An American Tragedy

Yes, well, hearing this on radio only and so many weeks later - having read the effusions of all my New York blogsiblings - does make feel like rather the poor cousin. And now we know what a risk poor cousins are, though I would never consider hitting Patricia Racette (or any other soprano) with an oar.

One hearing isn't enough to give one a proper idea of any opera, let alone one so shiny and new, so I can't say very much about that side of things. I did think it was wonderful, however. I know there were moments, too, which even on the first hearing struck me as special and blog-worthy, but my memory is not fabulous and I can't quite recall what they were. I want and need to hear it again (and again) and if a recording is released I'll snap it up.

To the singers. Almost more mezzo-soprano glory than a girl can take. This is hands-down the most I've ever enjoyed Susan Graham. Her Mozart & Gluck CD left me strangely cold and I didn't spend enough time with her Hahn disc (which came from the library) to fall in love with in the way apparently every other person in the world has. I had no strong feelings one way or the other, really, about hearing her as Sondra Finchley but I certainly have strong feelings now - she was glorious. Hers was a performance which grew and grew on me, from pleasant-enough surprise in her first lines to rapture by the time of her final letter to Clyde. Lord, and she's only the beginning. An American Tragedy is also, to all intents and purposes, the first time I've heard Dolora Zajick. I wonder how anybody who sees and hears her in the flesh makes it out alive. Then of course there is Jennifer Larmore. Who, I know, is saddled with a rather one-dimensionally unsympathetic role and not very much to sing but she's pretty damned impressive all the same. I have particular loyalty to Jennifer, who represents one of the thousand beginnings of my devotion to opera. I adore her in Rossini, Handel and Mozart and she gets away with "Art Is Calling For Me" in a tasteful and genuinely funny way nobody else (excepting ACB of course) can pull off. But my recordings are all a few years old, or more, so I'm happy to have heard her as she sounds now - and even happier that she's sounding so good.

However for all this mezzo-worship, my heart belonged throughout the opera, without a shadow of a doubt, to Patricia Racette. I don't just mean to her character, with whom one cannot help but sympathise, but to her singing. I've been a fan since I heard the Emmeline clip buried on her official website - more Tobias Picker - and since then have heard her sing almost nothing else. Musetta and Nedda. It's hard work, at this end of the world, to maintain an attachment to a soprano without a pile of recordings to her name, but I've tried my best and in An American Tragedy my efforts were rewarded tenfold. That said, she took me by surprise a little: I expected a slightly sweeter, more lyrical sound. But, oh, the knife-edge of her Roberta cut me to the quick. Vibrant, thrilling, heart-breaking too - but so delicious.

Nathan Gunn. Goodness me, but what a role to take on. He ought to be congratulated merely for surviving intact, but of course he did rather more than just survive. I don't swoon over baritones as I do sopranos - that's just how I am - but I was very impressed. The voice is lovely enough but what struck me was the way in which he inhabited the role: he was Clyde, as far as I was concerned, and if at times I wasn't paying too much attention to how Nathan Gunn sounded, it was probably because I was listening instead to what Clyde Griffiths was saying. I think that's a good sign.

In fact the same goes for the entire cast. I haven't the energy to come up with words about every single one of them, but there was certainly no weak link, nobody I wished had less (or nothing) to sing. Not even the boy soprano, though I certainly could have taken more singing from Dolora. A marvellous opera just on its own, I should think, but all the more so for such a talented and committed set of singers.

More than anything I think what I loved about it was its total American-ness. Does that sound odd coming from this hemisphere? I loved how recognisably and inescapably American the text, the setting and the story itself all are.  But most of all I loved hearing American singers sing with American accents - not to mention fabulous diction. Generally, given the sort of music I mostly listen to, hearing an American accent is not a good thing: because it means someone is singing German or French or Italian with an American accent, and as charming as English with a European accent can be, the reverse just isn't true. But just as nobody sings French like the French (and Felicity Lott), nobody sings American like Americans: and particularly Americans such as these.