Arts & Events

On Wednesday evening, December 16, Jamie Barton was featured in a concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Coming off her recent success as Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma last year at San Francisco Opera, a role she also sang recently in her debut at the Met, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton was accompanied by pianist Robert Mollicone and, in a new work by Jake Heggie, was joined by cellist Emil Miland. Barton opened the program with Homenaje a Lope de Vega by Spanish composer Joaquin Turina. These are three brief songs set to poems by Lope de Vega, all three dealing with the intensity of love and sexual desire. Singing in excellent Spanish, Jamie Barton imbued these songs with ardor and longing, especially in the third and final song, Al val de Fuente Ovejuna/To the Fuente Ovejuna Valley, which ends with the oft-repeated bold refrain, “My desire can find a way through walls.” Barton’s lush tone and impressive vocal power were perfectly matched with the pianistic power and sensitivity of her accompanist Robert Mollicone. 

Next on the program were three songs by 19^th century French composer Ernest Chausson. Le colibri/The hummingbird is set to a poem by Leconte de Lisle and is a love-song in which the poet states that just as a hummingbird dies from imbibing too deeply from the red hibiscus, he wishes to die on the lips of his love. Jamie Barton’s French may not have handled the “u” sound perfectly, but that sound is difficult for English-speakers, and in all other respects Barton’s French was impeccable. Chausson’s Hébé is dedicated to the Greek goddess of youth, and the song offers a meditation on the passage of time, which steals all too quickly our youth. The third of Chausson’s songs was his well-known Le temps des lilas/The time of lilacs, in which a lover laments that the changing of the seasons has brought their love to an end. It is a melancholy song of the death of love, beautifully sung by Jamie Barton. 

Before intermission, Jamie Barton turned to four well-known songs by Franz Schubert all set to texts by Goethe. First came Der König in Thule/The King in Thule, a solemn song about the death of a king. Next came the famous Gretchen am Spinnrade, in which young Gretchen sits at her spinning wheel anticipating the arrival of her lover, Faust. The piano sets the spinning wheel in motion, oscillating throughout the song, until that moment when Gretchen thinks longingly of Faust’s kiss, and the spinning motion suddenly stops short, only to resume falteringly. In this piece too, the teamwork of vocalist and pianist produced miracles of sensitive expression on this well-loved text. Next came Schäfers Klaglied/Shepherd’s Lament, 

a melancholy song in which a lonely shepherd laments the departure of his loved one for distant shores. The fourth and final Schubert song was Rastlose Liebe /Restless Love, a song full of dramatic outbursts on the mixture of pain and pleasure that is love. This too was a vocal tour de force as sung by jamie Barton. 

After intermission, Barton and Mollicone were joined by cellist Emil Miland for the West Coast premiere of Jake Heggie’s The Work at Hand set to poems by Laura Morefield. As Heggie explained in program notes, Laura Morefield was the daughter of San Diego-based poet Charlene Baldridge, whom Heggie had known for nearly twenty years. Although Laura was immensely proud of her mother’s writings, she was fairly quiet about her own poetry. Shortly after being diagnosed with advanced colon cancer at a young age, Laura Morefield responded to a request from Heggie that she send him a selection of her best poems. When Heggie opened the packet, he was immediately struck by the poem The Work at Hand, which he soon set to music with the poet’s permission. Laura Morefield died at age 50.  

This three-part poem is full of tender feelings about the need to say goodbye. The first and third parts, Individual Origami and The Slow Seconds, are quietly meditative. The first part is introduced by a long and lovely cello melody exquisitely played by Emil Miland and soon joined by pianist Robert Mollicone. When Jamie Barton eventually joins in, the song speaks of the poet’s wish – and struggle – to say goodbye thankfully to all those who have brought grace and song to her life. The second part, Warrior 1, strikes a yoga or martial arts pose of a warrior. Here Heggie dramatizes the emotional struggle, making it almost overwrought, ending the song on a triumphant – or is it simply a desperate – high note. The third and final song offers a shimmering affirmation of the love of nature. While I had some reservations about the overwrought tone of the second part, on the whole this was a deeply felt musical setting of the poem by a resilient young woman who knew she was soon to die. Heggie was present to hear this work receive its West Coast premiere. 

Jamie Barton closed the program with a lively set of Gypsy Songs by Czech composer Antonin Dvořák. Singing in Czech, Barton moved gracefully from melancholy songs to lively Gypsy tunes, even offering an ironic number about the poverty of gold compared with the richness of song. As an encore, Jamie Barton sang a hymn she used to sing in church, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.