United States Various: Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano and government producer), Il Pomo d’Oro / Zefira Valova (concertmaster). Presented by Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, University of California Berkeley, 21.1.2023. (HS)
Ives – The Unanswered Question
Rachel Portman – ‘The First Morning of the World’
Mahler – ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ and ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ from Rückert-Lieder
Uccellini – Sinfonia terza (a cinque stromenti), Op.7
Marini – ‘Con le stelle in ciel che mai’ from Scherzi e canzonette, Op.5 No.3
Mysliveček – ‘Toglierò le sponde al mare’ from Adamo ed Eva
Copland – ‘Nature, the gentlest mother’ from 8 Poems of Emily Dickinson
Valentini – Sonata in G Minor Enharmonic
Cavalli – ‘Pianti ombrosi’ from La Calisto
Gluck – ‘Dance of the Furies’ from Orfeo ed Euridice; ‘Misera, dove son! …Ah! non son Io che parlo’ from Ezio
Handel – ‘As with rosy steps the morn’ from Theodora
Any efficiency by the extraordinary mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato just about ensures nice singing, together with a big serving to of coronary heart. EDEN, her newest undertaking, provides an additional layer of visible textures to a compelling theme to boost what might need been a rare recital with out it.
The music spans 5 centuries, from early-seventeenth-century Monteverdi to a chunk written in 2021 by Rachel Portman particularly for EDEN that explores our human connection to nature. It additionally means that we higher pay extra consideration earlier than it’s too late.
Without being preachy, this system affords the eloquence of attractive, emotionally direct music, and clothes the stage with a easy however absorbing kinetic sculpture that matches metallic arcs into two circles that rotate round a low round platform. The 39-piece Il Pomo d’Oro chamber orchestra surrounds this dais. Lighting by John Torres (related to Robert Wilson’s operatic productions) and staging by Paris-based opera director Marie Lambert-Le Bihan make nice use of DiDonato’s putting determine, clad in a light-weight blue corset and a flowing, gauzy skirt.
DiDonato will not be new to increasing on a vocal recital. Her ‘In War & Peace’ established the template, taking the present on tour in 2017-2018 to delve into operatic arias about battles to the loss of life, and the way music can soothe the savage (and savaged) soul. ‘EDEN’, on its multi-year tour, had its twenty-third efficiency Saturday at Zellerbach Hall on the University of California Berkeley. It applies musical balm to the injury we people appear to be doing to the pure world round us.
Beginning dramatically in darkness, a single highlight illuminating concertmaster Zefira Valova, the softly pulsing opening chords of Charles Ives’ ambiguous The Unanswered Question, sung wordlessly by DiDonato as an alternative of by Ives’ solo trumpet, floated from a aspect balcony, intoning the query with out phrases, the singer shifting nearer to the stage with every repetition.
‘The First Morning of the World’, with phrases by opera librettist Gene Scheer to Rachel Portman’s engaging music, adopted with out pause. The message, conveyed gently by the music, is that we have a tendency to make use of land as a useful resource slightly than making an attempt to be a part of it, and asks how we will recuperate an untouched paradise.
That led seamlessly to Gustav Mahler’s fragrant setting of ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ from Rückert-Lieder, which accurately means ‘I breathed a delicate scent’. It performs on the similarity of linden (delicate) and Linden (the tree), whose blossoms create the aforementioned perfume.
The subsequent few numbers, additionally with out pause for applause, began with two seventeenth-century works: a sinfonia by the Modena composer Marco Uccellini (whose title means ‘little birds’), and the energetic music ‘Con le stelle in ciel che mai’ from Biagio Marini’s Scherzi e canzonette. Next got here ‘Toglierò le sponde al mare’ from the Czech Baroque composer Josef Mysliveček’s Adamo ed Eva and, returning to our present period, ‘Nature, the gentlest mother’, the primary music in Aaron Copland’s 8 Poems of Emily Dickinson. All had been delivered with distinctive attraction and readability by soloist and orchestra.
As she sang, DiDonato assembled the a number of metallic arcs into the double-ring sculpture, which, with shadings of sunshine because the circles rotated on the dais, framed each bit with a sequence of differing appears to be like.
Two works from composers related to Monteverdi adopted – the Sonata in G Minor Enharmonic by Giovanni Valentini, for an instrumental break, and a sinuous aria, ‘Pianti ombrosi’ from Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, an ode to shade-giving vegetation.
Gluck’s well-known ‘Dance of the Furies’ from Orfeo ed Euridice served as an instrumental prelude to ‘Misera, dove son! …Ah! Non son Io che parlo’ from the composer’s earlier Ezio. From Handel’s oratorio Theodora, ‘As with rosy steps the morn’ brimmed with nature metaphors, organising a completely ravishing finale – Mahler’s elegiac ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ from Rückert-Lieder.
As a kind of prolonged encore, DiDonato introduced out a youngsters’s refrain to display a undertaking concurrent with the EDEN tour. At every cease, the singer has engaged with a youngsters’s refrain, partly to get the youthful technology to find the fun and rewards of constructing music collectively, but additionally to encourage them to create their very own music by writing their very own songs.
In Berkeley, DiDonato labored with the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, which delivered with gusto the rousing ‘Seeds of Hope’, composed by the Children of the Canterbury Choir in England on one of many tour’s first stops. The choir additionally sang ‘Morgengesang’, a captivating Danish music about the great thing about the dawn by Danish composer Niels Wilhelm Gade. The pupil conductor was Lauren Brenner.
As a last encore, DiDonato and the orchestra despatched the viewers off into the cool, clear night with a heart-stopping single-verse rendering of Handel’s ode to a tree, ‘Ombra mai fù’ from Xerxes. On their approach out, viewers members acquired small, coaster-like playing cards imbedded with chamomile seeds prepared for planting.
Harvey Steiman