Customer Reviews

Dawn Upshaw: The World So Wide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great album. No one but Dawn Upshaw is so original and fresh. She tackles these amazingly difficult pieces and always does a great job. Unfortunately, the Amazon people listed the tracks incorrectly. Here are the real tracks:

1. Laurie's Song ... 2. This is Prophetic ... 3. What a Movie ... 4. Oh Yemanja (Mother's Prayer) ... 5. Willow Song ... 6. Lonely House ... 7. Give Me Some Music ... 8. Ain't it a Pretty Night

On reflection, it's amazing that Dawn Upshaw has made a major career for herself without recording a note of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, or Strauss. She's far from being a bread-and-butter soprano, as this marvelous colleciton of mostly obscure arias from mostly obscure American operas displays. The title aria form copland's The Tender Land sets the overall tone of rapt, romatnic charm. Her voice is too light to sing Barber's Celopatra onstage, but it works well in the studio, and the more popsy numbers, such as Delilah's big song from Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, call on Upshaw's excellent crossover skills. Another revelation is how good Joh Adams's Nixon in China music sounds when performed expressively by a major artist.

Renee Fleming released a similar collection on Decca ("I Want Magic"), but the two CDs couldn't be more different. Upshaw is touching, informal, spontaneous, and charming. Fleming tires for the big effects, boosting the music (not too successfully) into the ralms of grand opera.

In all, I'm deeply grateful for every unusual program Upshaw delivers. Now that there are more than a dozen of them, we can see how beautifully she has managed a career devoted to music that few other major stars come close to trying.

"Beautiful" has pretty much gone out of fashion as a much abused and now empty word. And yet, I can't think of a word that would more accurately describe Dawn Upshaw's "The World so Wide." It is just that: sheer beauty. The incredible dynamic range of Upshaw's voice is a perfect match for this thoughtful selection of stylistically very different, and demanding contemporary pieces. Going from ironic, witty grit of Bernstein's "What a movie," to poignant restraint of "Mother's Prayer," and softly romantic exuberance of Moore's "Willow Song," this brilliant this CD doesn't disappoint for even a moment. In its last piece, Floyd's "Ain't it a Pretty Night," where Upshaw sings, literally, to the stars, she seems to effortlessly soar just as high. A great CD, it is indeed "all velvet and diamonds."

Upshaw is a real favorite with many aficionados of twentieth-century music because of her adventurousness in tackling the modern repertoire and for her sensitivity in interpretation. In recent years, however, she's veered from the tact and discipline that informed her beautiful rendition of Barber's "Knoxville" and has instead given way to some incredibly irritating affectations, including a bizarrely distorting overenunciation of consonants and swooping when she reaches certain notes. Unfortunately these tendencies mar her performance on the disc of what should be a signature piece for her, Adams's exquisite aria for Pat Nixon, "This is prophetic!" On the recording of NIXON IN CHINA, Carolann Page gives a far more tactful and heartbreaking rendition of this aria than Upshaw, who whoops and swoops through it to oddly overstated effect.

Upshaw is far more successful on this disc on the more theatrical pieces: she handles the Willow Song from BALLAD OF BABY DOE admirably, giving it the drama it needs, and she's pretty funny in her rendition of Bernstein's showstopping "What a movie!" from TROUBLE IN TAHITI (though again here the overenunciation of consonants makes her sound at times like Julie Andrews). Her decision to record Weill's "Lonely Town," a song for tenors, is a bit strange, but she handles it very movingly.

The music on this CD is very beautiful and represents a wide variety of American opera. Dawn Upshaw does tend to scoop every now and then, but overall she does a good job. I would recommend this CD to anyone who enjoys opera.

This is not one of my favorite Dawn Upshaw albums, mainly because of the choice of music. The selections, generally, are quite dark and often lack lyrical continuity, which certainly has nothing to do with Upshaw. However, as a lost art form, they are still quite worth recording, but don't expect an easy-listening experience or to be humming the tunes around the house as is the case with Upshaw's broadway albums. That being said, Upshaw does a fantastic job with this selection of music, though she is a bit bright at times. The album is worth buying simply for the recording of the "Willow Song" from the Ballad of Baby Doe. Upshaw's interpretation is wonderful and the voice is obviously well-suited to the piece. In fact, I'm tempted to prefer her version over Beverly Sills' original. Bernstein's "What a Movie" shows Upshaw at her funniest-a great piece. And, as usual, one is amazed by her fantastic technique, which makes up for the brightness in the voice.

I used to be a huge Dawn Upshaw fan back when she put out her first few recordings. But, now she is one of my very least favorite singers. Why? The excessive nasality, the ridiculous swooping, and the overdone ...mannerisms. On top of that, she has lost the roundness in her upper register (as evidenced by places in Ain't it a Pretty Night). This music doesn't need someone to treat it like a cabaret showtune to be effective, it just needs to be beautifully sung. Once upon a time, I thought Ms. Upshaw was just the person to do this kind of performance...

I realize that there are diehard Upshaw fans out there that will completely disagree with me. This is just a warning to those that dislike this sort of approach to singing.