MUSIC REVIEW : Jon Vickers in an Eccentric Recital

Tenors, according to lamentable tradition, are expected to have either voices or brains. Jon Vickers of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, has both.

Tenors, according to unfortunate custom, are supposed to be either singers or actors. Jon Vickers, idol of the world’s leading stages for more than three decades, is both.

He has never played by the rules.

Although he commands a voice of staggering heroic thrust, he has always had the good taste, and good sense, to scale it down--way down--for moments requiring lyric sensitivity. Sometimes he has scaled the tone down as far as a croon, even when maximum introspection wasn’t automatically required.

Steadfastly avoiding typecasting, he has excelled in French opera (“Les Troyens,” “Carmen,” “Samson et Dalila”), in Italian opera (“Otello,” “Don Carlo,” “Pagliacci”) and even in English opera (above all, “Peter Grimes”). The bulk of his reputation has rested with the great Germanic heroes (Florestan, Parsifal, Siegmund and--on all too few occasions--Tristan).

Paradoxically, however, he has shunned the great Strauss roles in which he might have been peerless, not to mention Wagner’s Stolzing, Siegfried and Tannhauser. Our loss.

Although his magnificent voice betrays few signs of age, even at 61, Vickers can be seen these days less often in the opera house than in the concert hall. The more intimate venue doesn’t seem ideal for his gargantuan talent.

At least it didn’t seem ideal on Wednesday, when he offered a much-deferred recital at Ambassador Auditorium. Did I say recital ? This wasn’t exactly that. Vickers didn’t play by the rules here either.

He gave his program an intriguing if somewhat pretentious title: “A Retrospective on the History of the Tenor Role.” Then, in a modest series of songs and arias interspersed with seemingly improvised banter, he steadfastly ignored the professed topic.

Vickers paced nervously, rocked from foot to foot, while mumbling platitudes to the sparse but patently enthusiastic audience. “A lot of people wonder,” he began, “what art is . . . .” We are still wondering.

He said little about the evolution of the high-voiced hero, nothing--alas--about his own career and his own interpretive concepts. Instead, he rambled at random on the horrors of a British production of Handel’s “Semele,” on half-baked matters of morality, sociology, philosophy and aesthetics, and on plot synopses.

Occasionally, he inspired chuckles in the tradition of Anna Russell. When he introduced Siegmund’s song of love and spring (“Wintersturme”), he reminded us that “Sieglinde was Siegmund’s twin sister.” Then he paused and blinked. “Did you hear that?”

He described the incestuous love of the young Walsungs as “real evil.” He also said he thought “the rise of the Third Reich had a lot to do with Mr. Wagner,” even though the composer was “a great genius.” Such provocative ideas demand careful development. Here they were nonchalantly dropped into the verbal soup like so many ornamental croutons.

What’s that? You want to know about the singing? So did we. There wasn’t all that much.

Vickers began with a nice, long-lined stroll through Handel’s “Where E’er You Walk.” This was followed by some pleasantly romanticized Purcell (Aeneas’ Lament, “Mad Bess”) and some invariably poignant Handel (“Total Eclipse” from “Samson”).

Then, while the tenor cleared his throat backstage in anticipation of some Wagner, his sensitive accompanist, Peter Schaaf, approximated Beethoven’s 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor. The unexpected program detour wasn’t particularly welcome.

Vickers returned, in appropriately stentorian voice, for two brief “Walkure” excerpts. He sounded undeniably resplendent, but the music, shorn of context and orchestral framework, sounded odd.

After intermission, he ventured a pretty Vaughan Williams song (“Bright is the Ring of Words”), followed by the same composer’s lusty “Song of the Road” from “Hugh the Drover.”

Finally came the gripping agonies of Britten’s Peter Grimes, delivered with characteristic shading of the text, with minute dynamic contrasts and nearly hysterical pathos. It served as a fine memento of Vickers’ operatic art and, with its ultimate whimper, as a rather anticlimactic close of the program.

In response to much applause, the great tenor said “Enough opera,” and added “a couple of fun songs” by Purcell as encores. One of these, “Man is for the Woman Made” was offered “with apologies to women’s libbers.”

This misconceived recital, originally announced for last fall, had been twice rescheduled, reportedly because of Vickers’ indisposition. Some things, one ruefully and reluctantly discovers, are better never than late.