United States Various: Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Bryan Wagorn (piano). San Francisco Performances, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 19.11.2024. (HS)
One of the world’s leading countertenors, Anthony Roth Costanzo has starred in a long list of world premieres, including works by John Corigliano, Jake Heggie, Matthew Aucoin, Steve Mackey and Nico Muhly. At the age of 42, he is also the newly minted general director and president of Opera Philadelphia, a vocal gay advocate and a particularly chatty recitalist.
When introducing the pieces in his concert at the Herbst Theatre, he touched on all these aspects of his life and shared more than a few revealing reminiscences. His often-candid anecdotes built a tight personal relationship with rapt listeners and primed them for the music, much of it relatively obscure, even from such well-known composers as Handel, Liszt, Verdi and Glass.
Pianist Bryan Wagorn, an assistant conductor at The Metropolitan Opera, caught the various styles of the songs, and the two demonstrated the musical mind-melds of fifteen years performing together.
The recital opened with ‘Pena tiranna’, an aria from Amadigi di Gaula, Handel’s earliest opera in London. The slow lament accentuated Costanzo’s ability to shade his voice and manage dynamics to coax the drama out of the character’s frustration. Then came ‘Quella fiamma’ from Arminio, Handel’s failed final opera, which provided a platform for the singer’s formidable coloratura.
Costanzo told the audience he is writing a book about the countertenor voice and noted in introducing these first arias that Handel was writing for castrati, male singers who had been castrated as boys to maintain a high singing voice. They were, he emphasized, the rock stars of Baroque opera, and the singer allowed as how it did not surprise him that modern audiences were beguiled by the falsetto sound, invoking Michael Jackson, Frankie Valli and Miss Piggy as examples.
Songs by contemporary composers reflected the relatively recent renaissance of the countertenor voice in today’s operas. Gregory Spears’s ‘Fearsome This Night’, from an opera on a Welsh myth, achieved a strong effect with the full countertenor range, all the way down to some baritonal notes for contrast with the highs in a slow-paced, legato texture. (Gregory Spears also wrote the opera Righteous in which Costanzo starred at Santa Fe Opera this past summer).
Joel Thompson’s gentle, folk-like settings of two poems about the African-American experience got a dignified rendering. Closing the first half were four songs by Liszt, a connection for Costanzo that, he mused, might be due to genes he inherited from his Hungarian Jewish mother. He did show a sensitivity in ‘Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’ (‘Over all the peaks it is peaceful’), which he sang without vibrato at a stately pace. That contrasted with the warm sound of modest vibrato on the first lines of ‘Ihr Glocken von Marling’ (‘Bells of Marling’), reflecting the thoughts of an apprehensive bride.
Singing without vibrato, unfortunately, exposed some slight intonation issues, which also affected some of the other songs. It did contribute a wild edge to his sound, which managed to enhance his natural dramatic expressiveness.
Romantic-era music, of course, was not written for his voice type. In introducing the first set after intermission, Costanzo pointed out that he did not want to appropriate operatic arias meant to be sung by sopranos or mezzo-sopranos, but song? Why not? The first, ‘Villanelle’, from Berlioz’s Nuits d’été (originally written for a mezzo), caught the simplicity and folk-like spontaneity.
In Verdi’s ’Non t’accostare a l’urna’ (‘Do not approach the urn’), published a year before the composer’s first opera, a voice from the grave attempts to repel a visitor who was responsible for the death. Costanzo set up the song by recalling, on a visit to Italy, the rage that came his way when he chose to end his first love affair to return to college.
Duparc’s ‘L’invitation au voyage’ could have benefited from a more even legato, less punctuated by short bursts that did not fit the sense of acceptance he described in his commentary.
Constanzo has demonstrated a clear affinity with Philip Glass’s music, particularly in the title role of the opera Akhnaten in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2022 production. ‘Liquid Days’ stems from a 1983 recording of music Glass set to words by pop artists such as Paul Simon and Laurie Anderson. Linda Ronstadt originally sang the text by David Byrne of The Talking Heads, but Costanzo and Wagorn brought their own lively touch to the song’s list of everyday expressions of love. ‘In the Arc of Your Mallet’ (1997) and a wordless excerpt from 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988) underlined a sweet connection between this voice and Glass’s inventive, minimalist music.
Three theater songs associated with Barbra Streisand – ‘My Man’, ‘The Man I Love’ and ‘I Got Rhythm’ – completed the program. Costanzo’s slow but steadily-sung rendition of ‘My Man’ had the requisite warmth without Streisand’s hesitation histrionics in the song in Funny Girl. ‘The Man I Love’ was a nod to another of the singer’s idols, Ella Fitzgerald, and ‘I Got Rhythm’ closed things out on a zippy note.
He introduced his encore by noting that people often ask what his ‘real voice’ sounds like. His execution of the baritone part in ‘Crudel! Perché finora’, the Act IV duet between the Count (a baritone) and Susanna (usually a soprano), revealed a pleasant lyric baritone and gave him a chance to show off some comic theatricality as he spun from role to role. It was a juicy taste of his solo version of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, in which he sang all the major roles in an abbreviated production presented in New York earlier this year: impressive and smile-worthy.
Harvey Steiman
Handel – ‘Pena tiranna’ from Amadigi di Gaula; ‘Qella fiamma’ from Arminio
Gregory Spears – ‘Fearsome This Night’ from Wolf-In-Skins
Joel Thompson – ‘Supplication & Compensation’
Liszt – ‘Im Rhein’; ‘Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’; ‘Hohe Liebe’; ‘Ihr Glocken von Marling’
Berlioz – ‘Villanelle’ from Nuits d’été
Verdi – ‘Non t’accostare a l’urna’
Duparc – ‘L’invitation au voyage’
Philip Glass – ‘Liquid Days’; ‘Arc of Your Mallet’ from Monsters of Grace; ‘The Encounter’ from 1000 Airplanes on the Roof
Yvain/Charles/Wilemetz/Pollock – ‘My Man’
Gershwin – ‘The Man I Love’ from ‘Lady Be Good’; ‘I Got Rhythm’ from Girl Crazy
Encore: Mozart – ‘Crudel! Perché finora’ from Le nozze di Figaro