I am not a hit
The world needs a lot of things: health care, happiness, homo marriages, peace, prosperity and butterflies. What it doesn’t need is a mediocre “budget” recording of a contemporary opera already satisfactorily recorded with the original cast
A new revelatory, superbly cast recording of the simultaneously fascinating and boring Nixon in China would probably be happily snapped up by those who are more of a fan of this opera than I am. The new CD on Naxos is so not that recording.
For some reason Nixon in China tempts its interpreters to bellow and declaim. Since all productions are amplified and the lines are relatively sympathetically written for the voice this vocal distorion seems unnecessary. I’m willing to bet that Marc Heller (who “sings” Mao Tse-tung) is actually pretty fierce: he sounds like he can make some noise and his credits are impressive. Unfortunately, here he just screams and pushes his voice until pitches are unrecognizable. Or maybe Adams is just not his forte.
The same could be said of Chen-Ye Yuan as Chou En-lai. It’s obviously an interesting instrument but is not shown at an advantage in this ungrateful role. Tracy Dahl makes some impressive sounds in the extreme top of Madame Mao’s music but whenever she sings around an A natural (which is often) her vibrato loosens dangerously close to a wobble. I also couldn’t understand one damn word she sang.
The Opera Colorado Chorus tries their best but this is not a world-class ensemble and the choral music in this opera is not easy.
It’s not that this recording is completely awful. There are strengths. Marin Aslop knows her way around American music, and her reading is taut and inspired. She moves the action along (as much as Adams’s music allows) and keeps excitement bubbling (again, as much as the music allows).
Pat and Dick are both interesting here. Maria Kanyova, as Pat, is the only singer who sings like this is opera. Her other roles include Butterfly and Violetta and it shows. The voice is fluid, beautiful and ballsy. She’s also the only singer that phrases beautifully. “This is prophetic” is easily the highlight of the recording. Kick-ass singing.
Robert Orth manages to be charismatic and idiomatic as Nixon while singing with grainy, unsupported tone. It’s a believable and truly interesting portrayal. It’s just hard to listen to.
All of this begs the question of Naxos- what was the point of this recording? Just Aslop and Kanyova? They’re great, but it’s not enough to warrant a $25 price tag. If I were you I’d say bump both recordings and watch the broadcast of the original production on Youtube for free. But hey, if you love a good arpeggiated chord and have money to burn then by all means, skip on over to Amazon
Amazon.com states that Thomas Hampson is in the Original cast recording of Nixon in China. Is this true?
No he wasn’t. But I wouldn’t put Amazon past mistaking Sanford Sylvan (who sang Chou En-Lai on that recording) for Hampson.
These days I pity Amazon.com. They are too big and they do not haved the right people for the job. I did a search for recordings in their Opera section and the search results included Empire brass, Christopher Parkening and the 1812 overture
Empire brass? Sounds like a nickname for one of the Vicar’s favorites.
Bass Thomas HAMMONS sings Kissinger on that recording, I think.
Love the opening line of this review!
If one defines “vanity project” as broadly as squirrel chooses to, then yes — I suppose any new recording can be defined as one, the better to be sneered at. Never mind the many of us who had been desperately hoping for decades to get a recording of Songs of Innocence and of Experience; we don’t exist, and Bolcom has not earned any interest in his work (from, for instance, Slatkin, who’s been desperate to record it for years). Anything that doesn’t serve the largest possible consumer base (like, well, all classical music now)? pfft, vanity project.
Since “Aslop” has been attended to, I’ll mention “begs the question” when “raises the question” was intended.
I think there are Vanity projects and there ARE vanity projects. I think the line between them is how much they are of service to the greater good.
For example, RF’s Verismo is a vanity project. That being said, besides her fans and those gullible enough to buy into the whole “La Voce bull, who would want to spend hours upon hours listening to this singer do stuff that Scotto, Olivero and even Freni did better? Make no mistake, I thought the recording was decent, great, for what I expected of her, but beyond the excerpts from Zaza, the original Sola Perduta and the arias from Leoncavallo’s Boheme, much of what I heard can be heard better sung elsewhere.
Then there’s every vanity project that Cecilia Bartoli has put together for the past decade: Salieri, Vivaldi, Prohibita, Malibran and Sacrificium; hell, even the Sonnambula. Those vanity projects have allowed us to discover music that has remained largely unrecorded, forgotten and ignored for many years. Is it a vanity project? Absolutely, just as much as RF’s, but if it had not been for those vanity projects, we would not know how wonderful a composer Malibran could be, or how utterly delicious Salieri could be, or about the music that the Popes forbade people to listen to, or those arias written for castratos whose name WAS NOT Farinelli.
Let’s not dis all vanity projects as unnecessary. Thanks to some vanity projects we have enriched our knowledge of the repertoire.
The “vanity project” discussion makes me look at the current state of the recording industry.
There are comparatively few CDs recorded and released by the big companies today and I think the market for audio-only is not so large as it was say 30 years ago.
So for the most part it takes a lot of marketing input to make a recording and usually some big name and/or a
concept. Many of these releases are going to seem like vanity projects and to an extent they are.
The vacuum left by the fewer cd releases seems to have been filled by the DVD releases, which seem to include many more releases of a general repertory nature. There are some “vanity project” type items here to , to be sure but they are blended in with less carefully marketed items.
Nr. 18: Who is this? She’s amazing!