Wednesday April 18, 2012 - The first two works on this programme performed by the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall are among my all-time favorite pieces of music; having a conductor I admire - Emmanuel Villaume - on the podium added to the allure. I went to the box office and found that free tickets were on offer. So I invited my friend Alan to go with me; we decided in advance that we'd only stay for the first half.
Maestro Villaume has conducted all too rarely at The Met, but performances of BUTTERFLY and SAMSON & DALILA that he led there remain in my mind as outstanding musical experiences. He upheld those earlier impressions tonight, and the young Juilliard musicians seemed to respond to him with remarkable assurance. The playing had a silken sheen in the LOHENGRIN prelude where the ethereal opening pianissimo descends into full-blown romantic grandeur before re-ascending to the stratosphere. The Juilliard players delivered the dynamic transformations with fine control, whilst the conductor sought out aural textures that allowed the inner voices to be enjoyed without detracting from the overall flow of the music. Being in a mood to be transported, I was...and decided this is the music I want played at my funeral. Though not for a few years yet.
Hector Berlioz Les Nuits d'Ete is for me, along with Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, the most gorgeous of all song cycles. Steeped in romance and filled with longing, tenderness, regret and despair, the six poems by Theophile Gautier that comprise the Berlioz cycle always seem to speak directly to my heart, and never more so than in this turbulent period of my life. Even so, I've rarely heard the cycle performed live: a darkly luminous performance by Tatiana Troyanos at Tanglewood remains vividly in my mind. On a more personal level, a famous tenor once sang the Villanelle in my ear while we were in bed. But that was another lifetime.
So this evening's performance of these songs was meaningful to me on many levels. Subscribing to the composer's original concept of using three different singers, the songs were rightly assigned to a light soprano (Villanelle, Absence, L'Ile Inconnu), an expressive lyric mezzo (the haunting Spectre de la rose and Sur les lagunes) and a dulcet, heady lirico tenor (Au cimitiere).
This large hall is probably not the best place to experience these songs which belong - really - in a salon. But Maestro Villaume supported his young singers with care and they never resorted to forcing. The result was very pleasing. Soprano Lei Xu (of the Met's Young Artist Program) and mezzo Nathalie Mittelbach both wore lovely gowns in shades of aquamarine. They have youthful voices; they can't yet plumb the emotional depths that great interpreters of these songs like Dame Janet Baker or Hildegard Behrens can. But both sang pleasantly, and Ms. Mittelbach showed a burgeoning sense of vocal colour that was often intriguing.
However, it was the tenor Spencer Lang who truly captivated me. I've been ungallant enough to borrow a photo (by Dan Ahrendt) of this young singer from his Facebook page. The moment he opened his mouth to intone the opening words of Au Cimitiere: "Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe?" I felt that this was a voice - one of the few in recent experience - that could speak to me most movingly. It is a sound of striking clarity which poignantly coloured the nuances of the text. I found his singing both sensuous and sorrowful, striking a direct connection to my current emotional state.
"Oh! never again shall I go
near that grave when night lets fall
Its black mantle,
To hear the pale dove
Sing on the limb of the yew
Its plaintive song!"
So now my desire is to hear this voice again. Or will it be something I will remember for years without ever having another another opportunity? That has happened to me before, as on that afternoon when the Villanelle was sung to me in the most intimate setting imagineable.