Thomas Pasatieri: Monologues (Before Breakfast / Lady Macbeth)

For the longest time, Thomas Pasatieri was known as a prominent contemporary composer, primarily of vocal music -- art songs, choral works, and primarily opera. By April 2009, Pasatieri has composed 20 operas that were well-known in the theater, but not known at all on recordings. Producer John Ostendorf and Albany Records have steadily been rectifying this situation, starting with Pasatieri's 2002 opera The Sea Gull and canvassing his worklist for practical and appealing projects. In Pasatieri's operatic world, the diva is queen, and Albany's Pasatieri Monologues pairs him for the second time -- the first was the Albany disc Frau Margo -- with an ideal diva in soprano Lauren Flanigan. Extremely versatile, Flanigan is able to sing her heart out, yet maintain character in two very different Pasatieri projects, the short opera Before Breakfast (1980), written for Beverly Sills but not sung by her, and the monodrama Lady Macbeth (2007), which was specifically designed with Flanigan in mind.

This recording was made in conjunction with Voices of Change, a new music ensemble based in Dallas, TX, where the premiere of Lady Macbeth was given in September 2008; Joseph Illick leads the Voices of Change Chamber Orchestra in the first work and provides piano accompaniment in the second. Recorded at Dallas' Saint Andrew Methodist Church, the whole album is quite distant and at some points Flanigan's voice drops below a level where it is comfortable to hear, which is a little surprising as she has such a big voice. Pasatieri's music closely follows the content of the text and is by its nature so unobtrusive upon the drama that it seems to fall short of making its own statement, and while it lacks strong, memorable kinds of themes, it does succeed in providing support for the on-stage action. During Before Breakfast, one wishes to see Flanigan in the costume of the front cover delivering the piece, adapted from Eugene O'Neill and featuring an ordinary housewife, preparing breakfast and conversing with an offstage husband who is never seen. Lady Macbeth, as a song cycle, requires less imagination, but seems the stronger of the two pieces; while Pasatieri's style is often cited for its accessibility, its nebulousness and unwillingness to commit to distinct kinds of textures -- and for that matter, tunes -- which places it in the same boat with academic composers whose music Pasatieri is sometimes cited as a reaction against. However, with imagination one can imagine these pieces might be rather effective in the concert hall; given the distant sound of the recording, one will need to crank it up and imagine hard indeed in making this Albany recording deliver its intended cargo.