jwilzewske: Art Song, Youth, and Omniscience: Stephen Costello, Tenor, & Danielle Orlando, Piano

W hen I decided to go for vocal music in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was afraid of classical music. I didn’t understand it because of the languages. It seemed really long—like a lot of work, and everyone was singing all the time. Plus, how do you memorize all that music, right? [A chorus of nods around the table.] I was into Broadway music for a while, but you know that whole ‘dancing’ thing didn’t work for me. [Laughter by other interviewees, at Costello’s dry delivery and self-effacing humor.] So I auditioned at AVA. There was something that the maestro saw that was very raw, which he really liked. Teachers can work with it and develop you, so I decided to go... It was kind of overwhelming at first. I think I was the only one at the school who had never sung a complete operatic role before. To be with these people who have sung two or three or more roles—it was intimidating! But, no matter: just dive into it and work your ass off. For me, if I hadn’t had music in my life during my public school system days, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now. I don’t know if I would have gone to college. No one in my family went to college. Through music, I made connections in school that helped me excel in places I wasn’t the most comfortable with.”
— Stephen Costello, interview with Marilee Vergati, Dallas Examiner, 05-NOV-2010.

T he synergies between Stephen Costello’s tenor voice and Danielle Orlando’s piano last night were incredible.

Verdi - Questa o quella (Rigoletto)
Liszt - Tre sonetti di Petrarca, S. 270
Rossini – La danza
Lehár – Dein ist mein ganzes Herz
Quilter – Drink to me only with thine eyes
Quilter – Over the mountain
Traditional – Danny Boy, arr. Brodszky
Brodszky – I’ll walk with God
Tosti – Non t’amo più
Tosti – A vucchella
Tosti – Pierrot’s Lament
Tosti – Goodbye
Tosti – Ideale
Tosti – Aprile

O rlando’s piano provided poignant contrast and astringency to counterbalance Costello’s warm singing. The effect was like that of a third-person omniscient narrator in a novel. Orlando’s piano: theotic; godlike; expressing an all-knowing perspective; telling us listeners things that the main character, Costello, does not know—things that that few mortals (or none) can fully know—the meaning of Life; the mystical depth and transcendence of True Love—short of attaining Buddhahood or assumption into Heaven. Through the piano, we appreciate what the human species feels like and how much we humans stand yet to learn, as this young male exemplar sings his account of, say, what Tosti says ‘Love’s Gift’ is. The almighty Piano has seen it all and knows Everything. The mortal singer is earnest and true, but has only learnt as much as his youth has so far afforded opportunities for him to experience.

T he whole program was excellent, but the Tosti pieces were especially interesting. So I go and read Francesco Sanvitale’s biography of Tosti (link below), to try to figure out why these compositions fascinate me so. Francesco Paolo Tosti was from Ortona, a town of 11,000 in Adriatic mid-coastal Italy. He was born in April 1846, the youngest of 9 children. He attended the Conservatorio di Napoli when he was twelve, studied violin with Pinto, and went on to become a gifted violinist and teacher as well as achieving fame and wealth as a singer, attracted royal sponsorship and employments, and enabled his success as a composer. He lived in Rome from 1870 through 1874 and was teacher to Princess Margherita of Savoy before moving to London in 1875 where he served as singing master to Queen Victoria’s kids. Tosti figured prominently with the Ricordi publishing house, who published all of Tosti’s art songs except for a few released by Thomas Patey Chappell & Frank Chappell (Chappell & Co) and Emile Enoch (Enoch & Sons) in London. In all, Tosti composed more than 400 works, including some that are way-droll or humorous—comedic in their coupling a jocular text with a ‘formal’ setting or delivery.

S ignor Tosti is an agreeable and amiable composer. He has discovered the great weakness of the English for sentimental songs, and his ‘For Ever and For Ever’ is massacred in every schoolroom and drawing-room in the British Isles.”
— Vanity Fair, 14-NOV-1885.

B ut for all his outward humor and public drollery, we know that Tosti suffered from angina for a number of years. Early letters suggest that his cardiac symptoms began in his mid-30’s. He died of a heart attack at age 70, on 02-DEC-1916 at the Hotel Excelsior in the via Veneto in Rome. Possibly it was the recurrent cardiac reminders of his mortality and the chest pain dogging him through his productive middle age that imbued these piano parts with poignancy and paradoxical ‘omniscience’.

T his song ‘Aprile’ was one of two Romanze that Tosti wrote in 1882, when he was 36 (‘Aprile’ was in October and ‘Ideale’ was completed in December).

