Music Review: Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano
By SCOTT CANTRELL - The Kansas City Star
Date: 03/19/99 23:23
This seems to be a golden age for mezzo-sopranos. But much of the stir has been
caused by lighter-voiced specimens, Mozart-and-Rossini mezzos like Cecilia Bartoli
and Angelika Kirchschlager.
Denyce Graves isn't one of their kind. No, hers is a denser voice, all cream and
smoke, with flashes of fire. And in a very short time she has become the pre-eminent
Carmen of our day.
To hear Graves wrap herself around the Habanera and Seguidilla of Bizet's potboiler,
as she did Friday evening, was to know why. This is a gorgeous voice, endlessly pliant,
without a break anywhere, even way down into chest tones. And it was good to hear
a Carmen capable of girlish charm, not merely the man-eater too often portrayed onstage.
Actually, the best things on her recital were the spirituals, especially the three
in jazzy arrangements by Marvin Mills, and Jerome Kern's "Can't Help Lovin'
Dat Man." Here everything -- voice, words, emotions and sheer dazzle -- fairly
leapt across the footlights.
The non-English repertory was a more qualified success. Emotional commitment and
communication were never in doubt, and everything was lusciously phrased. But words
-- what about words?
At least in the four Brahms songs the vowels were right. In songs of Bizet and
Saint-Saens the French was sometimes passable, sometimes utterly incomprehensible.
Her Italian (in songs by Puccini and Francesco Santoliquido) and Spanish (in Falla's
"Seven Popular Spanish Songs") too often turned into a pretty ooze. You
could make a whole recital out of the consonants that simply weren't sung.
Graves has a luscious voice and a winning stage presence. If she can bring the
clarity and projection of her English -- one of the harder tongues to sing -- to
other languages, she'll be one of the great singers of our day.
Praise without qualification, though, to pianist Warren Jones, who seemed incapable
of playing a single phrase on automatic pilot. This was pianism of exquisite color
and voicing, dramatic where called for, playful elsewhere, but without a hint of
fuss.
To reach Scott Cantrell, classical music editor, call (816) 234-4764 or
send e-mail to scantrell@kcstar.com
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