Tamberg: Cyrano de Bergerac.(Opera Review)

TAMBERG: Cyrano de Bergerac

Huhta, Airenne; Korts, Tiilikainen, Zahharov, Elp; Orchestra and Chorus of the Estonian National Opera, Magi. Text and translation. CPO 999 832-2 (2)

Cyrano, it seems, is in the air. This season, as the Met produces Franco Alfano's sddom-heard opera Cyrano de Bergerac as a vehicle for Placido Domingo, Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn is at work on a new musical version of Rostand's beloved comedie heroique, and Michigan Opera Theatre's David Di Chiera has composed a new Cyrano opera, currently being orchestrated. Now CPO, the label that released a recording of the Alfano Cyrano last year, has issued a Cyrano by Estonian composer Eino Tamberg.

Tamberg, born in 1930, completed his Cyrano in 1974, and the opera has been produced at the Estonian National Opera House in 1976 and 1995. This recording, a coproduction of Estonian Radio and Estonian Record Productions, was made in 1999-2000 and features a number of the principals from the 1995 production.

Tamberg, perhaps Estonia's most esteemed contemporary composer, composes in a style that is neoclassic, accessible and tonal, epic in scope and feel, and sometimes passionately melodic; his vast experience in writing symphonic music brings rich atmospheric color to the tone painting underlining the vocal writing in his Cyrano. He is also a sympathetic composer for the voice. The tide role is particularly well written, and unlike Alfano's hero, Tamberg's Cyrano is a baritone, providing a contrast to the romantic tenor lead, Christian. Only in the famous balcony scene, in which Cyrano woos Roxane on behalf of the inarticulate Christian, is the disparity in timbre a dramatic hurdle. But the composer overcomes it with a treatment of the scene that builds magnificently.

The libretto and translation included by CPO are crucial here, as this Cyrano is sung in Estonian. (There is a small ...