For nearly twenty-five years, a stalwart band of Washingtonians with rare cultural sensibilities has rallied to the venerable Vocal Arts Society to sooth their souls in this most political of cities. From its early days at the French Embassy’s cultural center, Vocal Arts’s seasonal recital series has migrated to the first-rate Terrace Theater, atop the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This season, and in fact at this very performance on January 9, the series has for the first time adopted a titles system that projects the sung text above the stage. It is a pleasant alternative to the constant page turning through printed programs, though the habit is so ingrained that much of the audience continued its not-so-silent appreciation by following along with the printed text.
The Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, an accomplished star on European stages now building an American career, joined the roster of splendid soloists whose Vocal Arts appearances have, for the most part, presaged great careers. A young Renée Fleming had the same experience at the beginning of her superstardom, and the Society’s impressive roster of artists over the past quarter century strongly resembles that of the Metropolitan Opera over the past few seasons.
Accompanied at the piano by her countryman John O’Connor, Erraught presented an ambitious recital of songs in four languages. She began with Franz Liszt’s rarely performed songs set to texts by Victor Hugo. Dating from Liszt’s earlier years, when he was just reaching the cusp of international celebrity as a pianist, the songs capture the callow yet still sometimes naive affects of a young seducer. “Enfant, si j’étais roi” offers imagined riches for a mere glance. “Oh! Quand je dors” invites a kiss from a woman who would be an angel. “Comment, disaient-ils,” poses flirty masculine questions to confident women with one-word answers, the last of which is a command to “love.” Erraught captured the delicacy of the songs’ male voices with that sense of anima that inhabits the trouser roles she often performs in Richard Strauss’s operas. She struck a fine balance between boldness and insecurity, between conviction and doubt. Octavian might have sung them to the Marschallin.
As she continued with six favorite selections from Hugo Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, so named for the Lutheran pastor who wrote the texts, Erraught rose to the very different challenge of matching Wolf’s vibrantly emerging expressionism. Emulating Wagner, Wolf used song to capture emotion, as well as natural phenomena, sensual impressions, and spiritual crisis. Erraught moved seamlessly through this wide range of feeling, displaying a strong, expansive top voice with only a few throaty moments that put the sensibilities a bit off balance. The same effect both benefited and shadowed the next three songs by the English “Second Renaissance” composer Roger Quilter. Set to poems by Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Shelley, they easily match Wolf’s expressive power, and Erraught was more than up to the task while still having a touch of warble in the lower register.
The second part of the program opened with some of the more delicate Richard Strauss songs, most of them recital chestnuts that have been heard over and over again by Vocal Arts audiences. Strauss wrote more than two hundred art songs, perhaps fifteen or twenty of which stand alongside the better of his operas and tone poems as his major artistic legacy. For the most part, especially in “Die Nacht” and “Morgen,” Erraught sang comfortably, marshalling lithe tones to capture the sensitivities at work in the mind of the young aesthete who composed them. The demands of “Cäcilie,” however, created a bit of strain.
Rather weaker was the closing Rossini cantata, “Giovanna d’Arco,” a retirement composition on the Joan of Arc story that falls into the composer’s “Sins of Old Age” oeuvre, which he composed for home entertainments. In this case written for a mistress, the coloratura demands seemed a bit outside Erraught’s natural range and style.
Lest we forget that Washington is a political town, Erraught greeted her final ovation with a heartfelt statement offering herself and her pianist John O’Connor as ambassadors for their country and noted the supportive presence of Ireland’s newly arrived official ambassador Daniel Mulhall in the audience. As a gasp of appreciation swept over the audience, whose city reveres foreign ambassadors as semi-deities, Erraught encored with two Irish songs: William Percy French’s “Gortnamora” and, perhaps inevitably, “Danny Boy.” The latter song, much abused in Irish pubs throughout the world, was affecting without descending into cliché. “Gortnamora,” which Erraught learned from her musical grandmother, shined as her most inspired singing in what was already a most impressive evening.