Handsome recital fails to catch fire

A Wagner-Strauss soprano now active at the Metropolitan Opera and in major European houses, American singer Deborah Voigt began her career in Southern California in the 1980s.

Her appearances here have been infrequent lately, but she returned Sunday with a recital in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and scored a success before a large and vociferous audience.

The performance, though, also proved a reminder that high musical accomplishment can still fall short of complete artistry. Handsomely sung, clearly pronounced, it lacked that spark of invention, re-creation and fire we expect in superior recitalists.

Nicely vocalized, Voigt’s first half -- songs by Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss -- emerged uninteresting through a lack of word-connection and materialization of subtext and through monochromatic sounds. These are great songs, but they came out only partially realized.

The second half -- 15 songs by Americans Charles Ives, Ben Moore, Stephen Sondheim and William Bolcom -- held the listener with clear words, fine writing and the singer’s nice sense of humor. It was too generous, however, and went on too long.

Particularly pleasant were four new songs by Moore, an exact contemporary (born 1960) of Voigt, that were written in an accessible neo-Romantic style.

Throughout, the soprano’s healthy voice, though limited in its dynamics and colors, rang well in the hall, and her personable connection to her audience had to be admired. She acknowledged that this recital preceded a similar one scheduled for New York in April. Perhaps that was why she used scores and an ugly music stand between herself and the audience.

Brian Zeger was the efficient, unobtrusive and unassertive pianist for the afternoon.