Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann :: Matthias Goerne - Arias

Possessor of one of today's most beautiful baritone voices, Matthias Goerne has been associated, on stage and disc, more with lieder than with opera. Listeners who were spellbound by the emotional impact of his performances of Schubert's great song cycles were amazed at the comic perfection of his Papageno in his Metropolitan Opera debut. This recording, on which he creates and impersonates nine vastly different characters from operas spanning three centuries, is an even bigger surprise. Using--but never abusing--an extraordinary range of vocal and expressive color and inflection, he captures Papageno's humor, Count Almaviva's malicious cunning, Don Giovanni's seductiveness, Wolfram von Eschenbach's inward, chaste devoutness, and Wozzek's yearning desperation and madness, with equally total involvement and conviction. Along the way there are also rarities: the Minstrel's heartbreaking lament from Humperdinck's Die Königskinder--unjustly neglected if the rest of the opera is indeed as beautiful as this aria--Harlekin's ironic ditty from Strauss's Ariadne; the Pierrot's sensuous dream-song from Korngold's Die tote Stadt; and the final, heroically dramatic section of Schumann's Scenes from Faust. Soprano Dorothea Röschmann, his partner in four duets, also takes on several greatly varied roles with admirable flexibility. A children's chorus and a women's chorus participate in one aria to lovely effect, and the orchestra is excellent. --Edith Eisler