Yesterday at the Taube Atrium Theater, the Merola Opera Program & the San Francisco Opera Center presented the first of this season's three Schwabacher Recitals; this one, curated by Nicholas Phan, featured pianist Ji Youn Lee, soprano Mary Hoskins, & baritone Olivier Zerouali. The program had not been announced in advance, so the first pleasure was finding out that we would be hearing Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch, a collection of 46 mostly brief lieder to words by Paul Heyse "based on anonymous Italian poetry", which I've heard on recordings but which I've rarely (maybe never? unless it was decades ago, in another time & place?) encountered live. The second pleasure was how successful, how thoughtful, charming & moving, & inspiriting, the concert was.
I'm guessing that the "curating" part of Phan's role was not only in picking the repertory but also in directing the performers; the songs are not explicitly about an on-going story, but instead about many stories flitting in & out of possibility, & the two singers listened to each other attentively, with subtlety & care, to the apt, often dramatic or witty, accompaniment of Lee's playing. Her Steinway was to the center left (audience left) of the stage; to its right were two black chairs on either side of a small round café-like table with a black tablecloth, topped with two glasses of water (Zerouali drank more of his than Hoskins did of hers) & a few candles. Lee wore a stylish black ensemble; Zerouali wore a black tuxedo with an open-necked shirt, & Hoskins wore a velvety forest-green gown (one of her songs mentions wearing green, a possible inspiration). The large back wall featured a series of close-ups of paintings, some famous (Botticelli, Munch) & some not so much, a different art work for each song, printed in soft blacks & greys against a purple background, the art work reflecting & commenting on the content of the songs & the lovely shade of purple evoking the musical period in which Wolf worked; the effect was subtle & evocative. The words of the songs were displayed in large clear white type against the dark background of the art works.
I think I have only once before been to a recital which used surtitles, which have now become obligatory in opera houses. I am all in favor of using them in recitals, though I understand there are various difficulties, including cost, that prevent surtitles from becoming standard for recitals. It's worth the trouble, from an audience member's point of view, if only for sparing us the constant rustling & riffling & folding of programs with the words in them. (I'm always amazed by the number of habitual recital-goers who seem unable to figure out how the songs are arranged on the word-sheets, leading to endless flipping & scanning & searching, generally during the music). I was also grateful that in his brief opening remarks, Phan politely but clearly asked us not to applaud until the very end. I don't consider it the end of what passes for civilization if applause arrives at the "wrong" moment, but it is obtrusive, often feels merely de rigueur, & would be especially disruptive when the songs are all relatively brief (our 46 were covered in roughly an hour & 15 minutes).
The soprano is sometimes flirtatious, sometimes annoyed at her straying lover; the baritone is seductive, sometimes puzzled; both are sometimes angry, sometimes sweet. The later songs sometimes reference Paradise, in presence or in absence, a singular marker in Catholic Italy. Unlike lieder that expose the intimate feelings of a single heart, these songs are usually addressed outwards, to another (perhaps this is part of their extroverted "Italian" nature, in the eyes of an Austrian like Wolf), though there is not a clear dramatic arc or storyline in this cycle, but rather a variety of moods & situations; potent little dramas are implied, then slip away. The interplay between Hoskins & Zerouali reflected the on-going variety of the songs; nothing was overdone, nothing detracted from whichever was singing at the time, but both were at all times really present & responsive to the other. Both singers have appealing voices, Zerouali vigorous & forceful, Hoskins with a powerful but pure tone. Their attention to the words & their meanings was heightened by the audience's ability to follow along easily with the surtitles.
I do find the Taube Atrium Theater an odd space, with some acoustic peculiarities. There were only a couple of brief moments when the singers seemed to let the big size of their voices escape the reality of the room a bit. These were very tiny flaws in a collection of jewels. All concert-goers know the peculiarities of the interactions between the day they're having & the performance: does one lift or bring down the other, pull one somewhere else or seem like more of the same: each performance will be different for each audience member. So I'll just say I was having a fairly strange & not all that good day, & this concert was a welcome & delightful respite.
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