QUEENS AND DIVAS OF THE BEL CANTO
Lirica Arts
Esplanade Recital Studio
Thursday (17 April 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 April 2025 with the title "Lirica Arts' recital series combines outreach and education without dumbing down".
Want to learn something about opera besides listening to wonderful singing? One could do worse than attending Lirica Arts’ Opera 101 recital series. Its carefully curated and meticulously researched concerts are what the musical scene really needs, genuine outreach and education with absolutely no dumbing down.
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| Shridar Mani did all the detailed research for this excellent programme. |
Its latest offering was a solid 95-minute treatise without intermission on the world of Italian bel canto opera. Listeners will already know something about this early 19th century’s operatic trend of seamless melodies and elaborate ornamentation, and the usual composer suspects. This concert, eruditely narrated by Shridar Mani and accompanied by pianist Samuel King, offered so much more about its interesting and often scandalous history.
It all began with castrati, young males surgically emasculated to retain pure unbroken voices allied with muscular heft. German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Il Crociato in Egitto (The Crusader in Egypt) of 1824 was the last opera to cast a castrato in a lead role. Armando’s aria Oh come rapida fuggi la speme was beautifully sung by Korean soprano Renata Hann, opening the evening on a pristine high.
Then came the lives of four historical sopranos, famed for their ability to sing like men, effectively replacing the castrati. Giuditta Pasta was responsible for two major roles, Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena (Anne Boleyn) and Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma.
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| Photo: Moonrise Studio |
The dramatic duet Sul suo capo with French soprano Serine de Labaume and Malaysian mezzo-soprano Samantha Chong portraying Anne with her lady-in-waiting (and queenly successor) Jane Seymour was a touching display of sympathy between rivals. Here the acting also matched the singing.
Hann had the honour of singing bel canto’s most famous aria, Casta Diva from Norma, and she did so spotlessly. She was joined by Chong as fellow Druid priestess Adalgisa in the memorable duet Mira, O Norma, where their voices separated by the interval of a third was perfectly balanced on a knife edge before a race to the finish.
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| Photo: Moonrise Studio |
Soprano Giulia Grisi was responsible for the role of Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani, whose mad scene Qui la voce saw Labaume skillfully shift vocal gears from slow lament to outright rave. Norina from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale was also created for her, and the duet Pronto io son with baritone Martin Ng in a cameo as Malatesta provided the evening’s precious moments of comedy.
The final two historical sopranos were sisters Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot, daughters of the fanatical Spanish tenor and vocal pedagogue Manuel Garcia. Both were represented by Desdemona’s Willow Song from Gioachino Rossini’s Otello, its G minor melancholy with harp-like accompaniment lovingly captured by Hann. Chong accounted for O mio Fernando from Donizetti’s La Favorita which brought the concert to a satisfying close.
Before that, all three lady singers were united in the dramatic finale of Act 1 of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart) in a final climactic clash of queens and divas. One goes to the chopping block but not without making a big song and dance about it.
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| Photo: Moonrise Studio |