Ramey rolls over wide repertoire

Ramey rolls over wide repertoire

By Daniel Buckley
Citizen Music Critic

Samuel Ramey brought down the house yesterday with a Cole Porter Western Song with "Green Acres" undercurrents - "Way Out West (On west End Avenue)."

But the house was barley half-full for the first of Arizona Opera Company's benefit "Great Singers Series" recital programs. That's really a shame as Ramey's two hour program was world-class in every sense. And how the low turnout will factor into helping AOC trim the $750,000 of red ink spilled over from last season remains to be seen.

Ideally, a vocal recital should be like a variety show. A bit of theater, a broad range of moods and enough stylistic real estate to stretch coast to coast was what the roughly 1,100 attending got at Ramey's show yesterday. From the "devil role" encore of his Boito "Mefistofele" finale to excerpts from Handel operas and French song, Ramey served up a heaping dose of his vocal artistry.

The bass-baritone romped his way though the staircase melodies of excerpts from Handel's "Samson," "Semele" and "Judas Maccabeus" like a marathon runner in training. Standing against the curved body of the piano with accompanist Warren Jones deftly handling the stylistic juggling act, Ramey sang of Samson's victory with a strong, virile voice delivered with clarity and regal bearing.

The music took on an almost religious sense in the "Semele" excerpt, with Ramey floating long, extended lines with weightless grace, dropping at the close to a low note to rival those of Tibetan monks.

The French set included songs of Henri Duparc, Spaniard Manuel de Falla (whose "Seguidille" owed as much to Debussy and Ravel as the Gypsy tradition), Vincint d'Indy and Camille Saint-Saens. Of the group, the arrangement of Saint Saens' "Danse macabre" was the standout, with Ramey neatly negotiating the urgent rhythms and swaying undercurrents of the score.

The American set, which comprised the second half, was wonderfully entertaining and diverse. Nineteenth century salon master Stephen Foster's "Gentle Annie" gave Ramey an opportunity to show off his sentimental side, while Foster's "If You've Only Got a Mustache" (a song of facial hair as babe magnet) provided an arena for sly wit. Several of Paul Bowles' songs linked Ramey with the blues and jazz traditions, while the composer's "They Cannot Stop Death" was a powerful peace using texts by a death row inmate.

Still, Ramey kept the crowd pleasers by Cole Porter for the close, hamming it up a bit on "Don't Fence Me In" and "Way out West" to the crowd's delight.

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Ramey rolls over wide repertoire