Never mind the so-so programme – Barton’s is a voice in a million
Jamie Barton comes on strong, and it’s hard not to be bowled over. Unabashed about her bisexuality, feminism and “body positivity”, with a warm and open personality to match her generous figure, this 38-year-old American mezzo-soprano won the crown at the 2013 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and scored a hit at this year’s Last Night of the Proms.
Although she’s already become a big star at the Met, she hasn’t yet had much chance to shine at Covent Garden. But if her singing in this recital is anything to go by, it shouldn’t be long before she does.
For hers is a voice in a million, full, flexible and even throughout the range, rich in colours and needlesharp in projection. Beyond that, she has the gift of communicating music simply and directly, without phoniness or hauteur. Even though her fan club was clearly out in force at the Wigmore Hall, applauding every number, she never pandered to them or played to the gallery. She sings sincerely, from the heart; she’s got the joy.
But her programme was a little disappointing, and short measure (we were out on the street, after only one encore, by 9.10pm). Its intention, Barton explained, was to celebrate women and the “genius” of the composing sisterhood. Was this wise? Up against the white heat of music by Richard Strauss, Haydn, Chausson and Ravel, the latter phenomenon was not evident, even if Elinor
Remick Warren and Amy Beach produced pleasantly mellifluous parlour songs and Attente by Lili Boulanger (Nadia’s little sister, who died tragically young) is a miniature gem.
Libby Larsen ambitiously describes her cycle Love after 1950 as “the new women’s Frauenliebe und Leben”. The five settings of verse by contemporary female poets are good fun, wry in tone and couched in an eclectic style that embraces vague atonality, Broadway and jazz, but comparing them to Schumann does them no favours. There’s music to be enjoyed here – and the excellent Kathleen Kelly made much of the scintillating piano part – but hyperbolic words like genius should be kept at bay.
Barton proved her chops more persuasively in a thrillingly vivid performance of Haydn’s cantata of male treachery Arianna a Naxos, and freshly minted interpretations of two standards – Chausson’s Phidylé, sung with gorgeous hazy sensuality, and Strauss’s rapturous Cäcilie. Wild whooping and whistling from the fans led to Over the Rainbow, delicately and unaffectedly done. But we were left wanting more.