REDMON IN RECITAL AT AMBASSADOR

In the world of young singers, display is the name of the game, and every round in this game must exhibit the greatest number of virtues in the shortest time.

It could not be surprising, then, that a singer as thoroughly gifted and promising as Robynne Redmon, making her first major appearance in Los Angeles on the Gold Medal series at Ambassador Auditorium on Monday night, would attempt to display the full range of her achievements.

In a long and generous program, the mezzo-soprano from Virginia (via the University of Houston and the Eastman School in Rochester, N.Y.) practically succeeded.

She offered a kitchen-sink of a program, beginning with Haydn songs, continuing with standard recital literature by Rossini, Schubert, Schumann and Chausson, adding a suite of spirituals (with high notes), and closing each program-half with a blockbuster operatic excerpt. Her single encore was another showpiece aria, Charlotte’s Letters Scene from Massenet’s “Werther.”

Rather than establish the blonde singer’s supremacy in several categories of musical performance, however, this agenda only proved again that, for most vocalists, specialization in one area is preferable to a generalized lack of distinction.

Redmon’s strengths clearly are, and will be, operatic. At its best, her attractive voice has a healthy ring, good size and nice thrust. These emerged most tellingly in “O mio Fernando,” from Donizetti’s “La Favorita,” and in the Composer’s Aria from Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos.”

The singer’s commendable efforts to scale the voice down and to apply stylistic restraints as well as textual detail and nuance of tone, proved usually unsuccessful, always inconsistent. In her Schubert group and in Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und leben” cycle, for example, her interpretive stance consisted mostly of a general air of stoicism and worry.

Redmon’s expert and supportive pianist of the evening was Mark Ferrell.