MUSIC REVIEW : Tenor’s Sentimental Recital Provided No Trills for the Crowd

In recent years, the San Diego Opera has augmented its modest four-opera season with recitals by such vocal luminaries as Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Hakan Hagegard. Monday night at Sherwood Auditorium, the opera presented in recital tenor Robert White, who gave a curious program called Homage to John McCormack.

From White’s Monday performance--unlike Hagegard, his reputation did not precede him--it is clear that no discerning music lover would include this American singer in the musical company of Sutherland et al. Although White’s modest instrument is pleasant enough in mid-range, it thins out rather quickly on top. And, as an interpreter of serious vocal repertory, his depth hardly challenged that of a well-meaning graduate student, much less the sublime vocal insights of Hagegard’s program heard a year ago in the same hall.

Speaking from the stage, White explained that in his performance he did not wish to imitate McCormack, but rather evoke the era in which the late Irish tenor flourished. Although McCormack’s opera career peaked in the early 1920s, his concerts and recordings of sentimental Irish ballads keep his career alive between the two world wars. Unfortunately, White was most successful when he performed the lightweight leftovers of McCormack’s legacy.

White included only one major opera aria on his program-- “Il mio tresoro” from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” This aria exposed both his weak upper range and his modest technical skills, especially his inability to sustain and shape a challenging melodic phrase. In his three Schubert lieder, he relied on exaggerated declamation rather than sensitive melodic shading.

When singing in English, notably two Handel oratorio excerpts and an aria from Michael Balfe’s rarely mounted opera, “The Bohemian Girl,” White affected the typical Irish tenor vocal quality. But when he shifted to Italian or German, that identifying color, a bright, forward timbre, disappeared.

Given some sentimental nonsense such as Ivor Novello’s patriotic “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” or an Irish ballad the likes of “A Little Bit of Heaven,” White emoted to beat the band. Similarly, he threw himself into the corny religiosity of Arthur Sullivan’s chestnut “The Lost Chord,” but found neither the lyricism nor the conviction to provide a reasonable facsimile of Cesar Franck’s devotional “Panis Angelicus.”

White’s accompanist was pianist Russell Miller, whose keyboard contribution was sure, but without a hint of flexibility and too loud much of the time.

There is nothing inherently offensive about a program devoted to nostalgia. There is something even rather endearing about recalling an era in which such a vocal recital could draw huge audiences, a time when people gathered around the parlor piano after dinner and sang “Molly Malone” and the “Roses of Picardy” for one another. Perhaps, if White had made more of a case for his own abilities in the serious repertory, it would not have appeared that he was merely using the sentimental stuff as an excuse.