Throwing a Gauntlet to Composers

The art of singing has, for some time, seemed stuck.

In Italy, the historic seat of opera, the important conservatories not only still teach an essentially 19th century technique, they often forbid the students to attempt anything modern. At an opera conference in Rome once, I found myself surreptitiously slipping scores by Philip Glass and John Cage to a young singer desperate to learn new things but afraid that if caught by her teachers with such contraband she would be expelled from the conservatory. In America, the situation is not nearly as fascistic, but classical and operatic singing, newer vocal techniques and a more popular Broadway style have not exactly melded into a seamless whole.

Which means composers are stymied.

Broadway composers are typically forced to keep it simple; the singers are tied to loud amplification with little, if any, vocal technique to fall back on. Opera composers find they can be far more adventurous with the orchestra, exploiting modern sound-production techniques, than with the strait-laced singers, which may explain why so many new operas have such dull vocal writing. Meanwhile, we have all kinds of inept crossing over between classical and pop. Who can say whether Michael Bolton attempting opera or Luciano Pavarotti crooning with the Spice Girls is more preposterous?

There is, however, hope. Some singers, particularly but not exclusively Americans, do seem to have flexible voices, a natural feel for more than one idiom and a sense of the times in which they live. Dawn Upshaw, who can make the leap from Mozart to Bernstein to Crumb with aplomb, is the role model here. And now three young singers, with first-rate technique, stunning voices and arresting individuality, are starting to make noticeable waves. They are the future.

Audra McDonald, indeed, is being hailed, left and right, as the future and the hope of Broadway. She comes from opera (and attracted attention appearing as one of the student singers in “Master Class,” Terrence McNally’s version of Maria Callas teaching), but she has chosen a career in music theater. “Ragtime” catapulted her to stardom. But, fortunately, neither “Ragtime,” which offers too little challenge for a voice or intellect of her caliber, nor celebrity seems to have distracted her from deeper pursuits. McDonald’s new Nonesuch recording, “Way Back to Paradise,” demonstrates a restless searching for sophisticated new material, the kind that seems next to extinct on Broadway.

Given how fine the performances are on this new disc, she may well inspire a whole new genre of grown-up musicals. But it could also take time. However gratifying it is to encounter a disc of songs by young composers and lyricists actually trying to say something, the next Sondheim has not yet announced him- or herself. Many of these songs are simply too earnest, and Adam Guettel’s abortion tear-jerker, “Come to Jesus,” is downright maudlin. Guettel, however, is also responsible for one of the few amusing songs on the disc, “A Tragic Story,” a clever Broadway-ization of a Thackeray rhyme that reminds us of Guettel’s own musical heritage (he’s Richard Rodgers’ grandson) and of his powerful off-Broadway musical “Floyd Collins.”

The other composer-lyricist here worth following is John LaChiusa, whose “Tom” and “Mistress of the Senator,” from “Hello Again,” have the only sardonic or clever new lyrics on the recording. He also has a singular melodic gift and a sense that songwriting didn’t stop 50 years ago (there are hints of Minimalism in his accompaniments). “There Is a Way Back to Paradise,” the title song, is from his upcoming show “Marie Christine,” which will star McDonald. She sings it as if on wings.

And if the rest of the disc--songs by Rickie Ian Gordon, Jason Robert Brown and Jenny Giering--is more disappointing than not, McDonald has produced a loud wake-up call to idealistic composers who believe that there might be a heart still beating, if just, on Broadway.

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Remember L.A. Opera’s “Norma” two seasons ago and the debut of a young Argentine tenor and Domingo protege, Jose Cura? If ever there were a singer who seemed to bring back all the jokes about witless tenors, it was he. He paraded himself like a peacock; he muscled to the front of the footlights whenever he could; and he sang out as if infatuated with his looks (very good) and voice (proudly stentorian). But as for brains, who could tell?

In fact, Cura, who is rapidly and deservedly rising up the ranks of star opera tenors, is a remarkably complete and accomplished musician. His latest solo CD, “Anhelo,” a collection of Argentine songs, shows him to be just as stuck on himself as ever, from the smug cover photo to his unbelievably braggart note in the booklet. But not only has Cura chosen haunting, sophisticated material, which he sings with depth and suavity, but he has written a couple numbers of his own, arranged others, and even acts as conductor of the ensemble. He is also joined by a couple of his boyhood friends, guitarist Ernesto Bitetti and pianist Eduardo Delgado, both of whom add a further shine to a terrific recording.

Most important, though, is the singing and the songs. The mainly contemporary composers, and especially Carlos Gustavino, grab the listener with strange, original melodies and arrestingly poetic lyrics. Cura’s own songs, less original but still perfectly competent, are to texts by Pablo Neruda. His voice is in peak condition, with tone and pitch as sure as his ego or his irresistible feel for torchy lyrics. If you can imagine a Frank Sinatra of moody Argentine song, but with a voice twice as powerful, that’s Cura here. Even his arrangements are good, if not exactly remarkable.

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With Yoshikazu Mera we enter stranger territory, somewhere between Bach and schlock, Kabuki and kitsch. Mera is an extraordinary Japanese countertenor with a growing cult following. He has been appearing on a series of recordings by the Bach Collegium Japan, singing the alto arias with a suppleness, an androgynous purity of tone and a stylistic elegance that have astounded the early music community. His German pronunciation has actually impressed the German critics. Everything is perfect.

That’s one side of Mera, and one cult. The other, as represented by the new solo disc “Romance,” is somewhat different. The 28-year-old appears on the jacket cover heavily made up, wrapped in fur, displaying a come-hither expression. Whether this is simple cross-dressing or postmodern Kabuki, I don’t know. He looks like one of Moriko Mori’s installations--those glitzy, kitschy, curious fantasies that combine pop culture with spirituality and a particularly Japanese vision of the future--come to life.

And in “Romance,” a recital disc of well-known soprano arias and songs, Mera, this model of unsullied Baroque style in Bach, hardly hesitates to doll up Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss or even Bach with glitzy orchestrations. He may leave two well-known Handel arias (“Lascia ch’io pianga” and “Ombra mai fu”) alone, singing them with delicious yet proper ornamentation, but this is no disc for purists.

For one thing, there can be a kind of ghostly quality to Mera’s singing; his performance of the Bach / Gounod “Ave Maria” has the same skin-crawling creepiness of the historic real-McCoy castrato recordings made at the beginning of the century. Satie’s cabaret song, “Je te veux,” sung by a high male voice, seems like something straight out of a 1930s Berlin nightclub. In Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise,” Mera is a human theremin. His “Greensleeves” is the stuff of haunted houses.

When the classical music radio stations play selections from this disc, the phones ring off the hook. If ever there were a singer composers should be rushing to write operas for it is Mera, and the weirder the better, with, of course, Mori engaged to design the production.