One of the highlights of the recently completed national convention of NATS – the National Association of Teachers of Singing – was the recital presented Sunday night by one of America’s most celebrated baritones, Nathan Gunn, with his gifted wife Julia accompanying him on the piano. Nathan Gunn has been a major star at the Met, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and on opera, concert and recital stages around the world. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him at the Lyric in The Pearl Fishers, Sweeney Todd, Billy Budd and The Barber of Seville. . . at the St. Louis Opera in the title role of Ambroise Thomas’s opera Hamlet. . . in Met movie theater simulcasts of The Magic Flute and Romeo & Juliet. . . and with a couple of different recordings he’s made. In fact, his album of American arts song, titled “American Anthem,” earned one of the most enthusiastic reviews I’ve ever written for the Journal of Singing. I also had the great pleasure of doing a lengthy phone interview with him for WGTD, just ahead of him soloing in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the Milwaukee Symphony. In short, I am a very big fan of this singer – and I was thrilled at the prospect of finally getting to see him in recital. (Marshall had seen him a few years ago in recital and absolutely raved about it, so my expectations were sky-high.)
I created the headline “Nathan Naked” for a couple of reasons beyond good old fashioned attention-grabbing. It was inspired in part by some comments I overheard from a couple of my fellow voice teachers at the convention, who were talking amongst themselves about how much they would like it if Mr. Gunn sang his recital shirtless, given how he has one of the very best physiques in the business – a physique which ends up being shown off in many of the opera productions in which he appears. No, I should not have been eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help it, especially because these were a couple of middle-aged women who at a glance were perfectly proper, fine and upstanding voice teachers making such comments . . . which of course made their comments all the more amusing.
But mostly I’m using the term “naked” to refer to the stark simplicity of the typical recital. I don’t mean simplicity in the sense of it being in any way easy, but rather the simplicity of presentation in which a singer is onstage with a pianist – wearing his or her own clothes rather than any sort of costume- without impressive scenery or special effects to entertain the eye. It’s just the singer and their accompanist, in a performance about as low-tech and straightforward as it was when such recitals were first sung hundreds of years ago. In a sense it’s the absolute acid test for a singer who has nothing to hide behind nor anything to bolster their impact on the audience. It’s roughly akin to an entirely acoustic performance by a folk musician or country western singer, or a jazz singer doing torch songs to piano accompaniment. In an intimate setting, it’s the perfect sort of music-making. . . but in front of an audience of a thousand people or more? The singer had better have something very special to say.
By that gauge, Mr. Gunn’s recital began a bit tepidly but ended triumphantly, and when you’re singing for an audience of voice teachers and singers, that is no small feat. The first half of his recital featured him in five songs by Franz Schubert followed by the 16-part song cycle “Dichterliebe.” His sound was unfailingly gorgeous and he deployed his voice with beautiful musicality. But when it came to actually conveying what these songs meant, and especially when it came to conveying the passionate joys and wrenching sorrows of the Schumann, his singing almost never rose about the level of pleasant generalities. But in the second half, when he was singing in English, we were treated to singing on an entirely different level. Even here, the pretty songs sounded a little too much alike- but the pieces calling for gusto or humor were filled with personality – and his last encore, “If ever I would leave you,” was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful and expressive performances I’ve ever heard in my life, and a potent reminder to all of us there of why Nathan Gunn is such a highly regarded singer.
It was a treat to be the same room with this wonderful artist and to be able to soak up his exquisite sound in person – but the performance was also an important lesson for me as a voice teacher who next year will be preparing a number of students to sing recitals. . . and will (I hope) be singing a solo recital of my own at the beginning of the school year. It can be tempting to play it safe on the recital stage and to make pretty sounds your top priority. But experiencing Mr. Gunn’s recital was something of a wakeup call for me by calling to mind the importance of saying something when you sing. Even for Nathan Gunn, whose voice is as beautiful as any singer on the planet, wonderful sounds are not quite enough. We as listeners want to be moved and stirred. We want to feel what the singer is feeling, from the soaring heights to the despairing depths, almost as though we were up on that stage with them, immersed in the same musical journey.
Only then does the world truly stands still.
pictured above: Nathan and Julia Gunn accept the audience’s standing ovation at the end of their recital.