Ben Heppner
Ben Heppner, tenor
John Hess, piano
Four Seasons Centre on Saturday
One of the glorious voices of the 20th century has somehow not made it into the 21st despite a residual prestige still able to fill seats and to command a near-dogged loyalty among its large public.
Tenor Ben Heppner, 54, still has his stalwart, boyish charismatic presence, his endearing sweet temper and his nimble, unassuming wit - all those humanizing traits that once were only a bonus to the radiance of his musical and vocal gifts, though they got us firmly onto his side even before he sang a note. It was always reassuring to discover that so towering a talent could inhabit so fundamentally decent a man.
Before Heppner's modestly programmed song recital for the Canadian Opera Company, Saturday at the Four Seasons Centre, I had not heard him live since January of 2002, in an operatic recital in Roy Thomson Hall. On that occasion he was able to manage barely half of his intended program before repeated crumblings of his vaulting vocal line forced him to apologize to the audience, leave the platform and suspend the recital. Fond hearts broke to see an idol so reduced.
The vocal catastrophe was soon rationalized. Word went round that its causes could be laid at the door of a high-blood-pressure medication. A period of rest and vocal rehabilitation had restored the voice. Heppner returned to his punishing regimen of Tristans, Lohengrins, Otellos, Aeneases and Grimeses in the great opera houses of the world.
But Saturday, again in Toronto in altogether less gruelling material - songs of Grieg, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky - the great voice came unstuck again. Repeated curious lapses in the vocal line, which suddenly and unpredictably bent it out of shape, seemed like a regression to the problems of 2002. Heppner became absorbed in controlling the lapses, the listener began dreading them, and in this double process the essence of the song too often vanished.
This is not to say there were no beauties still to be savoured. Buoyed by his piano partner John Hess's delicate and perceptive accompaniments in Grieg's delicious six German songs, Opus 48, Heppner managed the fourth one, The Discreet Nightingale - intended for a woman's voice - with lightness and grace, and rose to the intensities of the sixth, A Dream.
Of the seven Sibelius Swedish-language songs, again ideally accompanied, perhaps the best two were those from Opus 17. In Lost, Heppner employed adroitly a delicate, narrative quasi-parlando style within an impeccably tuneful melody. In the beautiful In the Evening he exhibited a sure grasp of the elusive Nordic idiom. He also captured the darkening cumulative drama of the second of four songs chosen from Opus 37 - The Girl Returned from Meeting Her Lover. Of the final two songs, both from Opus 36, the more lovely Sigh, sigh, rushes faltered in spite of a perfectly placed final mid-range note, so the more successful was that Sibelian warhorse, the rather simplistic yet oddly thrilling Black Roses, whose climax the consummate actor in Heppner fulfilled.
The fluid first of his six Tchaikovsky songs - It was in the early spring - reminded us that Heppner's is really a lyric tenor, though cast in heroic mould. The fourth, that poster song of Tchaikovskyan depression best known as None but the Lonely Heart, reminded us that he can "do" tragedy. But the final song, Whether Day Dawns, was remarkable more for Hess's splendid projection of the final piano peroration than for Heppner's singing which, despite its real but patchy virtues, was ever more frequently blemished.
The final group of the afternoon, programmed as "Opera Arias to be announced from the stage," foundered after only two - O Souverain, O juge, O Père from Massenet's Le Cid, and Wintersturm, Siegfried's aria from Wagner's Die Walkure. The Massenet was extremely dishevelled. The Wagner was better until the final phrase, which simply disintegrated. A dreadful Tosti song thrown into the mix eased nothing. The singer confessed he was having troubles and left the platform with his superb piano collaborator, and with some remnants of his natural dignity, to a spotty standing ovation from his ardent loyalists.
I warrant there was not a single person in the packed hall who had not desired Heppner's complete success in this recital. But desire can survive only so long in the face of discouraging realities.