Voi che sapete
che cosa č amor, i.e. “You who know what
love is”, Cherubino begins his second aria in Le nozze
di Figaro. He poses the question to the Countess and Susanna,
one married; the other about to be, who should know what love
is. Yes, it is the women in Mozart’s mature operas who know
something about love. It was a good idea to collect all the
female characters in these two Da Ponte operas in a programme
with the collective title ... che cosa č amor .... Cherubino
is of course the odd boy out, but being cast for a woman he
fits into the proceedings. His two arias are the ones which
are most obviously filled with pangs of love. His first aria,
Non so piů cosa non, cosa faccio, illustrates this very
well. He sings, in Lindsay Craig’s translation: “I no longer
know what I am or what I’m doing - now I’m burning, now I’m
made of ice - every woman makes me change colour, every woman
makes me tremble. At the very word ‘love’ or ‘beloved’ my heart
leaps and pounds, and to speak of it fills me with a longing
I can’t explain! I speak of love when I’m awake, I speak of
it in my dreams ...”
The task of impersonating
these eight characters has gone to the Hungarian soprano Andrea
Rost, who, since her debut at the Hungarian State Opera in 1989,
has had a rapid and illustrious career. Within two years of
her debut she landed a contract with the Vienna State Opera.
In 1993 she sang Lucia di Lammermoor to great acclaim
and the following year she made a triumphant debut at La Scala
as Gilda in Rigoletto, singing against Alagna and Bruson
with Riccardo Muti conducting; a performance that was also recorded
by Sony. I had the good fortune to hear her Lucia in Vienna
in 1995 and was enthralled by her delightful stage appearance
and her magical singing. In 1997 Sony released her first solo
album with arias by Verdi, Puccini and Donizetti. Not long after
that came a complete Lucia, conducted by Charles Mackerras.
In all these one could appreciate her well-schooled voice, her
musical phrasing, her marvellous pianissimos and her elegant
coloratura. However there was also a certain metallic hardness
of tone and a little annoying vibrato under pressure plus a
certain sameness about her interpretations: her Lucia and Gilda
and Violetta seemed to be the same person.
Hearing her again
after some years in this recently recorded recital, my memories
of her were confirmed to a certain degree. She is very musical,
she phrases well, she has a clean attack, she never sings under
the note and the voice is very beautiful. On the other hand
her vibrato has widened ever so little and the hardness of tone
is still intermittently apparent. There are gains: she has acquired
an added warmth, her pianissimos are even more delicious than
before and, which is the most crucial point in this case, she
manages to differentiate the characters. Since the arias in
each of the operas are performed in the order they appear on
stage, it is very instructive to make comparisons. The teenage
anxiety of Cherubino is clearly contrasted with the noble sadness
of The Countess and the youthful, clear-voiced liveliness of
Susanna. Of course Mozart has already written all this into
the music, but it is quite obvious when one goes from Susanna’s
Venite, inginocchiatevi, when she is dressing up Cherubino
as a girl, to the Countess’s E Susanna non vien!, that
the Countess is an older, more mature woman, singing with soft,
almost smoky tone. At the climax the voice is surprisingly full
in a way Susanna’s could never be.
Then enter little
Barbarina, searching for the lost pin, and it’s a quite different
voice: thin, girlish, innocent. Marcellina, on the other hand,
is often sung by elderly mezzos to show her age. Andrea Rost
can’t quite hide that she is still young and beautiful, but
she adopts a more meaty sound and the coloratura passages are
not very elegant, more in line with the role. Susanna is, I
suppose, her real-life role in this opera, but Susanna’s “Rose”
aria, from the last act, shows the young bride-to-be in a pensive
mood and so sounds closer to the Countess than she does in the
“dress” scene.
Likewise, when we
move over to Don Giovanni, she is nervously fluttery
as Donna Elvira, while her Donna Anna has a certain amount of
steel in her voice. Zerlina is innocent but also clever, as
a peasant girl should be. A high-point on this disc is track
13, Donna Elvira’s In quali eccessi and the following
aria Mi tradi. These are notable both for the singing
per se and for the vivid characterisation. She has perfect
breath control in the long phrases of Donna Anna’s concluding
Non mi dir.
The accompaniments
by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra are discreet but stylish.
The sound is good, as can be expected from the production team
Ibolya Tóth and János Bohus. There is an interesting essay in
the booklet about “Mozart’s Lovers”, dealing with Mozart’s relations
with women, both in real life and through his characters. Moreover
we get the sung texts in four languages, English, German, Hungarian
and the original Italian. The playing time is not very generous;
room could have been found for the three female characters from
the third Da Ponte opera Cosě fan tutte, but that would
have involved Dorabella who is a mezzo. I could have wished
for more space between the separate numbers, though, and it
would have been interesting to know how many of these roles
Andrea Rost has actually sung on stage.
I have derived a
lot of pleasure from this disc and am sure that many other opera
lovers will like it too. There is a proviso and that is that
one must be able to accept the limitations of her singing, if
that’s what they are; call them characteristics instead.
Göran Forsling
Andrea Rost
(soprano)