N on senti tu ne l’aria—
il profumo che spande Primavera?
Non senti tu ne l’anima—
il suon de nova voce lusinghiera?
È l’April! È la stagion d’amore!
Deh! vieni, o mia gentil su’ prati’n fiore!

Il piè trarrai fra mammole,
avrai su’l petto rose e cilestrine;
e le farfalle candide
t’aleggeranno intorno al nero crine.
È l’April! È la stagion d’amore!
Deh! vieni, o mia gentil su’ prati’n fiore!

[Do you not smell the air—
the perfume of Spring?
Do you not hear the soul—
the sound of a new, enchanting voice?
Welcome, April, season of Love!
Ah! Come, my dear! Here, on this grass and on my flowers!

The feet will tread among violets,
while at your breast petals of rose and pale blue cavort;
and white butterflies
hover amorously around your adorable high black ponytail.
Hi-ho, April, season of Love!
Ah! Come, sprawl gently on my lawn and these here flowers!]”
— Francesco Paolo Tosti, ‘Aprile’, text by Rocco E. Pagliara.

C ostello excels when he’s portraying human emotions at their extremes and most over-the-topness. The program last night provided opportunities to sing with candor, lust, longing, righteous youthful enthusiasm, loss, and sorrow. (As he enters at least into his 30’s, he will be able to more fully inhabit roles that are propelled by greed, malice, deception, jaded cynicism, illness, and depression?)

T he Italian lyrics for ‘Aprile’: far more sensuous and suggestive than the standard English translation. Costello captures this and nails it.

A fter the voice enters, the piano either supports the melodic line or intervenes during the vocal part’s rests and ‘volumizes’ the production at the cadences. Sometimes the piano modestly doubles the melodic line—a gesture that is prominent at the end of the first stanza and becomes more so—more insistently so—in the second one. The effect welds the timbre of the piano to the tenor melody. The orchestration and this emphatic gesture is, surely, part of the ‘melodramatic school’ of Tosti’s late-19th Century training.

N o mere accompanist, Orlando had as many great ‘lines’ as Costello, and she delivered them with great ‘sparkle and wit and wry social commentary’. Her brilliant performance reminded us of how spoiled we can be with truly great collaborative piano.

T he vocal writing is syllabic and, apart from the ‘Ah!’s and ‘Oh!’s and other spots where the text doesn’t have to be intelligible per se, Tosti indulges the singer and the listener by spinning out highly-embellished fioritura passages and small-scale vocalizations that are plain fun to sing (and to listen to), as well as vehicles for displaying the technical prowess of the singer. The piano part offers its own sort of ‘fioratura’ opportunities, which Orlando executes with perfect poise—with godlike virtuosity that is not anxious to prove its divinity and never steals the show from the vocalist.

W hat I mean is—the supreme ‘omniscience’ of Orlando’s narratorly interpretations was not so astringent as to be indifferent toward mortals, toward the singer. When you, a poor mortal singer, need something; when your prayerful glance meets hers, she can be relied upon to bless you and keep you; to make Her face to shine down upon you and be gracious unto you. She lifteth up Her countenance upon you and giveth you peace. As collaborative piano goes, Orlando is one hell of a kindly personal god, one Who does not hesitate to answer urgent prayers and intervene from time to time in the still-young world below.

T he blessings of The Piano—spiritual (Nerves!); physical (Memory!)—ought never to be taken for granted. And so it came to pass at the conclusion of the recital Costello offered a heart-felt benediction, one that recognized the Pianistic source of all good things and of salvation itself.

A nd we were lifted up, and went forth! Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domina, quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum, lumen ad revelationem gentium. Artsong and opera without end, Amen!

B orn in Philadelphia in 1982, Costello is a 2007 graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA). Costello is the recipient of the 2009 Richard Tucker Award. Additionally, he won First Prize in the 2006 George London Foundation Competition, First Prize and Audience Prize in AVA’s Giargiari Competition, and First Prize in the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Competition. Costello has established himself as one of the current generation’s most impressive artists, with a prolific schedule of performances both in the U.S. and throughout Europe.

O rlando began her piano studies at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and continued at the Eastman School of Music. She earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance at Temple University. She currently serves as Master Coach on the music faculty of The Academy of Vocal Arts and is currently the Principal Opera Coach at the Curtis Institute of Music. Ms. Orlando collaborated for many years with Luciano Pavarotti as accompanist, judge, and artistic coordinator for all of the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competitions. Additionally, she spent nine seasons with the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, as the Artistic Coordinator and Coach for the operas, in addition to editing and arranging some of the compositions and performing recitals with the Festival.

jwilzewske

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Art Song, Youth, and Omniscience: Stephen Costello, Tenor, & Danielle Orlando, Piano

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