Search - Frank Patterson :: Favourite Tenor Arias

For all Frank (Patterson, that is!) fans!

Malley Patrick Keelan | Lincoln, NE | 03/31/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of Mr. Patterson's least well-known recordings. Dating from the 1980s, he is in fine vocal estate as he essays various opera and oratorio arias. In fairness, the opera renditions suffer from the lack of a more robust approach and sound, with the exception of the Magic Flute piece. It is in the Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Berlioz oratorio selections that he shines. His sweet voice was that of an Irish bard, not an operatic military officer or libertine. In particular, his near-perfect French is used with great effect in the excerpt from The Enfant Christ, by Berlioz. I met Frank on a PBS broadcast in Lincoln in 1999, and he expressed to me his love of the music of Berlioz and Britten. He studied in Paris in the 1960s with soprano Janine Micheau. I hope the Colin Davis Philips recording of Berlioz' La Nuits d'Ete is re-issued sometime, with Frank, John Shirley-Quirk, Sheila Armstrong and Josephine Veasey. It is just superb. And his recording of Elizabethan lute songs and the Beethoven-arranged Irish folk songs. Until then, except for the "Concert Requests" on Brio CDs, there just isn't much from Frank's classical repertoire to hear. So, buy the Irish ballad CDs and enjoy again the sound of this silver-voiced tenor, now gone from us almost four years (June, 2000.)"