Dario Acosta/Askonas Holt

LA Opera threw a party for one of its favorite daughters last Saturday night at the Music Center and it was quite the celebration. American Soprano Angel Blue, product of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, local Redlands University, and UCLA — plus our own Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artists Program — was fêted from the stage and invited some of her best musical friends along to accompany. Blue made her main stage debut here in 2007 as Puccini’s Musetta in a student matinée (a role she’s mostly retired now for Mimì, thank you) and has been our most recent Toscain 2022 which I reviewed on these pages. Now having conquered the majority of the world’s stages, LA Opera thought she deserved a little hometown appreciation. It turned out to be an evening of not a few surprises plus some glorious music making from all concerned.

I’m not going to deny that when I saw the evening’s program online a few nights prior, my one eyebrow did shoot heavenward in disbelief at the abundance of musical genres involved. We were given Opera, Operetta (there is a difference, beloveds), Jazz, Broadway, Gospel and Spirituals. Now I’ve seen this sort of thing before and I believe they call it, in the classical milieu, slumming. I enjoyed a Marilyn Horne recital where, as an encore in full Mahlerian Liederabend mode, she sang the Simon & Garfunkel classic, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It was lovely, long, and so, so, wrong. Although I was impressed with the ambition in theory, I wasn’t sure how ambidextrous Ms. Blue actually was going to be in practice.

I shouldn’t have worried because once those high notes fade into glory, and we got some really high ones Saturday night, Ms. Blue has a number of career paths open to her that she can slip into with ease.

The warm-up was Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados leading the LA Opera Orchestra in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro overture. Tempi were excellent but the strings seemed muted and perhaps not as incisive as they should have been. It might have been where I was sitting or it could have been an unideal rehearsal schedule because I’m sure these things don’t get an enormous amount of attention.

Then we heard that famous march “Su del Nilo…” introduction from Verdi’s Aïda and the concert door opened stage right and Ms. Blue marched out to tumultuous applause and slammed right into “Ritorna vincitor”. I’m just going to stick my neck out right here and say this is the most voluptuous voice in front of the public right now. Her phrasing was supple and she thundered in all the right spots. At forte the voice is so vibrant and full of color. This, my friends, is, as you know, a rare thing. More tumultuous applause and she gifted us with Mimì’s Act III farewell from Boheme with phrasing you only dream about hearing live.

Then with reading glasses in hand she introduced the first musical guest of the evening, soprano Kathleen O’Mara, herself an LA Opera Young Artist fresh from an Operalia win just last year and her La Scala debut as “High C” Helmwige in Die Walkure earlier this spring. Ms. Blue announced they would sing the duet from “Shawshank Redemption” to general hilarity. In a self-effacing gesture on behalf of Ms. Blue to a colleague (and the evening was full of them), Ms. O’Hara was given the Countess’ role in the duet which is the showier of the two parts. It was, in a word, glorious.

We also got a very fine, “Vissi d’arte” that lacked nothing in amplitude and beauty of tone as well as Rolls Royce phrasing. Then she closed the first half with an absolutely effervescent version of the Czardas from Kalman’s Die Csárdásfürstin replete with ALL the high notes. At this point I think we all needed a chance to catch our breaths and we repaired to the lobby for refreshment.

She opened the second half with Nacio Herb Brown’s “Love is Where You Find It” from The Kissing Bandit which is a 1948 film starring Kathryn Grayson and Frank Sinatra I’ve never even heard of. Then a taste of Zarzuela with “Carceleras” from Las hijas del Zebedeo, both beautifully rendered and, most surprisingly, in completely idiomatic vocal styles. She then invited her longtime friend, composer, and pianist to accompany her in a touching rendition of Harold Arlen’s “I Wonder What Became of Me?” from St. Louis Woman and, for the first time ever listening to a classical singer, I thought, “Where’s her crossover album?” They’ve pushed everyone else’s on us, but this time would be warranted. Plus, none of that arch received pronunciation. She sings this music like a real person not a grand lady gracing us from Diva Land.

Our next guest was Ms. Blue’s best friend of 20 years, Sacha Vera Boutros, who was listed in the program as a jazz vocalist but promptly launched into a zippy, no-holds-barred version of the Bob Merrill/Jule Styne Broadway anthem, “Don’t Rain on My Parade”. Then there was me sitting and wondering, “What is going on here tonight?” Ms. Boutros then favored us with one of her own songs, “La Espera” which was really lovely and I would have happily gone for more of that. Ms. Blue then joined her onstage and the two of them sang the famous juxtaposed version of “Get Happy” / “Happy Days are Here Again” with Angel as Barbra and Sacha as Judy. I believe the colloquial saying is, they killed it.

Then for the wrap-up our diva took us to church. She was joined by the Los Angeles High School of the Arts Gospel Choir led by Pat Bass. Ms. Blue came out with the group in a choir robe and they did beautiful arrangements of “The Goodness of God,” “There is a Balm in Gilead,” and Richard Smallwood’s “Total Praise.” Ms. Blue’s brief solos in each came, tastefully, with all the heavenly flights you’d expect from a virtuoso of the gospel genre, none of it grandstanding and all of it sincerely felt. In the last number she simply melted into the group of young singers. Her humility as an artist and her sheer joy of sharing all this music with us was absolutely palpable to everyone present. Then she sang, “Ride on, King Jesus” and I thought I was gonna need to be baptized again right there.

Throughout the evening our conductor, Ms. Lina González-Granados, gave the artists a break with musical interludes, first a really stirring Prelude from Verdi’s Attila (which deserves to be heard more, but you need a great cast) and the ubiquitous Intermezzo from Cavalleria, both extremely well played by the LA Opera orchestra.  My only quibble was that in the finale of the first half Ms. González-Granados swamped our diva at the end of the Kalman “Czardas.” I know excitement was running high at that point, but it takes a lot to swamp Angel Blue. A lot.

Once again I can’t stress enough the real joy and humility that emanated from that stage all evening, thanks to Ms. Blue and her very talented colleagues. However, I do have one very serious complaint: we only got one encore. One. And it was Lerner & Lowe’s “I Could Have Danced All Night” where she hit a note so high in the final bars that Julie Andrews had to wipe a tear from her own eye. One encore?! That was a sin. Frankly, if she had kept singing, I’d still be sitting there and so would everyone else at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Frankly, I had such a great time I in part just assumed we’d all meet for brunch somewhere Sunday morning. The only other thing I can say is I hope this becomes a regular event.