photo by Carol Rosegg
Lauren Flanigan
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On March 2, as part of the Concerts & Conversations series at Elebash Recital Hall at the City University of New York Graduate Center, soprano Lauren Flanigan and friends-a company of remarkable women and one man, representing diverse artistic disciplines-offered an intriguing and intense evening, probing the "Solo: The Art of the Monodrama," subtitled "Wives, Daughters, Queens & Whores-Medieval Voices," with a focus on 20th and 21st century musical settings, which, unsurprisingly, proved a satisfyingly intellectual and emotional experience. Flanigan's colleagues here were pianist Miriam Charney, actor Ellen Lauren, percussionist Ana Lorenzo, and jazz singer Annie Ross and her pianist, Tardo Hammer.

Following Flanigan's opening remarks, defining monodrama, using such diverse sources as the dictionary, Wikipedia, and a psychological text, Ellen Lauren, portraying Virginia Woolf, in extracts from Jocelyn Clarke's play "Room," employing words of Woolf's own, expounded on "women and fiction [which] remain unsolved problems," insisted that "'A Room of One's Own' is not a luxury, but a necessity" and, later, explored Woolf's anxiety and her origins.

Flanigan and Charney performed Libby Larsen's "Try Me, Good King: the Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII" (2000) or, as Flanigan described the piece, the "gallows speeches of the first five wives of Henry VIII." The quintet of bleak, contrasting and eloquent farewells by these condemned women invariably contained both prayers for and indictments of the inconstant king. Katherine of Aragon's stark lament, addressed to "My most dear Lord, King, and Husband," included, pointedly, the sentiment, "I pardon you everything and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also." Giving the cycle its title, Anne Boleyn's vehement, explosive and high-lying opening cry of "Try me, good King"-cf. the Queen's angry "Giudici ad Anna," in the finale of Act One of Gaetano Donizetti's "Anna Bolena"-came from deep in her, and Flanigan's, very being. She threw the king's own past, forgotten tender words back at him-"Do you not remember the words of your own true hand? 'My own darling ... I would you were in my arms ... for I think it long since I kissed you. My mistress and friend ...'"-prayed for the erring monarch-"I pray God save the king"-and bravely concluded with a quiet, frank observation-"I hear the executioner's good, and my neck is so little ..." Jane Seymour's gentle, lyrical text, limning "the rose both red and white," merited Larsen's lyrical scoring for it. Flanigan's Anne of Cleves-"I have been informed ... by certain lords ... of the doubts and questions which have been ... found in our marriage"-was at once resentful, cool and dignified. In Katherine Howard's hurt, sorrowful final prayer, including three wrenching repetitions of "God" on a high, melismatic figure, she recalled the cousin and fiancé, Thomas Culpeper, from whom the king took her, and ended with a final jibe at Henry-"I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpeper."

In "A business of some heat," taken from Susan Botti's "Telaio: Desdemona" (1995), Flanigan, in rhythmic speech, to the beat of Lorenzo's drums, and then Charney's jangling piano figures, offered an unnamed third person's look at William Shakespeare's tragic spouse of Othello, and ended by strewing pages of the score from her music stand and, joining in on the percussion, striking the stand with a drumstick.

Flanigan and Charney illuminated the madness of Shakespeare's poor Ophelia, heroine of "Hamlet," through three "Ophelia-Lieder," Opus 67 (1918) of Richard Strauss, the mournful "Wie erkenn'ich mein Treulieb?" (How shall I know my true love) and "Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss" (They carried him naked on the bier)-the latter with its couple of brief, irrationally cheerful interludes-bracketing the agitated "Guten Morgen, 's ist Sankt Valentinstag" (Good morning, it is St. Valentine's Day).

Flanigan's final tour-de-force was Thomas Pasatieri's "Lady Macbeth" (2007), a chilling grand operatic scena, written for her and linking speeches, from "Macbeth," by Shakespeare's ruthless Queen, depicting her expressing the desire that no emotion impede her ambition; urging Macbeth to murder King Duncan; planning to drug Duncan's guards, elated that attaining her goal is so near and, the murder done, dramatically plotting to frame the king's attendants; and finally, in the quiet, but certainly not peaceful Sleepwalking Scene, the 'mad scene,' unable, in slumber, to prevent the guilt haunting her from emerging.

After the artists' discussion about interpretation and reinterpretation of the chosen pieces, "the fabulous" Annie Ross, whose "songs really convey an entire play," said Flanigan, and who would shortly be on her way to the Metropolitan Room for one of her series of Tuesday night shows there, communicated a myriad of details and feelings in an essentially rueful, but not jaded "I Wonder What Became of Me," by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, cut from "St. Louis Woman" (1946).

Leave it to Flanigan to conceive of and successful coordinate such a fascinating endeavor!