There are two bass parts in Luisa, the oppressive Count Walter and the scabrous Wurm, splitting antagonist duties between them. Alexander Vinogradov, the Walter, showed a voice of strength and core. In the more lyrical lines of his aria, “Il  mio sangue” ( at “Di dolcezze l’affetto paterno,” and similar) he also showed a sympathetic timbre and good legato; in more proclamatory passages, his singing at times turned barky and, like Kelsey’s, inclined toward a straightness of tone. I fancied hearing a good Varlaam or elder Khovansky from him. Thus, we had the odd circumstance of a Wurm (Dmitry Beloselsskiy) with a rounder, more consistently cantante sound than that of his aristocratic boss. I musn’t neglect to mention that the settled, full tones of Olesya Petrova made more of Frederica’s music than one normally hears, and that as Laura, Rihab Chaieb, though by no means the mezzo-soprano indicated, sang with a pungency and quickness that would be welcome in a number of lyric soprano roles.

These were, all in all, two of the better repertory evenings I’ve encountered in recent seasons. Now let me briefly consider how they also illustrate some of the less promising vocal developments of our time. These appear to be two in number but to my mind they originate from the same functional cause. They are: a darkening and dulling of male timbre, and the weakening of chest-register participation in the female vocal structure, all in the context of a general diminution in calibre. These are continuations of trends in vocality, apparent throughout the 20th Century but accelerated after the Second World War, that I have outlined in Opera as Opera; the past year has afforded some clear examples .

To the ladies first, per Old School manners. (N.B.: I suggest my posts of Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2017, on Lotte Lehmann and the bonding of the registers in the female voice, as prequel to what follows. The other singers mentioned will be found along the way.) I spoke above of Sonia Yoncheva’s “technical arrangement.” I meant by this to call attention to the distribution of registral and resonantal energies in her voice, and to emphasize that this distribution is a selection, not the given structure of her “natural” voice. If the selection were different, so would be her “voice,” though no doubt its winning basic quality would still be identifiable. Her arrangement is this: at the bottom, she has several notes of musically functional chest voice, or, as I like to call it, “Lower Family.” They aren’t fully opened up, but they are on-center and lucid, the sort that would be good grounding in a leggiero or lyric-coloratura instrument. In the notes just above the passaggio, though, the vowels lose their clarity and penetration, and the lower-middle range takes on a darkened, somewhat occluded coloration reminiscent of the “veiled” tone of Maria Callas in this same area. ^(I) This technique represents an effort, conscious or not, to lend some body and timbral interest to the weak “tail” of the head voice. It’s analogous to the male (tenor or baritone) technique of “covering” the passaggio—and these are in fact the same pitches. Trouble is, now the voice is already “turned over,” with an octave and a half to go, and the shaded timbre creates the expectation of at least a spinto calibre. From here, Yoncheva’s voice proceeds nicely upward to the “secondo passaggio” vicinity, where she frees into a still-pretty but somewhat vague, unattached sound. At the sustained top (B-flat to C) she can drive out impressively large notes. They are effective, but they also give the structure an unbalanced, top-heavy feel, very similar to the present situation in Sondra Radvanovsky’s voice, though in a lyrical format, fresher and younger.