Diana Damrau/Photo: Richard Termine

In March 2007, Diana Damrau sang a recital in New York. Allow me to quote the first paragraph of my review:

Diana Damrau has wowed New York in three roles at the Metropolitan Opera—and, on Wednesday night, we got to hear her in recital. The venue was Weill Recital Hall, the pretty little space upstairs at Carnegie. We should enjoy this starry German soprano in such intimate quarters while we can. Before we know it, she may be singing in stadiums.

Sure enough, she sang a recital in Carnegie’s main auditorium on Sunday afternoon. It was probably too big a space—too stadium-like—to do Damrau and the music full justice. But you cannot expect a presenting organization to turn throngs of customers away, for the sake of intimacy.

Accompanied by Craig Rutenberg, a pianist and coach long associated with the Metropolitan Opera, Damrau sang a nicely varied program. And here again, I’d like to quote from that ’07 review:

At Weill, she sang a mixed program, with no “theme”—oh happy day. She did not sing 20 songs about willow trees, or a program of music by left-handed Hispanics. It was just—just!—an appealing mixture of very good songs. Only musicologists and writers of program notes could be displeased.

On Sunday afternoon, Damrau opened with a Schubert set, and followed that with a Strauss set. Rather than write a proper review, I’ll jot some details and some generalities. And I will do so essentially in the order in which they occurred to me.

Damrau’s first song was “Ständchen,” and her first note was flat. No worries, though: there were very few off-pitch notes thereafter. As for “Ständchen” at large, it was somewhat slow and tentative, but still Schubertian, and still beautiful

Next came “Du bist die Ruh”—and Damrau did something extraordinary in the third stanza of Rückert’s poem: she sang it in one breath. It wasn’t stunt-like either, but entirely musical. Elsewhere, Damrau showed how to control a high piano. And how to close off a note, letting that note, and the thought behind it, linger a bit. This is hard to describe (my apologies). And it’s not a simple thing for a singer to do.

Third came Gretchen—which is to say “Gretchen am Spinnrade.” This is a delicate song, yes, but it gets big, and Damrau filled the hall, when she should have. Lieder should not be treated with sugar tongs, and that applies to Gretchen.

By the way, the audience applauded after each Schubert song. That’s fine with me, but I have long wanted to make a deal with New Yorkers: Applaud after each song in a set or a cycle—or after each movement in a sonata or a symphony—or brag about how sophisticated you are, unlike those hicks in the sticks. I don’t care which you do. Just do one or the other, and not both. Thank you.

Schubert wrote more than 600 songs, and no matter how well you think you know them, or certainly the outstanding ones, there’s always one you don’t—or ten or thirty you don’t. Where has “Heimliches Lieben” been all my life? Either I had never heard it until Sunday afternoon or I had forgotten it. Damrau sang it with utter persuasiveness.

And I will say something I always say about her: she is slinkiness personified. She has a pliancy in her voice—a flexibility, a taffy quality—that is practically unparalleled.

The final song in her Schubert set was “Lied der Delphine,” which requires many qualities, many tricks, many assets—and I will point out one: Damrau can effect a diminuendo on high notes that comes out of a textbook. I have said many times that Damrau sings like an instrumentalist—a violinist, for example—by which I mean that she can sing like an instrumentalist plays. Which is very rare.

Let me note that Damrau had a music stand in front of her, and looked at her music—even in the most familiar of songs, I believe. This surprised me. But I do not think that reliance on sheet music detracted from her expression of the songs. Joan Sutherland used to use music—“for the words,” she explained (not the notes).

When she came out for her second set, Damrau asked the audience not to applaud between songs—and did so in the nicest, most charming way. That’s Damrau. Then she sang “Ständchen”—Strauss’s “Ständchen,” for which she is virtually made. Why? Because it’s light, high, and breezy, and no one does that sort of thing better than Frau Damrau. So it was.

