Lorraine at Emmanuel

It goes without saying, but — lock the doors, draw the blinds, anaesthetize pets and family members. You will not want to be interrupted when you listen to this. Even my horrible CD player, which opens in the middle of discs, had enough good sense to behave itself. 

What business have I calling Lorraine transcendent or fascinating or fabulous? To paraphrase the immortal words of Mick Hucknell, if you don't know that by now, you will never never never never know it. Anyway, she's all the above, she's all that she always is. I deny the past tense; Lorraine is the here and now.

The two Bach arias which bookend the disc are meditative treasures. "Kommt, ihr angefochtnen Sünder" is taken unbelievably slowly by conductor Craig Smith (to whom this release also pays tribute) but he has the good fortune to have as his soloist perhaps the only woman who could sustain it at that pace and still make it soar. It's the earliest piece on the CD, recorded in 1992 when she was still just Lorraine Hunt. All I need to say about the second aria is that it is eleven minutes of continuous Bach sung by Lorraine; the rest you can imagine.

In between are extensive highlights from a live performance of Handel's Hercules in which she makes one wonder, among other things, why on earth the piece isn't titled Dejanira. Surely no musclebound demigod could be more deserving of star billing than Lorraine's complex, passionate Dejanira. I kept making the same mistake listening to this. Again and again I would automatically reach for the liner notes to read along with the text, only to realise a second later that I could understand her perfectly clearly. Through all the vocal decorations and odd tricks of syntax, she's radiantly intelligible. Among my favourites is her "Resign thy club and lion's spoils", rippling with fiery colour. As for the mad scene, well, what do you think? More raw and desperate than Jennifer Larmore's restrained rendition, less completely psychotic than Magdalena Kozena's recent recording — insanity made all the more frightening by a lingering but fractured sense of sanity.

And then, hand in hand with this wealth of interpretive gifts, comes her incandescent voice, so lovely in and of itself that I think she could just hum for an hour and we'd be happy, wouldn't we?

Comments

[Sarah]

Joyce DiDonato is Dejanira in a 2005 DVD of "Hercules", and she has also recorded (not yet released) another Handel album of "mad scenes". She will be continuing her "Furore" tour, mostly in Europe, with Les Talens Lyriques. Her only two U.S. dates for this tour are at the end of January 2009 - NYC and Kansas City, her hometown - and what with the weather and other commitments I am totally bummed that I won't be seeing her. She hints at a later tour on her website.

[JSU]

Yes, I was going to recommend that same DVD. I saw her do it in Brooklyn and it was terrific.

[Theresa]

I ordered this cd and just received it yesterday. That glorious voice -- oh, how wonderful to have even more of it. The Bach is incandescent. And I have to confess that I kept pressing repeat on "Cease,ruler of the day, to rise". Handel is so generous to the voice, hers in spades.