di Monica Rosolen

Recitals, exquisitely musical moment. Without orchestras, scenes or costumes. It is the occasion to present chamber music repertoire, or characters we are not used to bring on scene, or national music, often not well-known out of its homeland.The choice of Larmore are a challenge, performing in the same evening very many different styles that require an equal number of solutions: this means assuming each time an attitude different from the preceding one, and sometimes having to moderate the flaunt vocal technique to adapt to non-operatic contexts. The mélodie for voice and piano, developed in the second part of the Nineteenth century, is not a mundane and sentimental form anymore, but it is more similar to Mahler’s Lieder; the rhythm in cadence style, the poetic intensity, and the ample sonorous gestures, the Romantic character of these pages require an intense, lyric singing, with the inevitable elegance of the French melodic writing. It is a repertoire that always requires two protagonists, singer and instrument, and that addresses great attention to resonances and correspondences between words and music. The lyrical artists of today commit themselves both with thought and with music, and do not disperse in this way nor sounds nor emotions.“Small lyric” is written in Spanish even if its origins are South American. Its sentimental themes express soave love with melancholy and nostalgia as in the typical Iberian tradition. In the human voice it searches for passion, languid tones, moderation in the vibrato; half voices whose sublime paleness transfigures the ephemeral character of joy. Momentum, conventional vehemence are not appropriate; crepuscular feel, pride, mythical and tenacious inflexions are required.
In theatre “important” voices of lyrical singers express entirely; they can perform in all their exuberance and drama; the generous and expanse vocalism, the ample singing, the incisive diction and the vigorous accents find a true location.
Carmen, elegant transfiguration of spoken language, is very different from the deformation of the incorrect Realist performance tradition; it requires stylistic precision without using violent and vulgar inflections.Emotionally complex, the Aria and the Canzonetta of Cherubino have been written to portray an extraordinary character, during the first innocent and unconscious disturbances of adolescence. Sweet torture and lack of direction, nothing corresponds best to this restlessness than the sentimental emotions of musical nature, which is also in movement. The feminine voice for a page well alludes to the intimate contradiction typical of this phase of life.
Speaking about Rossini, contemporary interpreters try to rebuild the sonority of the time; to realize this the voice’s colour, and the way it is controlled, is fundamental; furthermore it is important to examine accurately the original text. For a mezzosoprano the model is Maria Malibran, extraordinary timber, velvety, dark and dense, its colour remains equally beautiful in all of her vocal extension, extended texture, uncommon flexibility, perfect mastery of breathing technique that permitted her to confront with funambulist virtuoso arabesques and garish leaps.