Vocal Scene in Wellington: Daniel O'Connor in Recital

I work with AM at Uni. Her son, Daniel O’Connor is a bass-baritone who is going to be starting his fourth year of undergraduate studies next year. This was his End of Year Recital, his final exam, if you will. He is also in the opera chorus so I have seen him on stage in Lucia and Turandot and he was in Purcell’s King Arthur last year and had a nice solo in that work in which he excelled. He also is tall and good looking and handled himself well in KA and indeed in this recital.

He had an ambitious program. It was as follows:

A three-song song cycle by Ravel: “Don Quichotte et Dulcinee”

Two arias from Don Giovanni: Leporello’s catalogue aria and the Don’s serenade to Elvira’s maid in act 2.

Schubert’s Die Wetterfahne

“But who may abide the day of his coming” from The Messiah

The [very lovely] song cycle by Douglas Lilburn, Sings Harry

Let me say that he really sang well. The Ravel songs which I did not know are tricky and I was particularly taken with the last two. The catalogue aria was well done and his strong voice arched through the graceful lines and made a lovely impression. I cannot recall what I thought of the Schubert--- it has been too long now. My favorite moment in the recital (along with the latter two Ravel songs) was the Lilburn song cycle. Lilburn’s idiom owes something to Sibelius and, lovely and honest, it possesses a directness that is similar to Calisle Floyd’s (as in Susannah) though the harmonic choices are different. The poems track very loosely the life of man as he grows up out in the country of the south island. Love is mentioned, his uncles, his father, the countryside and it ends with these words (I quote at some length here):

Then Uncle Jim was off to the wars
With a carbine at his saddle
And was killed in the Transvaal
I forgot in just what battle.

And Uncle Simon left the farm
After some wild quarrel,
Rolled his blanket
And rode off whistling on his sorrel.

My father held to the land,
Running good cattle there,
And I grew up like a shaggy steer
And as swift as a Hare
While the river ran down.

But that was long ago
When the hawk hovered over the hill
And the deer lifted their heads
And a boy lay still
By the river running down,
Sings Harry.

The piano writing and the poetry and beautiful masculine lines of the vocal writing created a situation where my eyes watered a little a bit and I was loving what I was hearing. Obviously at home with this music—he is a NZ young man after all--O’Connor brought this work to life. It is so wonderful, by the way, that this young man is able to communicate musically like this. I look forward to hearing him again.