Finally, our intrepid baritenor does venture into three selections that represent “real” tenor roles, as we’ve come to hear them. He has a good feel for the brightness and bounce of the Kleinzach Ballad from Les Contes d’Hoffmann (it’s more or less the feel of the Fille and Postillon numbers, but without the way-high notes), and dispatches it handily, though—as with the middle section of the Hamlet aria—he doesn’t quite hold us rapt with the Romantic spell of the second verse. Next comes Lohengrin’s Grail Narrative, no less, but in what is billed as the “original full orchestral French version” (I haven’t checked to see how closely this “Au bords lointains” matches up with older French-language recordings of the Narrative, but at 6′ 13″ it does qualify as “full.”) It is quite beautifully sung, and despite some of the interpretive blandness that afflicts the big baritone arias, I’m more than willing to entertain the prospect of a Spyres Lohengrin. It’s not as if we suffer a surfeit of Jugendlich Heldentenor stars. To finish the CD, he goes to Paul’s voicing of the haunting “Glück, das mir verblieb,” from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. While not commanding quite the schmaltzy tonal richness or to-the-manor-born inflectional instincts of Tauber, he sings this with contained feeling and good vocal balance. It’s the closest he comes to suggesting an accomplished late-Romantic tenor.

Across the broad stylistic stretch heard here, Spyres receives skilled and sympathetic support from the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg under Marko Letonja and the Choeur de l’Opéra national du Rhin, led by Alessandro Zuppardo. The recording’s sonics are fine. With its essay, list, and full page of personal appreciations, the booklet conveys the feel of a self-generated project that has a major label (Erato’s) stuck on it by way of validation. There are texts in three or four languages, depending on language of origin, but for a reason that escapes me, their sequence departs from that of the actual tracks.

Spyres is gifted, skilled, and enterprising. This recording will interest not only his usual followers, but anyone intrigued by its departures from the default settings of the classical male voice. It will also be instructive to follow his path over the next few years. Coming up later in the Met’s season: Pollione, first sung by Domenico Donzelli 191 years ago. I make no predictions.

˜ ˜ ˜

I returned to the David McVicar/Charles Edwards production of Verdi’s Don Carlo (see Quiche-o Carlos, 3/25/22) to assess an almost entirely new cast of singers and a different conductor; to see how it felt to again experience the formerly familiar four-act, Italian-language edition; and to ascertain whether or not the gay-oriented distortions of the work had survived these changes. Taking these questions in reverse order: the overt gay theme has vanished—that is, Rodrigo does not “present” as gay and doesn’t sport a Mohawk; the pawing and smooching is gone from his relationship with the Infante, as is the extreme lightness of casting in those roles; the attempted hyper-elegance of the musical and vocal treatment of the score overall has diminished; and the opera’s ending has reverted to the amalgam of supernatural and patriarchal elements (as opposed to Redemption-Through-Outing-in-Death) that has never been entirely satisfying, but happens to be the one written and the one that fits the music. These reversions are all decided improvements with respect to the integrity of the opera. As always, receptors are free to read into the music, words, and actions whatever subtext may please them.