November 17, 2009: Joyce DiDonato returns to San Francisco

Since I am always interested in how to think of an evening's program as a journey in its entirety, I was delighted to see that Joyce DiDonato explicitly declared the structural strategy of her San Francisco Performances recital last night in Herbst Theatre with accompanist John Churchwell.  At the highest level the intermission divided the evening into an Italian side and a Spanish side (which provided DiDonato the opportunity to sport two different "geographically appropriate" gowns).  The Italian portion began with a selection of Arie Antiche, all of which predated the nineteenth century, which was then ushered with a scene from Gioacchino Rossini's Otello, composed in 1816 when he was twenty years old.  The section then concluded with I Canti della Sera, a cycle of four songs composed by Francesco Santoliquido in 1908.  The "Spanish" section should probably have been called the Catalan section, since its three composers were based in Barcelona (although the texts themselves were in Spanish), and was entirely twentieth-century.  It began with the first volume of Canciones Clásicas Españolas, a collection of seven songs by Fernando Obradors from the early twenties.  This was followed by the three "Maja Dolorosa" songs from the 1910 Tonadillas collection by Enrique Granados.  The section then concluded with four songs from Cinco Canciones Negros, scenes of Caribbean life by Xavier Montsalvatge composed in the mid-forties.

What was most striking about this collection was how unfamiliar most of it was.  Among the Arie Antiche, "Se tu m'ami" (falsely attributed to Giovanni Pergolesi) was the most likely to be known through its appropriation by Igor Stravinsky.  The Rossini excerpt was included on DiDonato's latest CD, Colbran, the Muse, but probably most appealed to the curiosity of those in the audience who had seen or were planning to see Giuseppe Verdi's Otello next door in the War Memorial Opera House by way of comparison.  On the Catalan side Obradors' "Del cabello más sutil" shows up on the recital circuit;  but this was the first time I heard one of his volumes (the first of four) sung in its entirety.

DiDonato alleviated the unfamiliarity with more than the usual amount of cheerful chat, which was probably a good way to encourage the audience.  Such encouragement was very much worth while, since I would be hard pressed to identify any selection from her program that was not a gem in its own right.  To the extent that I could play favorites, my past love of early music particularly resonated with "Amarilli mia bella" by Guilio Caccini, whose Florentine "new music" of expressive chromaticism was as daring as the work of his Venetian contemporary, Claudio Monteverdi.  Similarly, having worked on several of the Obradors songs with a baritone friend, I found myself drawn to Montsalvatge by my unfamiliarity and was particularly struck by his jaundiced view of Cuba "liberated" by the Spanish-American War.  Tasked with having to manage such a rich abundance of selections, DiDonato performed with an excellent sense of pace, gently ushering our attention from one discovery to the next, always dutifully accompanied by Churchwell.

At the end of the evening she took two encores, the "Tanti affetti" finale from Rossini's La Donna del Lago, another selection from her Colbran CD, and Harold Arlen's "Over the Rainbow," ending an evening of intensive exploration with an easing gesture of sentiment.  Susanne Langer completed the Foreword to her Philosophy in a new Key by quoting J. M. Thorburn:

… all the genuine, deep delight of life is in showing people all the mud-pies you have made;  and life is at its best when we confidingly recommend our mud-pies to each other's sympathetic consideration.

In recommending this rich collection of songs, DiDonato was probably more like a beachcomber, discovering a treasure trove of fascinating shells, than a mud-pie maker;  but she certainly did well to recommend her discoveries to our "sympathetic consideration!"