Synchronicity between stay performances and new recordings was once fairly frequent in classical music. Subsequently, the October 17 opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of La Fille du Régiment preceded by the discharge of Pentatone’s Golden Age CD—each starring Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee—might sound a mannequin of canny long-range planning. Nevertheless, the singers confided to me that the recording’s genesis got here effectively earlier than the Donizetti comedy was on the Met’s schedule as certainly one of this season’s bel canto highlights.
In April 2020, as a response to COVID-19 closing opera homes, the Met put collectively a stay on-line “At-Dwelling Gala” throughout which a blinding assortment of the most important stars carried out (typically from their properties) for a worldwide viewers. One significantly particular section featured Morley accompanying herself on the piano whereas singing an aria from La Fille du Régiment. I questioned if she had any inkling that she could be singing Marie on the Met 5 years later. Initially, she had hesitated to carry out, however her father strongly inspired her to take part. He believed, she informed Observer that the At-Dwelling Gala could be a second of connection, a second of sunshine within the darkness. “The push I felt singing “Chacun le sait” that day can’t be defined,” Morley informed Observer, “and now, to sing the aria with the Met Orchestra—with my viewers in individual—is sort of too overwhelming to know.”
That gala additionally proved to be prophetic for Brownlee, who sang “A te, o cara” from I Puritani: he’ll be Arturo reverse Lisette Oropesa as Elvira in Bellini’s last opera when the Met premieres its first new manufacturing of I Puritani for the reason that Nineteen Seventies on New Yr’s Eve.
Someday after the gala, the tenor reached out to Morley about the opportunity of doing a duets CD collectively. “Erin is a pricey pal,” he informed Observer, “and I’ve immense respect for her as an artist. She conjures up me as a performer and regularly pushes me to need to increase my very own degree.” Morley supplied that “making an album collectively felt just a little bit like planning a marriage. We now have to make so many little selections collectively!” Each mentioned that the pleasant Fille duet between Marie and Tonio was the primary choice they selected to incorporate.
Earlier than they got here collectively to report the CD in July 2024, Morley and Brownlee starred as Pamina and Tamino within the Spring 2023 Met premiere of Simon McBurney’s wildly creative Die Zauberflöte. They weren’t the unique casting: the manufacturing was deliberate with completely different singers for the canceled 2020-21 season. However their acclaimed high-flying collaboration maybe signaled that they have been a pair the Met wanted to function once more. Morley shared that the “Zauberflöte expertise was extraordinarily cool. I’ve little doubt we’ll have a blast singing Fille collectively as effectively.”
Their particular person lengthy associations with the Met started inside a season of one another as Brownlee debuted in April 2007 as Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, whereas Morley, contemporary out of Juilliard, joined the Lindemann Younger Artist Growth Program and carried out a tiny position in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut in February 2007. Whereas the tenor continued in starring roles, Morley moved steadily up the ranks till two 2013 breakthrough appearances, first as Soeur Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites after which, changing the initially scheduled soprano, as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. These, together with Olympia in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, are amongst her most important Met roles.
The upcoming Met Fille will probably be a task debut for Morley. An orphan raised by an all-male army platoon, Marie inevitably shows a tomboyishness that comes naturally to the soprano: “I like all the things about Marie. I join along with her by means of and thru. At one level in my childhood, all my mates have been boys, and we performed basketball for hours day-after-day. At one other level, I wished to be within the military like my Dad had been… I simply had an actual need to be a troublesome woman.”
Then again, Brownlee is a veteran of no less than fifteen completely different productions as Tonio, Marie’s non-military suitor, a task he final carried out on the Met in 2011 in Laurent Pelly’s beloved comically antic manufacturing, which has additionally been seen at Covent Backyard, the Paris Opéra, La Scala, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. It’s probably that even those that could have by no means seen the opera will know Tonio’s massive first-act aria with its 9 excessive Cs! “I’ve carried out this position many instances, and I nonetheless really feel a rush after I arrive on the excessive Cs! It’s vital to remain settled and targeted on producing my greatest, most effective singing on this second. I respect the challenges and embrace the pyrotechnics.”
