CONCERTS AND RECITALS: NEW YORK CITY.(Avery Fisher Hall, New York, New York)(Review)

Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra, who gave us Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae a while back, came up with another blockbuster concert performance, Ernest Chausson's Le Roi Arthus, on February 4 at Avery Fisher Hall. Arthus (1903) is a major testament of French Wagnerism, a genre that also produced Alberric Magnard's Guercoeur, Cesar Franck's Hulda, Emmanuel Chabriers Gwendoline and Vincent d'Indy's Fervaal. Little was heard of any of these after World War I. Chausson wrote his own libretto, based on Arthurian legend but running a perilously close parallel to Tristan und Isolde. Lancelot and Genievre (Guenevere) are the guilty lovers, with Arthus (King Arthur) the Marke of the piece. In Chausson's view, however, Arthus is the central and most sympathetic figure, while the remorseful lovers come to a bad end.

According to Richard Langham Smith's entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Chausson was well aware of the danger of writing too Wagnerian music to such a Wagnerian subject, but he couldn't help himself. The musical vocabulary engendered by Bayreuth was in the air of the time, just as Haydn's vocabulary was in Mozart's day. "Despite the resemblances," Smith notes, "Chausson's work has a strength of its own. For one thing, it contains many elements that are far from Wagnerian" -- he cites the personal use of harmony, the absence of leitmotifs, the massed choral effects.

Botstein had arrayed formidable forces: an augmented orchestra (four harps, for example, and an antique tuba), the Concert Chorale of New York spread three deep across the rear of the stage. It was an all-stops-out presentation, and the absence of a pit left the orchestra fully exposed, at the expense of the singers, but Botstein has a knack for picking soloists who can hold their own. Despite potential disaster -- the loss of his protagonist, baritone Russell Braun, on short notice -- the conductor had an excellent understudy in Andrew Schroeder, originally cast as the villainous Mordred. Both Schroeder and the Lancelot, tenor Hugh Smith, showed the focused timbre and linear assurance for a work of epic scale. Soprano Nicolle Foland, though modest in lyric sound, managed by purposeful projection to suggest the dramatic sweep of Genievre's music. In his single scene as the magician Merlin, Francois Le Roux exemplified star quality with a baritone voice of character and the clearest diction in a generally well-coached cast. The role of Mordred, vacated by Schroeder's move to the title part, was secure in the charge of Jung-Hack Seo, another baritone of rounded tone and solid delivery. Even the bit parts of Lyonnel (tenor Shawn Mathey), Allan (bass Don Yule) and a Laborer (tenor James Archie Worley), plus a few walk-ons, were sung with assurance and personality.

Alas, the libretto supplied for listeners offered the sort of gushy translation that doubles the word-count of an elegantly concise original. Botstein's conducting, on the other hand, let the work speak for itself. When grandiloquence was in order, he unleashed his forces: in sheer mass of sound, the long-winded choral finale was overwhelming. But he also moderated the flow when his soloists were scoring their own points. Above all, he inspired passion and enthusiasm -- on both sides of the footlights, as it were -- for this neglected school of music, which depends equally on bold oratory and suave coloration.

JOHN W. FREEMAN

[] Perrault writes of a maiden rewarded for good deeds with a torrent of pearls whenever she opens her mouth. Fairy-tale analogies have probably been exhausted in discussions of Cecilia Bartoli, yet this image recurred throughout the Italian mezzo's recital at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 20). The sounds pouring out of her are so magical, the pleasure she takes so seemingly innocent, that one forgets she's no babe in the woods, and she's worked hard to sing so well.

For this concert, announced on relatively short notice, she drew her program primarily from her CD, The Vivaldi Album [Decca 289 466 569-2; the following night, it won a Grammy]. Her collaborators on that album, Il Giardino Armonico, supported her here, too. The arias are ideal for her, not only because of her range and agility. She's the rare singer who understands that lyrics aren't an impediment to Baroque ornamentation. For her, ornamentation is a means of lingering over lyrics, of emphasizing meaning and mood. Vivaldi's librettos aren't great literature, but Bartoli approached every text with respect. The result, even in recital, was remarkably dramatic. In "Sposa son' disprezzata" from Il Tamerlano, she turned six lines of text into a mini-opera, a richly emotional portrait of a faithful wife whose husband thinks she's wronged him.