Opera’s Supernovas Blaze Anew

Opera’s numbers are up. There are more opera companies and more opera performances than ever. Curiously, however, there are not more opera superstars, the kind who are worshiped by canary fanciers and who, through a combination of voice and personality, are household names.

Despite a decent quantity of conventional stars (Renee Fleming, for example), there are really only three singers who fit the supernova description--Cecilia Bartoli, Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli. (Domingo’s tenor amigos, Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras, are essentially at the end of their careers in bona fide opera, even if, once in a great while, they are still nudged onto the lyric stage.)

Along with the dearth of truly stellar talents comes a lack of interest in making stellar opera recordings. But, again, Bartoli, Domingo and Bocelli are exceptions. Each has major new opera CDs, and the recordings, like the singers, are highly unusual.

Opera’s “It” girl, Bartoli, is that exceedingly rare singer, the kind that comes along once in a generation, radiating an expressive magnetism that transcends her art form. A listener somehow feels physically lightened by Bartoli’s effortless brilliance. And equally unique among superstars in the mass-market classical world, Bartoli does not compromise. You won’t find her in the pop crossover bins. Yet if her idea of a fling is forgotten Baroque, she nonetheless takes her audiences with her, having sold close to a half million copies of a recording of obscure Vivaldi arias.

Her two new recordings--Handel’s “Rinaldo” and Haydn’s “Armida”--are of operas well out of the mainstream. Both are made with singers and conductors who specialize in historical performance, and are accompanied by orchestras of period instruments. Neither opera has had a recording in many years, and they make a fascinating pair, since both are based upon the same source, the story of the Saracen sorceress Armida attempting to woo the Christian crusader Rinaldo.

Bartoli is typically cautious in “Rinaldo,” her first attempt at a Handel opera. She appears as Rinaldo’s Christian love, Almirena, rather than in the more punishing title role, which is written in her contralto range but is here assumed by the virile and compelling countertenor David Daniels. And if by taking on the soprano role of Almirena, Bartoli does not sound as perfectly at ease as she often does, she is never less than mesmerizing. She practically stops time in the famous lament, “Lascia ch’io pianga,” and the stopping of time is no easy matter, given Christopher Hogwood’s overly efficient conducting.

“Armida,” Haydn’s first serious opera, focuses much more tightly on the stormy relationship of Rinaldo and Armida, and here Bartoli is the fiery but vulnerable temptress, which is not only another soprano role, but, for the mezzo, an uncharacteristically dramatic one. That is not to say that Bartoli is now moving into Maria Callas territory (although Callas did sing the part in the early ‘50s), but this is her most heated theatrical performance on record and she dazzles.

Spectacular as she can be, she never oversings Haydn’s classically proportioned music, and, indeed she fits in very nicely with the eloquent, understated tenor Christoph Pregardien, who sings Rinaldo. Although Haydn’s operas have long been overshadowed by Mozart’s--and they always will be--Harnon-court’s propulsive conducting creates fine theater.

*

Domingo’s fame was harder won than Bartoli’s. Possessing an unquestionably fine and amazingly sturdy voice, he has nonetheless had to work extraordinarily hard to become a great singer, beginning with the effort of pushing his range from a natural baritone to tenor. Listening to Domingo, we are not so much lifted by sheer effortless song as we are impressed by his strength and conviction. It is an inspiration to see someone make tireless use of every bit of his talent.

Ever in search of new challenges, Domingo has been involved in bringing to life the forgotten theater music of Isaac Albeniz, the Spanish composer best known for his piano suite “Iberia.” Albeniz also wrote about 30 stage works--comic and heroic operas, zarzuelas and incidental music for plays. His grandest project was a planned trilogy of operas based on the King Arthur legend with an English-language libretto by a wealthy London banker, Francis Burdett Money-Coutts. Though a facile composer, Albeniz labored about four years on “Merlin,” never completed “Lancelot” and didn’t live long enough (he died at age 49 in 1909) to begin “Guenevere.”

“Merlin,” Albeniz’s most ambitious score, has never been staged. Until Domingo’s current recording of the opera, it was only performed twice in concert. The score was for a long while lost, and this CD is the end product of a musicological effort to reconstruct it from a variety of sources.

