RECITAL AT AMBASSADOR : TENOR ROGER BRYANT IN GOLD MEDAL SERIES

Roger Bryant’s recital in the Gold Medal series at Ambassador Auditorium on Monday night was not a local debut, for the tenor had sung in Verdi’s Requiem with the William Hall Chorale in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last October.

Neither in age nor experience is Bryant a tyro. He has concertized fairly widely and he is chairman of the music department of Ambassador College at Big Sandy, Tex.

Bryant was well into the third group of songs on his spotty recital program before it was possible to tell much about his capacities. He had been confident but bland in arias by Purcell, Handel and A. Scarlatti. Not until he arrived at a couple of slow and expressive songs by Caldara and Donaudy did he evidence any disposition toward variety of vocal color or sensitive response to the music.

The earlier material had afforded him the opportunity for some florid singing that was reasonably clear and accurate. His test piece in that department was “Il mio tesoro” from “Don Giovanni” and his control of long-breathed coloratura lines would have been admirable except for a break-neck tempo that conveyed nothing more than agitation.

A brief dip into lieder widely missed the points of Schubert’s “An die Musik” and Schumann’s “Widmung.” The singer glanced at opera in “Una furtiva lagrima” from “L’Elisir d’Amore,” which suits his lyric tenor, and, for an encore, in “E lucevan le stelle” from “Tosca,” which baffled him.

His clear enunciation, sweetness of quality and reserved sentiment were at their best in three of Vaughan Williams’ “Songs of Travel.” His light comic touch did well with Dougherty’s “Love in the Dictionary” and “The Deaf Old Woman,” a Missouri folk song arranged by Katherine Davis.

The final group--excerpts from Haydn’s “Creation” and Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”--suggested that oratorio might be the singer’s most profitable field of endeavor.

The piano accompaniments of Ruth Walter were modest in scale but true in musical perception.