Arts & Events

Mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh, who was a 2018 Merola Opera Program participant, gave a mesmerising performance in the Taube Atrium Theatre on Wednesday, March 4, of the song cycle Harawi by Olivier Messiaen. Harawi, rarely heard, is a major work of the 20th century art song, and it combines Messiaen’s passionate interest in ethnomusicology, nature, and birdsong. Loosely based on a Quechuan folktale of two lovers, Harawi bears some resemblance, though in an abstract way, to the medieval German story of Tristan and Isolde. In both there is a meditation on love and death. Messiaen found inspiration in a book given to him by a friend, comprised of Incan folklore and folksongs. From this unlikely raw material, Messiaen created a multi-hued song cycle of great rhythmic originality.  

Vancouver-born Simone McIntosh delivered an astounding interpretation of Messiaen’s Harawi. From the moment she walked on stage, barefoot, wearing a floor-length, off-white shift, accompanied by pianist Robert Mollicone, also barefoot, and clad in all-white, Simone McIntosh virtually inhabited the music. Or, to put it another way, Messiaen’s music inhabited her. And what music! Simone McIntosh threw herself into this music body and soul. She rarely stood still while singing. Rather, she moved, she knelt, she danced, and she imbued each of the twelve songs with its own visual component of movement as well as its particular vocal color. McIntosh’s range was extraordinary, as was her mastery of Messiaen’s unique rhythmic structure. In this, she was wondrously accompanied by noted pianist Robert Mollicone, who navigated with amazing virtuosity the large leaps in range and rhythmic complexity demanded by Messiaen’s writing for the piano.  

The text of Harawi, though drawing on Incan folklore, offers a poetic vision that is uniquely Messiaen’s. Birdsong keeps intruding into the vocal text, and McIntosh masterfully navigated the nonsense syllables that beautifully evoked several varieties of birdsong. In the fourth song, entitled Doundou tchil, Simone McIntosh created an elaborately graceful dance as she sang of the dance of the stars, rainbows, and birdsong. In the seventh song, entitled Adieu, McIntosh sang of a love potion in two voices, echoing the Tristan and Isolde story. The twelfth and final song, entitled Dans le noir, was a quiet meditation on love and distance, ending with the words, “la ville qui dormait…”/“The city that slept.…”  

In the end, what a revelation this was to hear Messiaen’s Harawi, which had heretofore somehow eluded me though I had heard much of Messiaen’s music while living in Paris. And how lucky we were to be in the Taube Atrium Theatre audience on March 4, 2020, to hear mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh and pianist Robert Mollicone deliver an impassioned interpretation of this remarkable music! 

Sharing the stage with McIntosh in this the second Schwabacher Recital of 2020 was tenor Zhengyi Bai, who opened the program with four of the six songs from Sei Ariette/Six Songs by Vincenzo Bellini, followed by the Vier Lieder/Four Songs by Richard Strauss. Hailing from Shandong province of China, Zhengyi Bai was a 2018 Merola Opera Program participant. In the four songs by Bellini, Zhengyi Bai demonstrated elegant Italian diction though his tone was occasionally thin, especially on high notes. He seemed definitely more at home in the German-language of the Four Songs by Richard Strauss. In these latter, Zhengyi Bai sang very expressively, and his high notes, sung in robust voice, were spot on. I’d definitely like to hear Zhengyi Bai in a major role in a German opera, though I’m not sure he’s ready for a lead role in an Italian opera. However, in Bellini’s song, Ma rendi pur contento, Zhengyi Bai offered a lovely interpretation of this quiet yet fervent love song.