The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > March > 31
Monday, March 31, 2008
Soprano Kate Royal’s Atlanta Debut
RECITAL REVIEW Soprano Kate Royal and pianist Roger Vignoles. Friday at Spivey Hall, www.spiveyhall.org.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
English soprano Kate Royal arrived in Atlanta for her U.S. recital debut Friday evening, the opening salvo in her all-but-inevitable conquest of America.
Inevitable? Almost no one on this side of the pond has heard, of yet heard of, the appealing 28-year-old, who’s already a star in Britain. Her debut CD — “Kate Royal” on EMI — was well received among opera specialists, although it didn’t gain much attention in the wider world.
Yet Royal arrives as an almost-complete package, where her only serious shortcoming happens to be the one thing that American audiences don’t seem to miss from a singer’s arsenal: a crisp, theatrical sense of words and language.
Streams of lustrous sound is what Royal offers in abundance. It’s an oaky, buttery-smooth voice, a glass of the best Chardonnay in the world — a taste that will appeal to many, even as it leaves others craving more complexity and nuance from their pleasures.
Partnered by British pianist Roger Vignoles, she took the stage Friday in a pale grey dress, a sort of slender, floor-length tunic that brought to life a Greek maiden statue from the Acropolis. She’s positioning herself as a “classic” on many levels.
Their opening set of Spanish songs, by Joaquin Rodrigo (his “Four Love Madrigals”) and Enrique Granados (“The Maiden and the Nightingale”), set the mood for the evening: Royal’s phrasing is shapely and always lovely. Her acting helped communicate the message, whether by clenching a fist in fury at her cheating lover or by gently swaying as she remembers the poplars in the breeze in Seville.
Yet almost everything arrived at one slight remove from the audience. Smoothness came at the expense of communicating, with her voice, an involvement with the texts.
In Claude Debussy’s “Five Baudelaire Poems,” Vignoles stretched out the Steinway (Spivey’s piano named Emilie) to symphonic proportions. His playing was ardent, a little cerebral, plump with personality, His approach felt more like a stimulating conversation with the singer than filling out the harmonies in accompaniment.
Royal was at her radiant best, magnificent in fact, in five melodies from Joseph Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne,” in part because these earthy, folk-inspired tunes are sung in a vowel-heavy Romance language with veiled emotional content.
Richard Strauss loved the soprano voice and seemed to have written with Royal’s in mind. The natural strengths of her instrument lie where Strauss asks it to linger, creating a wistful beauty to a song like “Epheu” (“Ivy”). Still, for all the poignant gorgeousness of her singing, something essential was missing.
As an encore, they offered Delibes’ gypsy-fired “Les Filles des Cadix” — wonderful and charismatic, and yet with a sense of the wild held in reserve.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
All about Audra
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After just one song, Audra McDonald confessed that she was having a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” — just like Alexander in the children’s book.
Looking lovely in a long black coat and pants and shimmering lip gloss, the Broadway chanteuse told her Sunday audience at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center that she had been plagued with problems after her Saturday performance in Savannah.
The car that took her from hotel to her plane was late. When she got to the airport, her reservation had vanished from the computer and she had to buy a new ticket. And, worst of all, she recently had her wisdom teeth removed and her “dry sockets” were killing her.
Ouch.
When McDonald wasn’t complaining and sharing anecdotes about her “quick karma” — she says her social faux pas seem to catch up with her quickly — the quadruple Tony Award-winning diva showered her audience with about 75 minutes worth of vintage and contemporary show tunes.
She introduced her Garland-esque interpretation of Harold Arlen’s “The Man That Got Away” by joking that she was a “gay man trapped inside a black woman’s body.” She re-lived the embarassment of choosing Jerome Kern’s “Bill” for a tribute to Bill Cosby, cringing at the lyrics: “He can’t play golf or tennis or polo. Or sing a solo, or row. He isn’t half as handsome as dozens of men that I know.”
And she recalled the time she did a sing-a-long version of “I Could Have Danced All Night” at Carnegie Hall and heard her mother’s lilting soprano above the rest of the crowd.
The Juillard-trained McDonald said her 7-year-old daughter, Zoe, is “a little bit of a chatterbox” and can’t stand the sound of her famous mother’s voice. Exact quote: “Mommy, your singing makes my ears cry.”
The star of Atlanta director Kenny Leon’s “A Raisin in the Sun” invoked her political side by saying, “I’m very excited about the changes that are coming” and then singing Steve Marzullo’s “Some Days,” with text by James Baldwin. (“Some days worry. Some days glad. Some days more than make you mad.”)
“Some Days” was McDonald’s second and last encore. The first was “Ain’t It De Truth,” which she said Lena Horne sang in the film “Cabin in the Sky” while bathing in champagne. (The scene was cut.)
“Really, folks. Life is so short and precious,” McDonald said after the anthem to embracing the moment. “Enjoy it.”
If the dazzling soprano hadn’t mentioned her dental issues, no one would have noticed. She hit her peak with Jason Robert Brown’s masterful storytelling song, “Stars and the Moon,” about a woman who marries for material wealth but is never satisfied.
It all made you wish for the day when the notorious perfectionist is mature and secure enough to shrug off comparisons to Streisand, Garland and Barbara Cook and exult in her own gorgeous instrument.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Best last lines of novels
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The literary journal American Book Review has come up with its list of 100 Best Last Lines from Novels, and like all such lists, it’s a fun time-killer.
Before you look at it, just take a second and think about what might have made the Top 10. I was pleasantly surprised when I started going through the list. Beckett at No. 1? “Bartleby the Scrivener?” And Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Yes, perfect. Never would have remembered that one.
I’m also grateful for them for including really, really obscure works as well as the usual suspects. “You Bright and Risen Angels” by William T. Vollmann? Anybody? Do I hear crickets?
You can click on the whole list here, but it’s in a pdf format, in case that’s an issue for your browser.
Take a look and report back on what caught your attention.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
