Music and Dance Reviews : Soprano Aprile Millo Returns to Ambassador

A recital appearance by Aprile Millo constitutes a predictably unpredictable event that, within a certain calculated framework, leaves room for all kinds of eccentricities.

It’s expected that the young American soprano will speak as well as sing, but what will she say? (Plenty). She doesn’t regard the printed program as sacred, so what will she really sing? (More arias, fewer songs).

Sunday night at Ambassador Auditorium even more than the usual suspense hung in the air as the audience waited nearly a half-hour for Millo’s entrance. Turns out she was being sewn into her gown, which had uncooperatively come apart in back.

That the Metropolitan Opera singer also split the seams of some of the music she sang is a problem with not nearly as easy a remedy.

The plainly major voice has few current rivals. For warmth, roundness, easy amplitude and pure Italianate effulgence, Millo stands as a welcome oasis in a virtual soprano Sahara.

But all is not golden. Forte notes above the staff can thicken, acquire an inert quality and sag from pitch. Soft tones, luminous in midrange, lose body and color on top, and the sound actually breaks when Millo attempts to move from piano back into her full voice.

Arias from Bellini’s “Pirata,” Verdi’s “Trovatore,” “Forza del Destino,” and “Otello” and Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier” alternated moments of nearly ravishing beauty and purity with instances of roughshod phrasing, coarse high notes and vague pitch.

Despite Millo’s unconquerable tendency to over-emote, the songs fared consistently better vocally, if not as high on the crowd-pleasing meter: Wolf’s “Mignon” and a group of Verdi, Bellini and Donizetti songs were limned in lustrous, contained, secure sound.

Excessively loud, decidedly unpoetic pianist Eugene Kohn at least accommodated Millo’s musical insecurities, even unto rewriting the final page of Brahms’ “Von ewiger Liebe.” The rhythm defeated her even though she was reading it.