Search - Richard [1] Strauss, Marc-Andre Hamelin :: Strauss: Enoch Arden

Enoch Arden

05/06/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It goes without saying (so why say it except for emphasis!) that John Vickers was among the greatest opera singers of all time. His bellowing voice proved a tremendous asset in his greatest roles, such as Florestan in Fidelio. But in Enoch Arden, his I-am-the-Voice-of-God approach and histrionic declamation is ill suited to the intimacies of the text and the music; after a short while, even the most discrete asides and eloquent rhetoric begin to sound pompous and bloated. Vickers was a grand singer, but his skills as an actor prove less than compelling here as he sinks into a kind of sing-song pattern throughout, with little if any variance of either mood or the characters portrayed. Though some may find it admirable that he takes no cuts, as the far superior union of Gould/Rains does, his decision to recite the entire 85 plus minutes is tiresome and unnecessary; it also compromises the interaction with the music.The recording quality suffers,too, as it was made in concert. Hamelin's piano playing comes off as glib, probably made all the more so by the watery underwater acoustics which the engineer did nothing to disavow. In fact, both volume and equalization are poorly controlled, and passagework drifts in and out like an unconscious person aroused from a coma. Vickers apology to the audience, following its applause, for having taken up so much of their time is inexplicably left on the CD, and suggests that he doesn't have too much faith either in the performance or in the piece itself. Our advice: Stick to the Gould/Rains disc, which is the classic in this piece. There are two new performances which we've heard great things about, but have not yet heard: one by famed actor Michael York and the other with another formidable but now retired singer, Benjamin Luxon. Stay tuned and we will report on these too."