Hunt Lieberson’s Voice Can Fill the Void

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson wasn’t particularly successful in filling Royce Hall; the audience was small for her recital Wednesday night. But this mezzo-soprano also happened to fill Royce Hall more impressively than any vocalist I have ever heard in the UCLA auditorium. Even in an age of dazzling mezzos lurking around practically every corner, her combination of imposing dramatic intensity and overwhelming vocal presence astonishes.

It is hard to fit Hunt Lieberson into categories. She has starred in stunning recordings of Handel operas and oratorios. In her vehement staged performances of Bach cantatas, she has invested the unflinching essence of life and death. She’s ideal for Berlioz as well; her just-announced appearance in Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “The Trojans” early next year is eagerly awaited.

Married to an excellent composer, Peter Lieberson, Hunt Lieberson also is devoted to music of our time. She returns to Los Angeles later in the season for John Adams’ “El Nino” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has commissioned a song cycle for her from her husband for 2005.

What is perhaps most unusual about Hunt Lieberson, though, is that while she embodies the versatility and vivid theatricality of the ideal modern singer, she also maintains the traditional virtues of singers of bygone eras. Who else today throws herself into every utterance with such abandon?

Anything Hunt Lieberson sings, anything at all, is sure to be riveting, and that was the case at Royce. After a sustained illness a couple of years ago, she has made a comeback, sounding stronger and fresher than ever. And her ideas about programming haven’t become any more conventional.

Two Handel opera arias, “Scherza infida” from “Ariodante” and the famous “Lascia ch’io pianga” from “Rinaldo,” immediately set the tone of high seriousness and acute emotion. With no ado, no warming up or settling in, she wrenched listeners out of their world and into Ariodante’s tormented, suicidal psyche with the very first note she sang, and there was no letup for the rest of the evening. The aria from “Rinaldo,” beloved of singers of old for its weepy beauty, filled the hall with the massive old-fashioned robust lusciousness of her voice, but her sensitivity to the modern ideas about the Baroque style also made it sound newly minted.

Five French songs by five different composers from the late 19th century and early 20th century followed. Debussy, Ravel, Chausson, Faure and Emile Paladilhe were each a distinct musical personality but shared the same devotion to poetic language. And Hunt Lieberson made each word speak, with the exception of Ravel’s “Vocalise en Forme de Habanera,” which has no text and in which she lost herself in sensual abandon.

After intermission came two songs by the American composer Ricky Ian Gordon to sad poems about cherishing life under death’s shadow by Jane Kenyon. Unlike the French, Gordon is a composer who stays out of poetry’s way, not so much giving words a voice as a cushion for them to sit on and air around them to let them resonate. Here restrained, Hunt Lieberson, whose own bout with cancer must have made the words personal, let them tell their own story. But she then turned to hot-blooded Spanish music by two Jaoquins, Turina and Rodrigo, and poured out the passion in huge lyric streams, reminding us that she could be a Carmen for the ages if she ever gets around to singing the role.

The last set was a cycle of five recent songs by Lieberson to German poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Once a composer of rigorous atonal music, Lieberson has become more of a colorist and fantasist in recent years, creating engaging, brilliant scores often illustrative of wondrous Tibetan Buddhist legends. The expressionist Rilke songs are something of a throwback, earnest explorations of the darker corners of the soul. But here Lieberson’s music doesn’t stay depressingly black; light finds a way to shoot through in the piano accompaniment, as does Lieberson’s inherent sense of wonder. The mezzo, for her part, seemed to live each of Rilke’s diffusive lines.

A short recital, it also was an exhausting one that had two short encores--a surprising early song from Copland, “Pastorale,” and a serenely potent performance of “Deep River.” Robert Tweten was the astute, assured pianist. He played as accompanists mostly do, with the piano lid down. I would have liked to have had it up. I think Hunt Lieberson could handle it as she seems to be able to handle everything else.