photo by Eric Melear
Frederica vonStade
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Beloved American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, familiarly known to music lovers as Flicka, has been winding down her four-decade singing career and elected, on April 22, to give her New York farewell recital at Carnegie Hall, assisted by ever-supportive pianist Martin Katz. No standard-issue concert, with song groups or cycles by this and then that composer, this was a diverse and intriguing, eclectic program, covering a great deal of musical territory, with the singer relating the songs to particular episodes in her personal and professional life. While nostalgia inevitably suffused the proceedings, so did consummate music making, with the lady of the hour in fine, polished voice.

Intimacy and immediacy of interpretation characterized the selections with which von Stade chose to take her leave, as it has throughout her seasons before us. And there was, fittingly, a fair amount of American music as part of the fare that she offered. Putting more thought, detail and nuance into the four-line song than some do into a three-hour opera, von Stade began with Ned Rorem's "I Am Rose," a Gertrude Stein setting, and segued into an ecstatic "La Vie en rose," with music by Louis Guglielmi and lyrics by legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf. Von Stade herself wrote the words for autobiographical song cycle "Paper Wings," to Jake Heggie's music, and its lilting title song, referring to a time she lived in Greece and a governess fashioned imaginative accoutrements for her-shades of Icarus-came next, and another buoyant, Hellenic-inspired chanson, "Tout gai!" from Maurice Ravel's "Cinq mélodies populaires grecques," followed.

A product-survivor?-of the Catholic school system, von Stade continued with a sincere "Prayer to Saint Catherine," from Virgil Thomson and Kenneth Koch's "Mostly About Love," a plea to be cured of shyness, contrasting the kindly titular holy figure from Siena with Saint Nicholas, who would ridicule, and with stern Saint Joanna. Von Stade sang Aaron Copland's "Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?(/Did I sing too loud?)," from "12 Poems of Emily Dickinson," with simplicity, but in full cry for the climactic repetition of the second line. With composer Lee Hoiby replacing Katz at the Steinway for his song "The Serpent," with text by Theodore Roethke, from "Songs for Leontyne [Price]," von Stade charmed us with the song of the snake who would sing lustily, over the neighboring birds' protest about his "awful racket."

With Katz back at the keyboard, von Stade shared her love for the City of Light in Francis Poulenc's "Voyage à Paris," which she followed with the languid "Hôtel," both from "Banalités," to Guillaume Apollinaire's poetry. Nostalgia was the mood of Rorem's "Early in the Morning," on "Rue François Premier," to Robert Hillyer's poem, after which Rorem, in the audience, took a bow. In songs from Marc Bertholmieu's "Les Jardins de Paris," von Stade sang gently of love, found and lost, in the Japanese gardens of the "Jardins d'Albert Kahn," and cheerfully, in "Bois de Boulogne," which quotes Mendelssohn's wedding march for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," of marriage consummated away from watchful eyes, save those of the squirrels and birds.

To conclude the first half of this farewell, von Stade's close colleagues baritone Richard Stilwell and bass Samuel Ramey joined her for "Some Other Time," by Bernstein, Comden and Green, from "On the Town," with Ramey interpolating a bit of Mozart's Figaro's "Non più andrai" to sing to the most famous Cherubino of our age, and von Stade and Stilwell adapting the words to refer to Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" and Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," repertory that they shared.

Von Stade and Katz amused us with Gustav Mahler's "Lob des hohen Verstands," from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," about a song contest between the cuckoo and the nightingale, judged by an ass, "since he has two large ears," which the mezzo pointedly related to her own early auditions. Von Stade paid tribute to the numerous travesti or trouser roles, pages and so on, which punctuated the early part of her Metropolitan Opera career, with, though this was not one that she sang there, young Frédéric's "Me voici dans son boudoir," from Ambroise Thomas' "Mignon," expressing his infatuation with coquettish actress Philine, and returned to the opera for a touching "Connais-tu le pays," the heroine's aria, which was the first she ever learned.

Von Stade paid affectionate tribute to her daughters with "Jenny Rebecca," the song, by Carol Hall-who was present and is best known as composer of "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"-for which she named one daughter and, opening with a musical quotation from Beethoven's "Für Elise," "A Route to the Sky," from "Paper Wings," the true tale of her other daughter, Lisa's adventure, at age eight, as "she climbed through a window out onto the roof," and-as Katz adlibbed, with "Mom to the rescue!"-both had to be helped out of their predicament by a team of firefighters, ambulance workers, and so on.

Our singer wryly limned Ravel's saucy "Nicolette," a more contemporary Little Red Riding Hood, who passes up both wolf and handsome page for a well to do, if unattractive, elder gentleman, and the William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein enchantress who inspires "Amor" in one and all.

This farewell also included a debut and, with Katz and, in his first appearance at Carnegie, San Francisco cellist Emil Miland, von Stade brought the formal program to a close with a lush "Die Sterne," by 19th century diva Pauline Viardot, and Stephen Sondheim's bittersweet "Send in the Clowns," from "A Little Night Music," sung with sensitivity and breathtaking classical style, and even more emotionally laden than usual, given the circumstances.

Von Stade finished her New York recital career with four encores. She gave Kern and Hammerstein's frothy "I've Told Every Little Star," from "Music in the Air," with hints of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusick" and, from "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Voi che sapete" in the instrumental interludes, the same meticulous care that she's given to the most rarified of classical pieces, and earned the first of the evening's many standing ovations. She brought out Jenny Rebecca, now expecting a daughter of her own, and they harmonized sweetly in Chris Brubeck lullaby "Across Your Dreams," which they dedicated to their daughters, present and future. Von Stade rolled back the years to sing us a graceful "Voi che sapete," Cherubino's aria, once again, and ended on a light-hearted note, with Offenbach's "La Périchole's" tipsy "Ah! quel dîner je viens de faire."

What a wonderful gift of sensitive music making von Stade has given us!