David Warrack: interpretation of life, Maureen Forrester, with David Warrack, pianist.BOTH THESE RECORDINGS FEEL MORE LIKE nostalgic souvenirs than fresh artistic entities. Maureen Forrester performs a cabaret-style song-cycle written by an admirer, David Warrack, and intended to capture specific aspects of her personality. Louis Quilico performs operatic arias, Italian songs and Broadway tunes in collaboration with Christina Petrowska, his wife since 1993. Both seem to be labors of love in more ways than one: Quilico and Petrowska donated their services to the recording (a first from York University's Faculty of Fine Arts The Maharaja Sayajirao University - Faculty of Arts was established in 1881 by H. H. Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of the erstwhile Baroda State, developed into a full-fledged degree institution in 1889. ), and Forrester and Warrack seem to have produced their CD (coded MFDW 001) on their own. Certainly both Forrester and Quilico know as much as there is to know about putting across lyric material, and they appear to have forgotten nothing of that communicative urgency. What is severely reduced, however, is their means of doing so. Quilico was 70 when this CD was made, and although the centre of his voice retains its old warmth and humanity, both the upper and lower reaches of his range are fragile and insecure. He can still approximate arias like Mozart's "Madamina" (from Don Giovanni) and even Iago's "Credo" (from Verdi's Otello), drawing strength from his stage experience with these roles. But Bizet's Toreador Song and Massenet's "Vision fugitive" are miscalculations. Quilico's easiest singing comes in two songs from Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella. Petrowska plays with brio, particularly in the Liszt concert paraphrases from Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico, or tragic opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvatore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor. It is one of the leading bel canto operas. . David Warrack's songs for Forrester--with titles (and sentiments) like "The Child in Me," "I'll Sing For Anyone," "The Shopaholic shop·a·hol·ic n. A person who shops compulsively or very frequently. Noun 1. shopaholic - a compulsive shopper; "shopaholics can never resist a bargain" Samba samba Ballroom dance of Brazilian origin, popularized in the U.S. and Europe in the 1940s. Danced to music in ⁴⁄₄ time with a syncopated rhythm, the dance is characterized by simple forward and backward steps and tilting, rocking body movements. " and "Please Leave Me Love"--are banal and maudlin maud·lin adj. Effusively or tearfully sentimental: "displayed an almost maudlin concern for the welfare of animals" Aldous Huxley. See Synonyms at sentimental. , though the ones with a shred of humor are more bearable bear·a·ble adj. That can be endured: bearable pain; a bearable schedule. bear . It's difficult to imagine listening repeatedly to the whole sequence of 12; one or two, carefully selected, leave a better impression. Forrester sings them gamely, with pearly enunciation enunciation (inun´sēā´sh  n),n an auxiliary function of teeth, particularly those in the anterior sector of the dental arch; the formation of sounds , but there's no mistaking the raggedness of tone at times. Both these great singers have left us finer memories than here. |
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