Soprano Krista Wigle

JOYFULLY WE SING

It was a welcome surprise to review a Feb. 23 recital given by two new Sonoma State voice faculty colleagues, Christa Durand and Krista Wigle, with pianist Yvonne Wormer. Since being recently retired from a performing and teaching career, I was curious to speak via a video chat with these next generation teacher-singers.

If you’ve heard of the “Freeway Philharmonic” you have an idea of the life of a freelance Bay Area classical musician. Instrumentalists spend many hours in their cars, commuting as far away as Fresno, Bakersfield, Mendocino or Redding to play in local professional symphonies. Singers tend to stay more local, but many commute to teach in more than one Bay Area college, while maintaining busy private studios.

Ms. Durand lives locally and Ms. Wigle teaches privately in San Francisco. In addition to concert performance, they have focused on making classical music accessible, relatable and approachable to their students. This recital certainly met that goal - an upbeat, accessible, and instructive recital of art songs, opera arias and duets performed to a small but enthusiastic audience of family, friends and voice students. The performers explained their songs, joked with each other and were just marvelously entertaining.

Mss. Durand, Wigle and Wormer began with a brisk and radiant rendition of “Laudamus te” from Vivaldi’s Gloria. They looked and sounded delighted to be on the Schroeder Hall stage. Ms. Wigle is a high coloratura soprano with a surprisingly strong alto range and Ms. Durand is a natural dramatic soprano who has such a rich Germanic voice that she can also sing mezzo if the opportunity arises. In all their duets, Ms. Wigle sang soprano and Ms. Durand sang mezzo and it worked well. Their voices are quite different but together they balanced very well.

After the Vivaldi Ms. Durand remained onstage and gave an extemporaneous musical introduction to the audience, speaking about the recital format and protocols (for instance not to applaud in a set of connected songs until the end) and describing the meaning of song texts, which were printed for this program. These are useful. This is how young audiences for vocal music are, and these teachers get it. She then sang Fanny Mendelssohn’s “Morgenständchen die Mainacht” and Richard Strauss’s beloved “Zueignung”, revealing a regal presence, the quality and size of a potentially robust dramatic soprano, and a deep connection to the music and poetry at hand. Opting in this performance for mezzo keys, I hope that in the future she will spread her wings into the soprano range-especially for pieces like “Zueignung”.

Ms. Wigle followed with a masterful performance of a favorite French composition - “Fiançailles pour rire” (Engagements for a Joke) by Poulenc. As she charmingly explained, these poems by Louise de Vilmorin run the gamut from the bizarre to nonsensical to macabre and are full of double entendres and multiple interpretations. Poulenc’s cabaret-influenced settings were expertly sung, showcasing a bright timbre, range of expression and open personality that were perfectly suited to these wonderful, yet little-known songs. Ms. Wormer’s skilled, moody interpretations also contributed to the odd magic of this set, her playing throughout the recital was authoritative, attentive, lively and sympathetic.

Ms. Durand then returned with two more elegant selections: ”Night” by Florence Price and Beach’s “The Years of the Spring”. Again I would have liked to have heard the Beach sung in a soprano key.

The first half closed with the famous duettino “Sull’ aria” for Countess Almaviva and Susanna from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. Vocally it was splendid, but there was too much distraction from dependence on the score to be as musically spellbinding. I also found the tempo to be a little fast, contradicting the nature of the conversation. It needed to sound more relaxed and dreamy.

After a brief intermission the duo sang another Mozart duet from his opera seria La Clemenza di Tito. Although a sprightly little piece, this selection did not ignite musically or dramatically, due to over-dependence on the score. It would have been more effective to simply stand, read and sing rather than attempting to act while having to constantly glance at the music. Ms. Durand continued with a uniquely intimate interpretation of “Quella Fiamma”, a familiar art song from the venerable “24 Italian Songs and Arias” collection that virtually every voice student and teacher has known, sung and taught for well over a century.

Ms. Wigle then presented a powerful version of a short and famous (by way of being very treacherous) aria by Puccini, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from his quasi-operetta La Rondine. No hint of terror here. Her bright voice soared fearlessly and effortlessly into the stratosphere, with a knockout high C. Brava. Donizetti’s “I Bevitori” (The Drinkers”) was a cute duet about being drunk from one of the composer’s forgotten operas, but it also suffered from a lack of memorization and some less than pristine duetting towards the end.

Ms. Wigle’s last solo was the beautiful and tender Dearest Mama from the mid-century American opera The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore. Here again her voice scaled easily all the way to high C-sharp, and she acted the moving text with energy and sympathy. Ms. Durand’s solos finished with an unusual but lovely choice “And This Is My Beloved,” from the classic 1950s musical Kismet. This work is unique in that all the tunes in the show were based on a collection of musical themes by the Russian Romantic composer Alexander Borodin.

The evening ended appropriately with the most famous of all duets for female voices, “The Flower Duet” from Delibes’ opera Lakmé. This duet was lovingly and pristinely sung, with pinpoint ensemble.

There was also a funny encore duet from the musical Spamalot: “The Song That Goes Like This,” and is a parody of a typical contemporary Broadway song. The audience loved it.

In summary this was everything you’d want a voice faculty recital to be.