Raymond Gubbay Concert,  A Puccini Gala: Soloists, The Manchester Concert Orchestra / Andrew Greenwood (conductor) The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. 4.11. 2007(RJF)

Puccini’s music for his operas is unmistakeable in character like the nature of his orchestration and melodic invention. With the aid of Arthur Greenwood conducting the Manchester Concert Orchestra together with four accomplished soloists, the Bridgewater Hall audience were treated to a Puccini feast of the grandest sort on Sunday evening.

The evening opened with the love duet from Madama Butterfly. The tall visually and vocally elegant Linda Richardson sang the eponymous role and was accompanied by the ardent and well-focussed tenor singing of Julian Gavin. Miss Richardson’s artist details state that her future plans include the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro and Gilda with Opera North. In fact these castings have already happened, the Countess in the summer of 2006 (Review) and Gilda a year later . In my review of her Countess I suggested she was perhaps moving to a heavier fach. Later, after hearing her Gilda, I also noted her vocal flexibility, true trill, secure coloratura and wide range of colour and expression and the fact that she uses these skills to build a consummate interpretation. But Butterfly, with Puccini’s dense orchestration is an altogether different challenge. That she rose to it with ease was an eye opener for me, particularly when she added a strongly sung and well-phrased Un bel dì to open the second half of the concert. With the tendency to cast the more diminutive sopranos in the role of the supposed teenager - such as Amanda Roocroft at Covent Garden and Anne-Sophie Duprels in Opera North’s new production -  her tall figure may deprive her of the opportunity to sing the role on stage, more the pity for I believe she has a formidable interpretation in her voice. I had further evidence of this in the second half of the concert when the Flower Duet and Act  III of Butterfly  were given in full when her characterisation of the role and dramatic singing could be heard to full effect.

I had not heard Julian Gavin for a number of years. I remember one of his early roles in Britain was Alvaro from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, a role written for the great Tamberlick and requiring a strong tenor voice. Not only has Gavin maintained his vocal strength, he has also gained in tonal variety and colour so that his portrayal of the arrogant yank prepared to con an innocent Japanese teenager for cheap sex, and later to regret his callousness, was well portrayed. Whilst Miss Richardson’s Signore ascolta from Turandot was creamy and perhaps a little too mature, Gavin’s Nessun dorma, every tenor's virility symbol, was given due weight and expression without transposition or abbreviation of the final note. His earlier E lucevan le stele from Tosca, was sung with a pleasing grace of phrasing and variety of tonal modulation. I wish Opera North would include him in their tenor roster for the Italian repertoire. At the moment the casting of the heavier roles there sometimes verges on the 'can belto.'

The evening was not a two-singer show with the bass baritone Darren Jeffery joining in for the extracts from La Bohème that closed the first part of the concert. Rather perversely,  these extracts started with the duet between Marcello and Rodolfo from Act III followed by Colline’s farewell to his overcoat, Vecchia zimmara from Act IV. I had not heard Darren since his marvellous Falstaff at the Royal Northern College of Music, after which he was scooped up by Covent Garden on their young artists programme. His voice continuous to develop and together with his tall imposing figure, will take him far. His biggest problem will be as to direction, baritone or bass. Physically he is a natural priest or ruler for which Verdi wrote some wonderful music and roles. As yet his voice is not that of a basso cantante and may never be so; he may end in the nether regions between bass and baritone and take a different direction altogether. Whichever direction his voice takes though, his  artistry points to a significant career and his contribution as Sharpless in Act III of Butterfly as well as in Bohème was welcome casting. The La Bohème extracts finished with that wonderful finale to Act I of the opera when Rodolfo’s Che gelida manina is followed by Mimi’s Si, mi chiamano Mimi and the love duet O soave Fanciulla. Whatever had come from Puccini’s pen before La Bohème, or flowed after, there is no better concentration of fifteen minutes of music than this. Julian Gavin and Linda Richardson sang this conclusion with attention to detail and lovely phrasing, colour and expression. It was a fitting end to part one of the concert.

No Flower Duet from Butterfly, or indeed a last act can be done without a Suzuki, sung on this evening by Alison Kettlewell. She sings in oratorio and is also building up a significant repertoire in the lyric mezzo opera repertoire. She has a resonant well-placed mezzo-soprano voice which she uses with taste and without vocal exaggeration. Hers was a welcome, if smaller part, of the evening’s enjoyment. The other major contribution not already mentioned was made by Andrew Greenwood and the Manchester Concert Orchestra, both of whom feature in the Raymond Gubbay Organisation activities in the City. The orchestra of sixty-five or so musicians played superbly in repertoire that is perhaps outside their usual metier, under Greenwood’s direction. He is one of Britain’s oft-neglected masters of the operatic genre. He was on the music staff of Covent Garden in the 1980s before going on to Welsh National Opera as Chorus Master and where he also conducted many operas. He has now found a home as Director of the Buxton Festival and where his conducting of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux was a highlight of the 2007 programme (Review). Not only has Andrew Greenwood the happy facility for supporting his singers, he is also able to do so without losing the drama of the work and doing justice to the composer’s intentions. He and the orchestra alone gave fine renderings of the Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut but also the Witches'  Dance from Puccini’s rarely heard first opera, Le villi.

A well-attended Bridgewater Hall audience  in a city starved of opera, enjoyed the evening to the full and were warm in their appreciation. Perhaps next year we could have a Verdi Gala, even with the same soloists. It would be an enjoyment to hear Miss Richardson in Tacea la note placida from Act I  of Il Trovatore, Julian Gavin singing La vita e inferno from La Forza del destino and all four soloists joining for the great quartet from Rigoletto. No harm in dreaming I suppose!! But while I dream and hope, I also recognise that the Raymond Gubbay Organisation can only continue with planning such future events if support is given by the people of Manchester and the surrounding area.

Robert J Farr

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