The drama, the humor, the diva

As I sat at the Ordway on Tuesday night, I wished I didn't have to review soprano Christine Brewer's Schubert Club International Artist Series recital. I didn't want to have to analyze, but just let that luxurious voice pour over me.

Brewer is a true dramatic soprano, but one whose huge instrument is warm and rich, never turning hard or steely.

She opened with "Divinités du Styx" from Gluck's opera "Alceste." There was majesty in her voice and her bearing that evoked the title character's cry to the gods, equal parts plaintive and rageful.

There had to be songs by Richard Strauss, the composer who is her bread and butter. In "Befreit" ("Relieved"), she used her soaring top to embody the transcendent release of a lover to death.

In "Wesendonck Lieder," Wagner set texts by Mathilde Wesendonck, his lover and the wife of one his patrons. Their passion inspired "Tristan und Isolde" and there are echoes here, but smaller. This was an opportunity for Brewer to demonstrate her mastery of the long legato line and the floated pianissimo.

Songs by Strauss contemporary Joseph Marx were not in their class, but were charming, evoking both Impressionism and operetta. This may have been Brewer's one misstep, her voice overwhelming the fragile pieces.

The real triumph of the evening was Britten's "Cabaret Songs," giving full vent to Brewer's skills as a comedienne. "Tell me the truth about love," to a wonderful text by W.H. Auden, was an homage to Cole Porter and laugh-out-loud funny.

It would not be out of line to call this a joint recital, so important was pianist Craig Rutenberg to Brewer's success. They seemed to breathe as one.

The evening concluded with songs, including ones by Idabella Smith Firestone and Sidney Homer (Samuel Barber's uncle), that had been encore pieces for singers like Kirsten Flagstad, Helen Traubel and Eleanor Steber. These delightful miniatures of a bygone era, taught to Brewer by her first singing teacher, were performed with great love and just the right degree of sentimentality.

This was one of the finest, and most enjoyable, recitals I have ever attended. Kudos to Schubert Club for engaging an artist who may lack the celebrity of, say, a Susan Graham or a Renee Fleming, but is every bit their artistic equal.