The baritone might not have an Elixir, but he’s learned a thing or two.

Opera Queensland’s baritone talks Rossini, six packs, bullock trains and stage disasters. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The First World War took its toll on a whole generation but George Butterworth was probably British music’s greatest loss, killed on
 the Somme in 1916. Ivor Gurney survived, but was confined to a mental hospital for most of his remaining life. Ralph Vaughan Williams escaped with impaired hearing but his musical outlook was darkly coloured by his wartime experiences. Programming these composers side by side isn’t unusual (Simon Keenlyside’s excellent Songs of War is still fresh in my ears), but when the singer is as good as James Rutherford it’s a pleasure to revisit the repertoire. The songs were mostly written before the conflict and so are not all as mournful as the CD cover might suggest. Death is a regular guest of A E Housman, and Gurney’s poems are certainly elegiac, but there is much idyllic music here as well. Butterworth’s Bredon Hill and On the Idle Hill of Summer, Gurney’s Severn Meadows and Sleep and Vaughan Williams Let Beauty Awake and Bright is the Ring of Words are among the finest songs in any language. James Rutherford’s is a substantial baritone voice, darker than Bryn Terfel’s but with plenty of bite. Thomas Allen (or indeed Keenlyside) may…

Pinchgut Opera explores Rameau’s bizarre operatic love triangle. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Hot on the heels of his Pushkin Romances and Tchaikovsky Romances, both released on the Delos label, Dmitri Hvorostovsky makes his Ondine début by continuing the series, this time with a recital of Rachmaninov. His muscular baritone is broodingly at ease in these songs, which deal predominantly with themes of bitterness, regret and ill-fated love, all of it couched in rich and picturesque verse. Here and there, one might wish for a lighter touch or a silkier tone – Hvorostovsky’s singing is more forceful than beautiful, but his musicality is rock solid, and his dramatic sense as compelling on disc as it is on stage. Indeed, his delivery is so robust, and his voice so sonorous, that many of the songs seem to morph into miniature arias. Such an approach might be the undoing of German or French art songs, but Rachmaninov’s romances, whose poetry and illustrative piano parts (deftly dispatched here by Hvorostovsky’s frequent recital partner Ivari Ilja) are already quite operatic in scope, seem almost to demand it. The desperate agony of It is time!, the desolation of Yesterday We Met, and the pleas of Oh no, I beg you, do not leave! are all brought to compelling…

Longing, melancholy and visceral pain – but also a stark beauty – pervade this new recital from Simon Keenlyside, a collection of mostly English songs from the early decades of the 20th century, when the shadows of war loomed large. Rollicking tales of battle and militant flag-waving are conspicuous by their absence; Keenlyside focuses instead on the personal side of war, the physical and emotional toll taken on soldiers and on those left behind. At the centre of the recital are Butterworth’s settings of poems from A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, and it’s hard to imagine these songs in better hands. Keenlyside’s singing explodes with raw emotion. Happy moments are as ardently captured as the deepest sadness or sharpest blow, and his exceptional diction and dynamic control are utterly in tune with Housman’s touching poetry. Ned Rorem’s graphic An Incident and Kurt Weill’s harrowing Beat! Beat! Drums! and Dirge for Two Veterans (all settings of Walt Whitman poems) are a bracing and at times brutal contrast but just as masterful in their execution. At 52, keenlyside is blessed with a voice that combines youthful brightness with dark mahogany, allowing him to declaim and whisper with equal impact, and to…