two vocal concerts

[calimac]

1. A whole evening of duet recitatives from French Baroque chamber operas. I wouldn't have been caught alive at this if it weren't part of a series I had tickets to. Bilingual libretto in program book. One line read "How you slow at responding to my voice." Read like a translation from the French, or possibly the Tontoese.

Music, actually pretty good. Tenor had prettier voice than soprano. One composer, J.J. de Mondonville, wanted to be Vivaldi so badly you could taste it. Tiny chamber orchestra spent so much time tuning up before each selection, violins shooting microtones past each other, that one expected them to break into Hába, or perhaps Ligeti. Would've been a relief if they had.

2. Mozart Mass in C Minor, half Handel, half The Marriage of Figaro. Venue, tiny Presbyterian church with hard benches. Decent soprano, better mezzo, outclassed tenor, superb baritone. Pretty good chorus, too. Superb baritone not given enough to do by Mozart, so he sang Schumann lieder to fill up the time. Could have listened to him all day. Soprano and chorus sang new piece by 20-year-old bass in the chorus, giving a ratty little poem by his ex-girlfriend a much better setting than it deserved. Review here.

Comments

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Inara Morgenstern, née Upmanis, whom you mention in your review, and her now-husband David, were my friends and fellow voice students at San Francisco State University back in the '70s.

musicians get around

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

And there were old colleagues and fellow students of B's in both the chorus and the orchestra.

[divertimento.livejournal.com]

Your characterization of Mozart's Mass in C Minor brought to mind my recent surprise at a Fanfare review of an OEHMS recording of a circa 1800 Mass in C Major adapted from Mozart's "Cosi fan tutti". That thought made my head hurt, until I recalled just how Figaroey Mozart's own Mass is.