedrillo, and especially by Diana Damrau as Konstanze, but Anna Prohaska is a disappointingly anonymous Blonde, and Franz-Josef Selig a surprisingly lightweight, rather unmenacing Osmin. Alongside the best performances already in the catalogue, whether traditional (conducted by Karl Böhm, say, or Colin Davis) or historically aware (William Christie or John Eliot Gardiner), this new version doesn’t begin to compete. (The Guardian)