Bravos for Von Stade

...There is no disentangling the burlesque fortunes of the aristocrats and nymphs and shepherds flocked anxiously around the temple of Diana at the time of the annual human sacrifice...

...Both sides of the disc end with selections by Offenbach...

...The subtle character she had created under Strehler would have been out of place in the broader, more disorganized Met production, where she had rightly adapted to the prevailing mood...

...Fortunately, von Stade has vigorously trained her splendid mezzo-soprano and today, following a few early years already rich in accomplishment, she is enjoying a luminous artistic maturity...

...in the duets, her firm mezzo-soprano lends smooth, handsome support...

...She very properly does not condescend to the material, but because much of it is shallow or pretentious, she tends to outclass it...

...she steered beautifully clear of hollow histrionics in bringing out his exaggerated, posturing ardor...

...In "Non piu di fiori" she glows no less brightly...

...von Stade unfurls them in rippling silken ribbons within her long-breathed and wide-ranging phrases...

...Her exquisite rendition of an abandoned mistress on the brink of drowning recalling her shattered love is suspended softly over the mournful instrumentation...

...On balance, it does not seem to deserve perpetuation, yet von Stade's Octavian is outstanding...

...But for La Perichole's song, "Quel diner je viens de faire," she joins to the deliberate distortions of rhyme her own trillings r's, a lolling air of contentment and a silly twinklemaking for an audible account of delicious drunkenness...

...The breathless "Non so piu" and the smooth-flowing "Voi che sapete" each displays the same dynamic and verbal detail one recalls from hearing her live...

...She does sing both his arias, however, on a recent recital disk made with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Edo de Waart (Phillips 9500 098...

...Although there is more in such a performance than records can capture, what records can capturefirst-rate voice, technique, musicianship, and interpretive sophistication is present in abundance...

...In expressing the young nobleman's total surrender to the wishes of his beloved Vitellia, and his turmoil at her cruel command to assassinate his best friend, the Emperor, the music suffuses this cardboard figure with a nimbus of heroism...

...It is no pleasure to listen to...

...It is surprising, therefore, that von Stade has not recorded the entire role of Cherubino...

...separately, each sings chamber music with a fine ensemble of instrumentalists...

...Von Stade sings "Dites-lui" from La Grande Duchesse de Golstein with the cloying opulence of a past-ripe grande -dame of the musical comedy stage...

...she sings with vibrant expression and musical refinement...

...She makes much of the role, and is by turns soaring and smoldering, hesitant and impetuous...

...Von Stade initially sprang to international attention in 1973 when Georg Solti, who had just become music director of the Paris Opera, invited her to sing the love-sick page Cherubino in his inaugural Nozze di Figaro...

...The wide intervals and grand phrases of her part, its pointed staccatos and demanding fioritura, hold no terrors for her...

...Despite the paucity of drama in the conventional and self-conscious text, von Stade follows the shifting keys and varying tessitura of the florid vocal line to reveal a subtle progression from noble pose through ghastly epiphany to jubilant heroic acceptance...

...On the other hand, two great arias from La clemenza di Tito show her blazing with fire and panache...

...Von Stade deploys her aristocratic vocal power in strong, lofty accents, displaying the fluency of her registers, the pliancy and grandeur of her instrument and her precision of dramatic shadings...

...In two perfumed ballads by Massenet and Thomas, she evokes the same heartache and longing as Goethe does in the novels they derive from...

...Parto, parto" belongs to Sesto (a role written for the castrato Domenico Bedim but sung by women now, our century taking a less casual view of nonsymbolic forms of emasculation...

...With the Paris Opera, her Cherubino had a precisely observed boyish awkwardness...

...Sadly, her efforts are largely wasted: Ruth Welting (Sophie) cannot similarly enhance the soprano lines...

...Still, closing open vowels, aspirating plosives and voicing unvoiced consonants are flaws...

...In ensembles, she offers the same deep musicality and attention as in her solos...

...Singing "Voi che sapete" cherubino's list of his symptoms and request for the ladies who hear to diagnose his erotic disarray- von Stade stood immobile and sad-eyed, issuing questions she pronounced not as mere Petrarchan commonplaces but as proceeding from the heart's honest confusion...