One doesn’t have to look very far for the reasons why “Merlin” was neglected, or for the reasons why Albeniz struggled so long in its composition. The libretto is hilariously inept, its stilted language a melange of clumsy rhymes and mind-boggling syntax. (Still, Domingo might have some fun staging the work with his Washington Opera company, given such lines as: “No more shall treason’s horrent head be seen presumptuous in the land of Gore!”)

Money-Coutts simply defies music. His drama wanders irrationally; each of the three acts seems from a different show. Aficionados of oddball operas will delight, however, in an octet of countertenors as gnomes--they appear for all of 54 seconds near the end singing “Tric a ta trac”--don’t ask!

There is little evidence here, in a Wagner-drunk score, of Albeniz’s nationalist Spanish music. Still, the composer supplies some genuinely powerful musical moments, and although it takes him a while to get going, the work includes some beautiful, sensual orchestra music. Domingo’s formidable Arthur is certainly the most persuasive thing about this earnest performance, which is hampered by Spanish singers with accents that only further emphasize the awfulness of the libretto. One exception is the American soprano Ana Maria Martinez, who brings a shine to the character of Nivian, a seductive slave.

Next, it is said, Domingo is eager to commission a completion of “Lancelot” for Los Angeles Opera, and why not? Such inquisitiveness keeps opera interesting, whether the works fully succeed or not. But it is not so easy to give the tenor the benefit of the doubt when he associates himself with projects such as his new recording of Luis Bacalov’s “Misa Tango.”

Bacalov, a Jewish Argentine film composer based in Rome and best known for his music for the movie “Il Postino,” has great aspirations for his Tango Mass. Somehow the incorporation of tango in a Latin mass signifies for him issues of the Jewish Diaspora. And, given the deep emotions that the great master of the new tango, Astor Piazzolla, was able to achieve with the Argentine dance, perhaps that is not such a far-fetched idea. But Bacalov is no Piazzolla, and his sentimental imitations come close to musical sacrilege. (Also on this recording are two cheesy Bacalov arrangements of Piazzolla tangos, which he plays himself on piano with orchestral accompaniment.)

*

Of course, it’s altogether easier for an accomplished opera singer to slip into Euro-schlock in a weak moment than it is for a Euro-schlockmeister to find the strength to diligently climb up into the realm of grand opera. But the ever-determined Andrea Bocelli is not to be underestimated. Whatever one thinks of Bocelli--and it is hardly any secret that most critics think him a sorry opera singer--he is clearly a uniquely charismatic performer who moves his legions of fans like no one else. Just like Bartoli and Domingo, he is immediately recognizable via his voice.

Bocelli’s extraordinary popularity is based on his creamy way with a pop tune. But his first love is opera, which he claims would have been the direction of his career had he not lost his sight. Now Bocelli has the wherewithal--financially and in the goodwill of his fans--to attempt that goal, though he must overcome far greater obstacles than Domingo’s: blindness and a smallish voice with pinched head tones. In preparation for recording his first operatic role, Rodolfo in “La Boheme,” he reportedly threw himself into intensive sessions with a Los Angeles coach, and for security, Decca surrounded him with a cast of fresh, young Italian voices under the veteran control of Zubin Mehta.

Bocelli sings Puccini with moderate confidence. But he does not even hint at generating a character. He is no different as the carefree Rodolfo at the beginning of the opera than he is as the heartbroken one at the end. He lingers on high notes, self-absorbed, and that only adds to his seeming to be lost in his own melancholy world. (He also sounds as if he were recorded in different acoustics than those of other singers.)

Mimi is the robust Barbara Frittoli, the most talked-about emerging soprano in Italy, and as the performance unfolds slowly, very slowly, under an unusually lethargic Mehta, a curious things happens. It is Rodolfo who sounds as though he is dying, not the consumptive Mimi. Bocelli keeps trying to steal all the sympathy for himself. Perhaps we should see this as a kind of emotional empowerment for Rodolfo, and thus think of this recording as supplying something new and post-feminist to opera. Certainly, his fans won’t mind.

As for Bocelli’s disc of Verdi arias, they all sound pretty much the same. Here Bocelli is like the Cindy Sherman of opera. It is always his face we see, no matter what characters he is attempting to portray.