Dario Acosta
Around 2015, it became fashionable to hate Renoir. His works were too saccharine, too nebulous in their composition. Each variegated fold of bathing flesh and cherry-stained cheek served as a testament to the limits of bourgeois taste, forming an insidious institutional rampart against worthier—or at least more interesting—artists. In short, he sucked. The Morgan Library has responded to the backlash with Renoir Drawings, asserting the artist’s competence as a draughtsman.
I am by no means a Renoir hater—a print of the Le Déjeuner des canotiers proved just the thing to hang above my kitchen cart—but I would not travel to see his works. Many of the drawings in the exhibition shed light on the care and vigor with which the artist approached his compositions. Yet if one was in search of an artist who went beyond the merely pretty, they would more readily find it in mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, who presented her La Belle Époque program at the Morgan’s Gilder Lehrman Hall in conjunction with the exhibition.
Bridges has been touring this all-French program widely with accompanist Mark Markham, the longtime recital partner of the late, great Jessye Norman. Yet, it functioned as a commentary on the exhibition, commenting and expanding upon the spaces Renoir depicted in his works. Traversing Berlioz to Ravel, many of her selections conveyed worlds both real and imagined, many of which had an Orientalist cast. But Bridges, through the strength of her dramatic sensibility, approached the exotic colorings of these works with empathy, infusing each with a distinctiveness of character that reoriented an outsider’s gaze into an outward expression of the self.
Dressed in a pale pink gown festooned in crystals and feathers, she looks suitably regal for the opening “Nous avons vu finir” from Les Troyens, in which Didon recalls the founding of Carthage and extolls the virtues of her people. Immediately, this selection asked the audience to consider cosmopolitan spaces beyond Paris—what a “beautiful age” could look like in other times and places. The satiny, amber-hued qualities of her voice were on display from the start, and her treatment of the text during the recitative was ideal in its easy noblesse. Yet, her phrasing often did not feel suitably integrated with the long, arching lines of the aria’s melody. Markham’s maestoso playing compensated for the absence of a choir in the response sections, suggesting the splendor of Didon’s beloved city.
The following Chansons de Bilitis by Debussy present a Sapphic vision of antiquity. She accented “La flûte de Pan” with a breathless flutter, mirroring its titular instrument and the coy sensuality of its errant young narrator. Bridges and Markham released enveloping waves of sensuality during “La chevelure.” Her rich, expansive chest voice bridged the silvery hues of a present winter with the warmth of an Arcadian spring during the “Le tombeau des Naiades.”
Bridges and Markham were joined by flautist Brandon Patrick George and cellist Titilayo Ayangade for Ravel’sChansons madécasses, which adapt Rococo poet Évariste de Parny’s poetic impressions of Malagasy life. The girlish lilt with which Bridges approached “Nahandove” was sometimes lost amidst the expanded accompaniment. Once the four had established a better balance, however, her voice melted into Ayangade’s smooth playing. She attacked the portentous “Aoua!” with a dramatic intensity matched by the menacing tones from Markham. By the end, her fierceness had receded into a mournful moan—the kind of singing that enriches that silence that follows. Her mezzo enkindled a glowing “Il est doux,” as it softly glided between George’s airy evocation of evening breezes.
Freddie Collier
A charming rendition of Satie’s Trois Mélodies de 1916 opened the second half of the program, wherein she played up the contrast between her registers to semi-comic effect. She flattened her vibrato during “Daphénéo” to effectively convey its childish simplicity. In contrast, she maximized the grandiosity of “Le chapelier,” approaching it as a dramatic showpiece to highlight its absurdity.
She returned to Ravel with Shéhérazade, the final selection on the program. “Asie” brought forth some of her most ravishing singing that evening; by then, the glamour of her sound had fully emerged, as she conveyed the narrator’s ever-increasing wonder at lands unknown. She swooned through “La flûte enchantée,” lingering on the final “baiser.” And the closing “L’indifférent” was refined, though she added a suitable level of cheek. A rollicking “Habanera” was the sole encore. She conveyed Carmen’s essence effortlessly. I hope that we will have the opportunity to hear her perform the entirety of the role in New York.
Go to the Morgan and make up your mind about Renoir, though it may prove a less stimulating experience without Bridges’s accompaniment. Should you wish to be truly moved by one of their exhibitions, I recommend heading upstairs for Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life, which is on view through January 4.
