{"id":36676,"date":"2016-05-04T13:34:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T17:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=36676"},"modified":"2016-05-05T09:50:13","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T13:50:13","slug":"scrutiny-anita-rachvelishvili","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/05\/04\/scrutiny-anita-rachvelishvili\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | A Force Of Nature: Anita Rachvelishvili In Recital"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"COC
COC Vocal Series: Anita Rachvelishvili, mezzo; Stephen Hargreaves, piano. (Photo: Lara Hintelmann )<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

COC Vocal Series: Anita Rachvelishvili, mezzo; Stephen Hargreaves, piano at Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, Four Seasons Centre. Tuesday.<\/h3>\n

One of the happiest occasions of the COC spring season is the presence of two great mezzo-sopranos, in town to share the role of Carmen, currently on stage at the Four Seasons Centre. Not only are opera fans able to catch them on stage as the Gypsy, they have the opportunity to hear them in recital.\u00a0 French mezzo Cl\u00e9mentine Margaine blew everyone away last week with her gleaming vocalism and stage allure in a noon hour recital at the RBA.\u00a0 Today was the turn of Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Rachvelishvili had just graduated from the Accademia dell Scala, La Scala\u2019s training ground for young artists. \u00a0She was immediately handpicked by Daniel Barenboim to take on this most demanding of roles to open the new season on December 7th<\/sup>. That\u2019s enough to strike fear in the heart of any young artist, given La Scala is arguably the toughest opera house in the world when it comes to audience approval. \u00a0Even great stars the likes of Pavarotti and Fleming had been on the receiving end of the wrath of the loggionisti.<\/em>\u00a0 But not Rachvelishvili \u2014 she was only met with bravos and a rain of flowers at her debut.<\/p>\n

Proving her success was no fluke, the young mezzo has gone on to establish herself as one of the finest young singers in front of the public today.\u00a0 COC was lucky to engage her immediately after her La Scala success, in three performances of Carmen back in the spring of 2010. In 2014, she returned as Dulcin\u00e9e in Don Quichotte<\/em>. This is her third engagement with the COC.<\/p>\n

Simply put, the Rachvelishvili mezzo is a force of nature.\u00a0 One rarely encounters a voice of such volume. I\u2019ve heard some very big voices in nearly fifty years of going to live performances, among them Regine Crespin, Gwyneth Jones, and Ghena Dimitrova. Rachvelishvili is at least equal to if not bigger than those ladies when it comes to pure decibels. As she amply demonstrated today, the Georgian isn\u2019t all about power \u2013 she has a lovely piano as part of her vocal arsenal. It\u2019s also a truly opulent sound, well focused, with great dramatic power when called upon to do so.<\/p>\n

She began with two songs by Georgian composer Otar Taktakisvili. \u201cThe Sun of October\u201d is somber and sad; \u201cMother of God\u201d is all of that but also intense. I\u2019ve noticed with big voices like hers, there\u2019s often some initial heaviness, with an excessively pronounced vibrato.\u00a0 In her case, it disappeared after warm up.\u00a0 She also spoke charmingly to the audience in near-perfect English. She sang the Rachmaninoff songs with gorgeous tone, delicately, making sure her big voice did not overwhelm the songs. Marvelous was the well-known \u201cNe poi, krasavica,\u201d an absolute gem. She also mentioned this song is about Georgia.\u00a0 Too bad the ecstatic \u201cVesenniye vodi\u201d (Spring Waters) \u2013 my favourite Rachmaninoff, was not on the program, which surely would have been stunning. O well\u2026<\/p>\n

Two Faur\u00e9 songs followed. Very lovely was \u201cApres un reve,\u201d sung with a melting mezza voce. The opening piano accompaniment of \u201cFleur jet\u00e9e\u201d is almost like Schubert\u2019s Erkonig!\u00a0 A true singer-friendly collaborative pianist, Stephen Hargreaves was once again exemplary. Excellent communication between the pianist and the soloist throughout. I should mention that Rachvelishvili used the score placed on a music stand, referring to it occasionally. Given that she\u2019s primarily an opera singer who rarely gives recitals, it\u2019s understandable.<\/p>\n

The last group was the Siete Canciones populares Espanolas<\/em> by de Falla, also programmed by Cl\u00e9mentine Margaine.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to hear both interpretations, which I find actually not that different. Both captured the inherent earthiness in the music and the text. Margaine sang it marginally more lightly, particularly the last song, \u201cPolo.\u201d Here, Rachvelishvili briefly dipped into an astonishingly powerful chest voice the likes of which I had not heard before from any female opera singer. \u00a0Following a huge ovation, she sang \u201cMon Coeur\u201d from Samson et Dalila<\/em>, a role she\u2019s going to sing very soon. The audience wouldn\u2019t let her go, and the last encore was \u201cSeguidilla,\u201d even more beautifully than I remembered on opening night.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Want more updates on Toronto-centric classical music news and review\u00a0before anyone else finds out? Get our exclusive newsletter\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili offers an afternoon to remember with gleaming vocalism and stage allure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":36679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,76,19,52],"tags":[4648,5822,5913,6119],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/05\/May03RBA8_copy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-9xy","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36676"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36683,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36676\/revisions\/36683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36676"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=36676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}