"Rising Stars" Recital at St. Paul's: Good Singing, Playing Undone by Inappropriate Last-Minute Room Change

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Saturday, June 15) I went to a concert at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral billed as the “‘Rising Star’ Recital,” featuring three aspiring singers: soprani Lauren Carter and Elizabeth Gaitan and tenor Gonzalo Ochoa. The two women have been accepted for courses in advanced vocal study at a conservatory in Graz, Austria – I’d never heard Graz associated with classical music before and the only context I’d heard of the city is as the birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger – Carter in Lieder and Gaitan in opera. The concert was originally scheduled for the church’s upstairs room, the so-called “Great Hall” (a bit of a misnomer because it’s actually considerably smaller than the main chapel), but at the last minute the concert was moved to the main chapel. I thought that was a mistake because the echoey acoustics of the big room were just all wrong for what should have been an intimate recital with three singers and piano accompaniment – and the church’s music director, Martin Green, agreed with me. I asked him after the concert why it had been moved, and he said it was a last-minute decision by the church’s board. Martin was the accompanist and throughout the concert I often wondered whether the sound of his piano, given huge natural amplification by the building’s high vaulted ceiling, was going to drown out the singers. Martin too said he’d rather have held the concert in the Great Hall, not only because its acoustics would have been better but because the piano in that room is a good deal easier to play.

As for the singers, the two women overshadowed Gonzalo Ochoa, who had a boyish appearance and sounds like his voice has just changed. He was a sweet lyric tenor and did a good job with two Mozart arias, “Il mio tesoro” from Don Giovanni and “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön” from The Magic Flute. But Elizabeth Gaitan totally outsang him in their duets, “Wir wandeltan durch Feuersgluten” from The Magic Flute (in which the hero and heroine, Tamino and Pamina, congratulate themselves on having successfully passed the ordeals set for them by the high priest Sarastro and proved their worthiness for each other) and “Depuis l’instance” from Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment, a comic opera the Italian composer wrote in Paris in 1840 to a text in French. The concert began with its most raffish number and the only one composed in the 20th century (all the other pieces were by Mozart, Donizetti, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn’s highly talented sister, Fanny Hensel), the “Eifersuchtsduett” from the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht 1928 masterpiece, The Threepenny Opera. It’s a conversation between two London whores, each of whom insists she’s the true lover of gangster Macheath (better known as “Mack the Knife”), and Carter and Gaitan did some clever stage business with each other to add to the verisimilitude of the scene.

Then followed three excerpts from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, two of which are sung by the character Zerlina, whom Don Giovanni tried to seduce. Lauren Carter opened the group with “Vedrai, carino,” in which Zerlina comes upon her boyfriend Masetto, who’s just been beaten up by Don Giovanni disguised as his servant Leporello, and offers to bind his wounds. Then Ochoa came on to sing the lovely tenor aria “Il mio tesoro,” in which Don Ottavio, boyfriend of Donna Anna – another of Don Giovanni’s seduction victims, who’s angry that Don Giovanni murdered her father, the Commendatore, when he caught Don Giovanni trying to rape her – agrees to help her avenge her father’s death. Finally Elizabeth Gaitan came on for another of Zerlina’s arias, “Batti, batti, il bel Masetto,” in which Zerlina literally pleads to Masetto to beat her for having nearly succumbed to Don Giovanni’s advances. (It’s as creepy as it sounds.) Then came another triptych of arias from a Mozart opera, this one The Magic Flute. First Ochoa sings the so-called “portrait aria,” in which Tamino pledges his love for Pamina even though he’s never met her and all he’s seen of her is a miniature picture. Then Gaitan came back and sang “Ach, ich fühls,” in which Pamina briefly contemplates suicide after Tamino fails to recognize her or acknowledge her existence – not because he doesn’t care about her (he does), but because the monk Sarastro has made Tamino pledge not to say anything to anyone for a specified period. The group from The Magic Flute finished with Ochoa and Gaitan singing a duet about their joy at having passed Sarastro’s tests so they can be together.

Afterwards came a group of Lieder – German art songs – by Lauren Carter, whose haunting voice was the highlight of last April’s St. Paul’s performance of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem and was equally the highlight of last night’s concert. Three of the songs, “Suleika – West Wind,” “Warum sind denn die Rosen so blass” and “Nach Süden” – were by Felix Mendelssohn’s equally talented composer sister, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Their father told her not to pursue either writing or performing music as a career because it should be just an “ornament” to help her attract a man, but she was quite good and a number of her pieces were published under his name. Carter’s voice is more delicate than Gaitan’s and suited this music perfectly. Afterwards she and Ochoa duetted on a song by Robert Schumann, “In der Nacht.” The final numbers of the evening were three excerpts from Donizetti’s opera The Daughter of the Regiment: “Chacun le sait” by Gaitan, “Ah mes amis” by Ochoa (it’s the aria that made a star of Luciano Pavarotti when he performed it in 1972 and stunned audiences with a succession of nine high “C”’s, eight written by Donizetti and the ninth a traditional addition) and “Depuis l’instance” as a duet. The acoustics of the room didn’t help Gaitan – her coloratura sounded shrill and I’m sure it was the fault of the high ceiling rather than anything wrong with her voice – but still the excerpts were a good way to end the concert. No doubt it will be interesting to hear what happens to these three quite good young singers later on, but judging from what I heard last night Lauren Carter seems to have the best shot at a major career – though the two others were by no means slouches!