...Lavishing gorgeous vocalism on Meyerbeer pyrotechnics, pretty nothings by Gounod and bespangled banalities of Massenet, she manages to draw enchantment from them...

...Of the Rossini selections, two are bravura showpieces calling for extensive coloratura embellishment on simple melodies...

...Her records will be the main concern here, but first, a bit of historical background...

...Even more impressive is the haunting Willow Song from Rossini's rarely performed Otello...

...The Rosenkavalier recreates last year's staging at the Holland Festival...

...But if she had, she would now be about ready to follow the inglorious path of countless young singers possessing fine voices who, ignorant of their craft, fired by sheer ambition, have paid for their premature and artificial fame with the irreversible ruin of their vocal equipment...

...In its entirety a dramatically stiff sequence of romantic and political intrigues at the imperial court of Rome, the neglected opera seria of Mozart's maturity contains high and formal set pieces that individually constitute sharp vignettes...

...This rondo finds Vitellia, previously utterly without scruples, at last resolving to take responsibility for the calamities her schemes have caused...

...The other operatic recordings where von Stade can be heard are the full-length La fedeltd premiata by Haydn, conducted by Antal Dorati (Phillips 6707 028), and Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, under Edo de Waart (Phillips 6707 030...

...The score sparkles from first note to last, though, and von Stade's fresh, vivacious portrayal is among the chief ornaments of a most welcome performance...

...Von Stade's more important individual contribution is unquestionably the sombre "Chanson Peretuelle" (accompanied by piano and string quartet...

...The mellow beauty of her ample voice, scaled to intimacy yet in crystal focus, softly filled the enormous house, and her lovely, cultivated phrasing conveyed to perfection Mozartean spirit and grace...

...Zerlina's "Vedrai carino" does not come off: As in the theater, von Stade sings it with honeyed refinement and no ginger...

...Although she subsequently performed the role to great applause with the Metropolitan Opera Company, it was not until three years later, when the Paris Opera brought its production of Figaro to the Met stage, that New Yorkers could fully appreciate how bewitching she must have been in France...

...On it, the ladies divide the spotlight in duets by Schumann and Brahms...

...Staged by the great Giorgio Strehler, the production premiered with a gala at Versailles, and amid the general jubilation von Stade was singled out for her musical and dramatic excellence...

...she paints a moving and eerie picture of the woman's neurotic surrender to death...

...The close miking prompts the observation that at times she seems to have learned her Italian on the Berlin-Vienna axis...

...The clarity of her voice tinged with sorrow, von Stade spins out the limpid strains of the song with pianissimos that float just this side of silence, then swell with heart-rending fullness, and die away in a hush...

...It is a performance to treasure...

...The Phillips disc also includes three other arias by Mozart and three by Rossini...

...She seems destined for the Composer in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, Clairon in his Capriccio, Gluck's Orfeo, and any number of Handel's heroes and heroines, to say nothing of the inexhaustible recital and concert literature...

...In the Haydn work, she is Amaranta, "a vain and arrogant lady" (the libretto says) who-no, I won't even try...

...disguised as the maid Mariandl, she sounds mawkish (which is part of the act) and touching (which usually is not) all at once, and she does not attempt, as do most Octavian/Mariandls, to make herself amusing by caterwauling...

...And her lush, romantic treatment of Berlioz' versions of Goethe and Shakespeare exactly fulfills the composer's musical conceptions...

...And much as there is to look back on, there is a great deal to look forward to...

...There are gaps in Frederica von Stade's discography...

...One hopes the record industry will catch up with her Penelope in Monteverdi's Il ritomo di Ulisse in patria, her Dorabella in Mozart's Cost fan tutte, her Melisande in Debussy's Pelleas, her work in Mahler's 4th Symphony, and her complete Sesto and Cherubino...

...Their best duet is Brahms' "Wege der Liebe (II)," but the entire Brahms group succeeds very well, as does the Schumann (particularly the lilting syncopations of "Botschaft...

...On another recent recital disc (Columbia M 34206), von Stade (accompanied by the London Philharmonic under John Pritchard) turns to the French operatic literature of the 19th century...

...Since Germany and Austria have produced many of the foremost Mozar-teans of recent generations, their pronunciation amounts almost to a tradition...

...A soprano who can is the silver-voiced Judith Blegen, who shared von Stade's first recital disc (Columbia 33307...