MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : TROYANOS AT UCLA

It’s the little signs that sometimes distinguish divas from art-song specialists--during a recital intermission, for instance, does the singer change gowns, thereby making a show out of her performance?

In the case of Tatiana Troyanos, who held forth Friday at Royce Hall, UCLA, there was every reason to identify the celebrated mezzo-soprano as an exponent of the Lied literature, despite her prominence on the opera stage: The program she chose was appropriately chaste, not an orgy of resplendent arias; her manner was introspective; and, yes, she wore the same white sheath from beginning to end.

Even apart from these clues, however, Troyanos is the sort of artist who can transcend such categories and bridge the distance between poetic intimacy and rafter ringing.

The deep pleasures of her art came immediately: In a tenderly affecting “Qui d’amor” from Handel’s “Ariodante” she defined legato singing as what seemed a single-breath, note-to-note embrace of the whole number. Elsewhere she may have lacked the computer coloratura that a Marilyn Horne can dispense, and sometimes her articulation tended to mushiness. But, more important, her expressive profundity went to the heart of its musical source, with able support by pianist Warren Jones.

As a paragon of German style, Troyanos brought breeze-swept rapture and heroic simplicity to an exquisite Brahms group. Here she shed a certain characteristic throatiness, at times exacerbated by remnants of a flu.

After intermission and into the 20th Century, she sang well but had to sip water--coughing between songs, and enjoying a sympathetic coughing chorus from the audience. Debussy’s five settings of Baudelaire (“Fleurs du mal”) found Troyanos deep into decadent mysteries, while five canciones of Falla were more notable for suavity than visceral directness.