And are German words as delicious out of anyone else’s mouth? Out of Dorothea Röschmann’s, maybe. But Damrau is hard to beat, or match.

In “Wiegenlied,” Damrau had a rare phonation glitch. For a second, sound refused to come out of her mouth. But that was just a glitch, and a refreshing reminder, in a way. My line is, “Life is not a studio recording.” In the next Strauss song, Damrau demonstrated absolute control, stunning control. This was “Breit über mein Haupt dein schwarzes Haar.” I had never quite realized what a good and affecting song this is.

Which leads me to a general point about Strauss. Toward the end of his (long) life, he apparently said, “I like my songs best, you know.” For all his operas and tone poems, he liked his songs best. I agree with him.

I agree with a singer friend of mine too, about Damrau. My friend remarked at intermission, “She always sings as though eager to tell you about what she’s singing about. She just can’t wait to share it with you.” That is very well observed.

And I have always observed that she has a secret ingredient, or secret weapon: adorability. An American mezzo colleague of hers, Joyce DiDonato, has it too. It is worth a lot in a singer, and in a person.

Damrau opened her second half on Sunday afternoon with Poulenc—his Fiançailles pour rire. Her qualities as a singer make her very well suited to French repertoire (slinkiness, delicacy, deliciousness, accuracy, allure, etc.). “Dans l’herbe” was a total treat. And let me say that Damrau knows how to flatten her voice. I’m not talking about dipping under pitch—going flat—I’m talking about draining the vibrato out of one’s voice (and allowing it to come back in, if one wants). Very effective.

The fourth of the six songs—about the corpse—was duly haunting. And in the sixth, “Fleurs,” Damrau did what she can be counted on to do, and do supremely: hug the line (the musical line). She adheres to that line undeviatingly. She sticks to it like glue. This is one of the ways in which she’s like an instrumentalist, particularly a string player.

By the way, do you remember what Arleen Auger did in “Fleurs”? She slew everyone, that’s what.

At this point in Damrau’s recital, I left the hall. There were two sets remaining, but I left the hall, as much as I hated to do it. I left in order to attend and review another performance. (Posting in due course.)

Damrau’s remaining sets were by Manuel Rosenthal and Dvorak. From the former, selections from Chansons du Monsieur Bleu; from the latter, the Zigeunermelodien, or Gypsy Songs. You don’t think I’ll be kept from commenting regardless, do you?

I will always cherish Rosenthal for something he told on himself. He was doing what people have always liked to do: trash Puccini (their better—their infinite better). He was doing it to his (Rosenthal’s) teacher, Ravel. I’ll let Rosenthal himself tell the story:

One day, Ravel was speaking to me in glowing terms about Puccini. And being the silly, impertinent young man that I was, I started to sneer. At that, Ravel flew into a towering rage, locked us both into his little studio in Monfort-l’Amaury, and sat down at the piano. He then played me the whole of Tosca from memory, stopping about 50 times on the way to ask: “Have you anything to complain about concerning that passage? Look how good the harmony is, how he respects the form, what a clever, original, and interesting modulation there is in that tune.”

Finally, he took down the score to show me how perfect the orchestration is.

There's more, but that's enough. Bless Ravel, and bless Rosenthal, for telling this story. (And bless Puccini for writing the music.)

The Zigeunermelodien? Damrau sang them in a Salzburg recital two summers ago. I wrote about that recital in this chronicle. Many, many singers have sung this set, including singers from Bohemia and elsewhere in Central Europe—Gypsy country. You know who my favorite singer of the songs is? She’s from Laurel, Mississippi. True musicality knows no boundaries. And Leontyne has it.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Not only did Homer nod. He dropped face first into his porridge. During a long walk in Beverly Hills (!), it occurred to me that I never heard Leontyne Price sing the Dvorak songs. I heard her sing Brahms: Brahms’s Zigeunerlieder. My point remains, about musicality and its boundarylessness. But I got the facts wrong. D’oh, and sorry.

 

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