However Tonio isn’t all about this show-stopping bravura, as “the second act aria is totally completely different and all about producing a compelling, heart-touching plea within the struggle for his love. I typically really feel a better sense of satisfaction in with the ability to execute the second aria than the primary!”
Whereas their new duet CD, The Golden Age, wasn’t explicitly deliberate to coincide with the Fille revival, its launch was finally coordinated with the Met opening. Earlier than it was recorded, Brownlee had a notable success with one other collaborative CD—Amici e rivali, an all-Rossini program with fellow tenor Michael Spyres. “I used to be happy with the success of Amici e rivali, and it highlighted the collegiality and friendship or connection that may spill over to the stage. I assumed, ‘why not do it once more?’—thus the venture The Golden Age was born!”
Each artists emphasised that the mid-Nineteenth-century Italian and French repertoire included within the new CD with Ivan Repušić conducting the Münchner Rundfunkorchester was chosen to emphasise essentially the most transferring and thrilling points of the operatic voice by highlighting “items just a little off the overwhelmed path that showcased virtuosic writing that challenged us as singers and communicators.” It appears a sentiment a lot consistent with the Met’s previous marketing campaign “The Voice Should be Heard” which the corporate has introduced again this season.
Morley consists of pretty variations of “Caro nome” from Verdi’s Rigoletto and The Bell Music from Delibes’s Lakmé, two of essentially the most often-recorded coloratura chestnuts, whereas Brownlee explores a nearly unknown prolonged scena from Donizetti’s Marino Faliero. However the duets are the CD’s actual gems, together with two Donizetti gadgets, the Fille quantity and the heavenly “Tornami a dir” from Don Pasquale that many listeners will already know.
“Revelatory” should be the most effective descriptor for 2 French duets: “D’ou viens-tu?…C’est le Dieu de la jeunesse,” one other slice of Lakmé, and “Ils verront si je mens!” from Bizet’s hardly ever carried out La Jolie Fille de Perth. The latter aptly demonstrates, together with Brownlee’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles aria, that there’s a lot extra to Bizet than Carmen. Each Lakmé excerpts urgently argue for extra revivals of a piece labeled by many as we speak as untouchable as a result of stereotypical remedy of its Hindu characters. Morley, nevertheless, argues that the work is much harsher on the British colonists and would possibly profitably be seen as illuminating the harmful impact of the exploitative Raj.
My very own favourite monitor from the CD is “Ah, quel respect…Ce téméraire qui croit nous plaire,” a scrumptious Rossini gem from Le Comte Ory. This scorching duel between Adèle and Ory is a French retread swiped from the composer’s Il viaggio a Reims, just lately revived by Opera Philadelphia. This monitor demonstrates that an excellent Met follow-up to Fille could be a revival of Bartlett Sher’s Le Comte Ory manufacturing starring Morley and Brownlee!
The Met’s Fille will probably be carried out by Giacomo Sangripanti, who was so spectacular in his Met debut final season, and likewise function Susan Graham, Peter Kálmán and actress Sandra Oh because the Duchess of Krakenthorp, a non-singing cameo position that opera firms have solid with Bea Arthur, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. After its run, Morley will add a brand new Richard Strauss position to her repertoire when she takes on Zdenka in Arabella on the Zurich Opera. She’s going to return to the Met in 2027-28 for a brand new work, The Moms of Kherson by Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets with a libretto by American playwright George Brant. Brownlee, who jumped in to exchange an ailing colleague for the second efficiency of the Met’s new La Sonnambula, has remained one of many world’s go-to bel canto tenors for twenty years. However he’ll reveal his first-ever Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto throughout February in Tokyo, the place final spring he mentioned goodbye to Barbiere’s Almaviva, lengthy a signature position. “Now I’ll yield to the younger guys!” All through the season, the pair will reunite to current The Golden Age concert events, most frequently with piano, as when Malcolm Martineau accompanies them at New York Metropolis’s 92nd Road Y on Could 6. When requested which position within the different’s repertoire they want they might check out, Brownlee mentioned, “Completely the Doll in Tales of Hoffmann,” whereas Morley mentioned she “would steal Tonio from him for an evening! Who wouldn’t like to sing “Ah, mes amis”?”
