Arts & Events

Under the auspices of Cal Performances, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton joined with pianist-composer Jake Heggie in a recital on Sunday afternoon, April 3, at Hertz Hall. Jamie Barton, fresh off a dazzling performance at the Metropolitan Opera as Princess Eboli in the original French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, here showed a lighter side. At least this was so in the songs she performed composed by her accompanist, Jake Heggie. I am not a huge fan of Jake Heggie’s. I admired his early operas Dead Man Walking and Moby Dick, but I passed on attending his 2016 opera It’s A Wonderful Life due to my intense dislike of the trite and maudlin Frank Capra film on which it is based. Recently, I was hugely disappointed by Heggie’s 2019 opera If I Were You, which I found woefully trite. As for Jake Heggie’s art songs, they are angular and often arch but devoid of melodies. You’ll never leave a concert hall humming lovely melodies heard in Jake Heggie’s songs. They may be whimsical, they may be arch, they may be stilted; but they are almost never melodic.  

Thus, in a program devoted largely to songs by Jake Heggie, well, you might have guessed it. What stood out, at least for this listener, were the highly melodic songs by Florence Price, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms. Maybe the most pleasant surprise were the songs by Florence Price. Based largely on American folk tunes, Price’s songs included “We Have Tomorrow,” “The Poet and His Song,” “Night,” and “Hold Fast to Dreams.” I especially liked “The Poet and His Song,” which was beautifully performed by Jamie Barton. Price’s song “Night” gave Barton a chance to show off, especially in its closing moments, her remarkable range.  

Although this recital opened with a song by Jake Heggie, “Music,” from The Breaking Waves, the first half of this recital thankfully concentrated on the far more melodic music of Franz Schubert, Florence Price, and Johannes Brahms. From Schubert we heard “An die Musik,” the much beloved “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” and “Rastlose Liebe.” Jamie Barton navigated the lush melodies of the Schubert songs with great aplomb. From Brahms we heard “Unbewegetelaut Luft,” “Meine Liebe ist grün,” and ‘Von ewiger Liebe.” The latter, which closed the set of Brahms songs, was exultantly celebratory of eternal love.  

After intermission, the entire second half of this recital was devoted to songs by Jake Heggie. In his introductory remarks, spoken in a voice that did not carry well to the middle of the hall where I sat, Jake Heggie stated that during the Covid pandemic he asked various people what they missed the most.  

Then Heggie set to music their responses. This gave rise to a work entitled What I Miss the Most, which here received its world premiere. The first song in this work was set to a reply by Joyce DiDonato. Entitled “Order,” it closed with a bombastic ending that seemed out of place. Next came Heggie’s music to a reply by Patti LuPone, which ended with Jamie Barton singing a lovely wordless vocalise. Following this was Heggie’s music to a reply from Sister Helen Prejean, which ended with a thrice repeated, and ever louder, call to “DO SOMETHING.” Next was Heggie’s music to a reply from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in which she decried the lack of live music during the pandemic. The final piece in this set was Heggie’s music to a text by Kathleen Kelly, which seemed to be a post coital reverie.  

The following set was comprised of two whimsical songs, “Of Gods and Cats,” set to a text by Gavin Dillard, and “Once Upon a Universe,” to a text by Gene Scheer. Jamie Barton closed the first of these sons with a “meow.” The second song, about a mischievous boy who enjoys destroying his toys, closed with Jamie Barton singing a declamatory “Alleluia.” These two songs, though delightfully playful n their lyrics, offered little that was engaging as music.  

This recital’s final set was introduced by Jake Heggie, who again spoke in such a hushed voice that I could barely hear a word or two of how he came to write this set. All I can say is that these are songs written as if for many of our country’s most prominent First Ladies. Leading off was a song allegedly from Eleanor Roosevelt, in which she praises the singing of Marian Anderson, who was the first African-American artist ever to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Next came a song in which Mary Todd Lincoln sings of her husband’s hat, the one he wore on the day he was assassinated. This song has a strange, eerily subdued ending. There followed what for me was the highlight, indeed, the ONLY highlight of this set, a song in which Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sings of writing a Christmas card and asking Jack to sign it, then asking him to help her choose what to wear the next day in Dallas. He chose a pink Chanel suit. She achingly recounts that fifty hours later, she returned to that bedroom, still wearing the pink Chanel suit and hat, now covered with her dead husband’s blood. And she cries out in anguish, “Oh Jack, what would you like me to do?” This cry is bone-chilling. The final song in this set was anti-climactic, to say the least. Allegedly from Barbara Bush, it is a paean to a piano she has named Pete. Both the song and its lyrics were as trite as could be. 

The sole encore was a song by Chopin sung in English by Jamie Barton.  

During the applause for these songs by Jake Heggie, the composer fawned over Jamie Barton, repeatedly falling on one knee with his arms outstretched toward Barton as if to direct all praise to his prima donna. Though this gesture showed humility on Heggie’s part, it seemed stagey.