Have You Seen This Man?
CD: Simon Keenlyside with Ulf Schirmer/Munich Radio Orchestra: Tales of Opera
When I was perhaps 12 or so, I attended one of those mother-daughter church banquets at which the men are enlisted to perform KP and the women and girls for once are fed and entertained. That evening's entertainment was a barbershop quartet, and aside from their rendition of "Last Night on the Back Porch," the memory that stayed with me was the baritone's rueful observation that the tenor and bass got all the fun parts and he was left with, as he put it, the garbage pit. My natural empathy for underdogs has kept that memory with me all these years, and it's quite possibly the source of my fascination with the baritone voice.
So let's have a tip of the hat to all baritones, past and present, the celebrated and the obscure, the obvious ones and the stealth singers. We all acknowledge the recently departed baritone Robert Goulet, for instance, whose recording of Camelot spent a lot of time spinning on our hi-fi during my childhood, but how many of us remember that the overachieving Placido Domingo started out a baritone and indeed has announced plans to revisit that range when he takes the lead in Simon Boccanegra?
In that spirit, let us consider the new recital disc by the lyric baritone Simon Keenlyside. Tales of Opera has been out in Europe for some time but Sony has only just released it stateside. This CD has, however, been collecting awards and accolades from various sources, and ought to win Keenlyside some well-deserved attention from American listeners.
So where has this guy been all your life? The London-born Keenlyside was first a boy treble, later a singer of lieder, and only wound up on the opera stage when he was in his late 20s. The profiles I've read suggest he approached his voice training with perspective and moderation, perhaps in part due to his childhood as a chorister.
Over the years he has appeared on the opera stage in Europe and the United States, playing a varied baritone repertoire -- Count Almaviva, Danilo, Figaro, Belcore, Marcello, Billy Budd -- and also creating roles in new operas by Thomas Ades and Lorin Maazel.
Those of you who watch Classic Arts Showcase may well have caught the video of Keenlyside singing "Estuans interius" ("Burning Inside") -- on a train, no less -- from that Deutsche Grammophon recording of Carmina Burana with Christian Thielemann. Keenlyside also joined the indefatigable Bryn Terfel for some duets on the Simple Gifts CD from two years ago.
If you haven't had a chance to see him onstage, on TV, or even on YouTube (quite a few treasures there), lend an ear to this very tempting recital collection. There's a nice balance of roles, themes, composers, and moods. Keenlyside is, by turns, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Wagner's Wolfram, Tchaikovsky's Yeletsky, and Figaro in the Rossini incarnation. He sings in four languages, though not his native English, and if he devotes three tracks apiece to Mozart and Verdi, he also works in Cilea, Massenet, and Thomas.
Keenlyside has a pleasing lyric baritone and brings a decided emotional resonance to each part, and judging by the footage I've seen, he's definitely of the breed of singers who are as adept at both the acting and vocal demands of performing. He's up to playing comic relief, even if his Papageno comes off a bit intense here (then again, Papageno always was a hot and bothered guy), but really shines at the subtler passages. Just listen to what he does with Germont, for instance, or Hamlet.
Keenlyside has expressed an interest in moving on to roles such as Rigoletto, though a glance at his schedule indicates that in the immediate future we can expect to hear a lot more of him as Don Giovanni and the Marquis Posa, in addition to his performances of a varied repertoire consisting everything from Brahms to Butterworth. Clearly he's more a guiding star than a meteor, and deserves our attention as we look towards the singers who dot the night sky.
When I was perhaps 12 or so, I attended one of those mother-daughter church banquets at which the men are enlisted to perform KP and the women and girls for once are fed and entertained. That evening's entertainment was a barbershop quartet, and aside from their rendition of "Last Night on the Back Porch," the memory that stayed with me was the baritone's rueful observation that the tenor and bass got all the fun parts and he was left with, as he put it, the garbage pit. My natural empathy for underdogs has kept that memory with me all these years, and it's quite possibly the source of my fascination with the baritone voice.So let's have a tip of the hat to all baritones, past and present, the celebrated and the obscure, the obvious ones and the stealth singers. We all acknowledge the recently departed baritone Robert Goulet, for instance, whose recording of Camelot spent a lot of time spinning on our hi-fi during my childhood, but how many of us remember that the overachieving Placido Domingo started out a baritone and indeed has announced plans to revisit that range when he takes the lead in Simon Boccanegra?
In that spirit, let us consider the new recital disc by the lyric baritone Simon Keenlyside. Tales of Opera has been out in Europe for some time but Sony has only just released it stateside. This CD has, however, been collecting awards and accolades from various sources, and ought to win Keenlyside some well-deserved attention from American listeners.
So where has this guy been all your life? The London-born Keenlyside was first a boy treble, later a singer of lieder, and only wound up on the opera stage when he was in his late 20s. The profiles I've read suggest he approached his voice training with perspective and moderation, perhaps in part due to his childhood as a chorister.
Over the years he has appeared on the opera stage in Europe and the United States, playing a varied baritone repertoire -- Count Almaviva, Danilo, Figaro, Belcore, Marcello, Billy Budd -- and also creating roles in new operas by Thomas Ades and Lorin Maazel.
Those of you who watch Classic Arts Showcase may well have caught the video of Keenlyside singing "Estuans interius" ("Burning Inside") -- on a train, no less -- from that Deutsche Grammophon recording of Carmina Burana with Christian Thielemann. Keenlyside also joined the indefatigable Bryn Terfel for some duets on the Simple Gifts CD from two years ago.
If you haven't had a chance to see him onstage, on TV, or even on YouTube (quite a few treasures there), lend an ear to this very tempting recital collection. There's a nice balance of roles, themes, composers, and moods. Keenlyside is, by turns, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Wagner's Wolfram, Tchaikovsky's Yeletsky, and Figaro in the Rossini incarnation. He sings in four languages, though not his native English, and if he devotes three tracks apiece to Mozart and Verdi, he also works in Cilea, Massenet, and Thomas.
Keenlyside has a pleasing lyric baritone and brings a decided emotional resonance to each part, and judging by the footage I've seen, he's definitely of the breed of singers who are as adept at both the acting and vocal demands of performing. He's up to playing comic relief, even if his Papageno comes off a bit intense here (then again, Papageno always was a hot and bothered guy), but really shines at the subtler passages. Just listen to what he does with Germont, for instance, or Hamlet.
Keenlyside has expressed an interest in moving on to roles such as Rigoletto, though a glance at his schedule indicates that in the immediate future we can expect to hear a lot more of him as Don Giovanni and the Marquis Posa, in addition to his performances of a varied repertoire consisting everything from Brahms to Butterworth. Clearly he's more a guiding star than a meteor, and deserves our attention as we look towards the singers who dot the night sky.
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