Beautifully sung stage roles demonstrated singer as born stage animal

FROM the moment the Swiss-born mezzo-soprano Alexandra Meier bounced on to the stage at Christ Church with a broad smile and dressed in an elegant all-in-one flame-coloured trouser suit, a perfect match for her red hair, we could tell that we were in for an exciting and entertaining morning.

The subject of this lecture/recital was to examine the special role played by the mezzo voice under the theme of “Vengeance, Follies and Growth: How opera has used the mezzo-soprano voice to tell coming-of-age stories”. One challenge for the mezzo singer is the requirement to play male roles; this can arise from a deliberate choice of the composer or when the role was originally written for a castrato voice, very common in operas from the 18th century.

To illustrate the overall theme, Alex gave us a number of arias for male roles, all deliberate choices by the composer — Sesto from Giulio Cesare by Handel (vengeance), Cherubino from Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart (follies), and Octavian from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss (growth).

To illustrate the female roles for the mezzo voice, Alex chose Olga (the sister of the heroine Tatyana) from Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky (follies), Mignon from Mignon by Ambroise Thomas (growth) and Charlotte from Werther by Massenet (growth).

These roles and arias covered a large range of emotions and characterisation — Sesto is angry, vowing to take revenge for the brutal murder of his father, the youthful Cherubino sings of love and is romantic, bubbly and energetic, while Octavian is wistful, singing of the love he shares with the older Marschalin.

Olga is cheerful and full of fun while Charlotte is melancholy to witness the death at his own hand of Werther, whose advances she had earlier rejected. Alex takes on these varying roles, fully embodying the character in each case. She is a born stage animal!

Vocally, Alex displayed a strong voice with good power in the lower register and an agile coloratura; she was fully competent in holding the long legato lines much favoured by Richard Strauss. She was given excellent support by Lucy Colquhoun on piano.

As part of her lecture Alex explained that the distinction between the soprano and mezzo voices only really arose in the 20th century, when previously only a “high female voice” was recognised. This leads neatly into the next Opera Prelude lecture/recital in May which examines the two voice types and the associated roles.

Robin John