On Thursday night, July 29th, I attended the Colorado Music Festival’s concert entitled “Epic Opera”. The program as advertised on the CMF website was to feature the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde with soprano Jane Eaglen, followed by Lorin Maazel‘s suite “The Ring Without Words”. Unbeknownst to me, or presumably anyone else until we got our programs last evening, Miss Eaglen would add in a few of the words at the end, that is, the entire Immolation Scene from “Götterdämmerung.
Miss Eaglen, based on the intermission chat facilitated by conductor Michael Christie, is a sweet, honest, pleasant, very down to earth individual with an easy laugh. There is probably not a Wagnerian soprano out there who is less the diva than she. She was warmly received by the audience, who rose to their feet at the end, as it has become expected that one will do in America, regardless of what one has just heard.
Ah yes, there was some singing, but hearing was the problem. Sitting in Row Q, about two thirds of the way back, in the direct center behind the podium, one had a hard time hearing her. She was overwhelmed by the orchestra at the climax point of the Liebestod. This is of course partly the conductor’s fault, but it is also partly her fault. The voice simply lacks presence. It is unfocused, breathy, and does not “cut” or “speak” as some would say out into the house. There is a distinct lack of core sound to the voice, except on top, which is a sort of overblown, go for broke kind of scream.
The best singing (that is to say the most audible) was at the end of the Immolation Scene, at which point she seemed to give it all she had to give. And it was impressively loud in a way. However, I can’t imagine how she ever was able to sing things like this in a house the size of the Met, that seats at least four times as many people and has about 10 times the total interior volume that the the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado has.
Those of you who heard her in her prime can perhaps shed more light on this. I have only heard recordings and seen videos before, but the voice does not sound the same now as it did when she made the recordings she was making a decade or so ago. There is no middle or bottom to it, as many other commenters on parterre.com have said about her. Those of you who are pedagogues will all doubtless have opinions about why this is. To me personally, it just seemed blown out.
As for her appearance, she looks much the same as she always has. I found her ensembles (there were two) to be appropriate for a woman of her size. She accessorized a plain black jersey dress with a long gold velvet coat for the Liebestod, changing to a gunmetal blue-goddess type thing for the Immolation Scene.
She’s no actress, but she is engaged in what she is doing. She did seem physically grounded, there was no nervous fidgeting. She did not seem uncomfortable in any way. I did wonder if the altitude bothered her at all. Boldly painted on the side of the auditorium is it’s elevation, 5,718 feet—considerably higher than what she is used to.
And so, I was underwhelmed: a nice woman whose voice is well past its best. She told the audience during the intermission chat that she is moving (literally stopped on the way in Boulder with her husband to do this concert) to Ohio (!!!!!!!!!!!) where she is joining the faculty of Baldwin Wallace College to teach voice, run the opera program, etc. She said she has always wanted to teach, but that she will still perform. She made it very clear that she is not retiring from singing any time soon.
The orchestra was large. It filled the stage, I would say there were about 100 or so. They played well too. I liked them very much. Christie’s tempi were SLOWWWWW for the Prelude and Liebestod. He favors lyricism, except in the biggest climactic moments, which were rather explosively loud. He is a relative newcomer to opera, and he needs to take better care not to cover singers. I know it’s hard in concert when everyone is on stage right behind the singer, but there were times when he just should have held them back quite a bit, and he didn’t. The Maazel suite of music from the Ring was quite finely played.
There was one glaring problem though. The CMF commissioned a video presentation of artwork representing the various characters and scenes to to projected on a large screen above the stage in order to make it easier for the audience to follow the story that the music is telling. It was a disaster. It got out sync, had to be restarted continually, then jumped ahead into the Siegfried pictures while the orchestra was still in music from Die Walküre. There were also times when you would see the fast forward button, or the track numbers, or nothing at all. One had to just ignore it in order to concentrate on the music.
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Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
