Armenian tribute comes from her soul
- |
Isabel Bayrakdarian is poised to become a major singer in opera houses and concert halls. She's a soprano prized for the flexible color of her voice as well as for the dramatic urgency she brings to operatic roles. Like any serious musician, she throws herself completely into whatever project is at hand,
But she has a particularly strong attachment to her latest project. It is a CD, released last month, of arrangements of songs by the Armenian composer, singer, and musicologist Gomidas Vartabed, often known just by his first name. Bayrakdarian, who lives in Toronto, was born in Lebanon to parents of Armenian heritage, and grew up singing many of the songs on the recording. Most opera roles require a singer to step inside a character; here, the identification is deep and immediate.
"This one is quite, quite special," she says by phone from California. "Other [projects] come from my heart. When I sing these songs, it just comes from my soul."
Bayrakdarian is touring with her husband, pianist Serouj Kradjian, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. All of them arrive at Jordan Hall on Sunday, with a program that surrounds a selection of Gomidas songs with music by Ravel, Bartok, Nikos Skalkottas, and Gideon Klein. Underwritten by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, it honors what the soprano calls "the legacy of all those artists who, through genocide or Holocaust, were not able to reach the recognition they deserve or the potential they could have achieved."
For Gomidas, destiny changed irrevocably on April 24, 1915, when he was one of a large group of Armenian intellectuals who were rounded up and deported by the Turkish government. It was the first stage of the genocide that would eventually claim the lives of some one and a half million Armenians. Though Gomidas survived, the experience broke his spirit, and for the remaining 20 years of his life, he never composed or performed again.
Bayrakdarian says that the experience of recording and performing his songs showed her that "what has always spoken to me on a sentimental basis - this music that I grew up with - does have artistic merit." More important, she gained an insight into why Gomidas's music speaks so powerfully to Armenians.
"Armenians have a 5,000-year-old civilization," she explains. "Yet, ask a lot of us to go beyond 1915 to trace any of our history, we can't. A huge knife has cut us off from it. And in a way Gomidas, with his songs, is our link to the past. Because these songs were passed from generation to generation, and these words were sung by the villagers, in a way it's a very important link in our identity."
Gomidas wrote all his songs for voice and piano; Kradjian orchestrated them with a colorful, restrained atmosphere that recalls Debussy, whom Gomidas greatly admired. "The whole idea behind the project is to highlight the fact that Armenia is not just Eastern; it's Eastern and Western."
While the ideas motivating the recording and tour are important ones, Bayrakdarian isn't one to oversell the music's didactic points. "My mission isn't really to educate," she says. "This is entertainment. We go to a concert hall to leave reality behind for two hours, to be transcended. Whatever the medium is, as long as it moves an audience, then my job on that stage is accomplished."
Recently, Bayrakdarian ran into singer-songwriter and fellow Canadian Ron Sexsmith, who told her how jealous he was that she was releasing the Gomidas CD on the hipper-than-most Nonesuch label. "That was so cool," she says of the props, with a laugh that's both slightly self-conscious and totally sincere.
"I try not to think a lot about where I'm going, what I should be doing and just letting it unfold. That's how it all started - by my not stressing about where am I going, how am I going to do it? Things have a way of unfolding."
Presented by
Opera opener
Opera Boston opens its season tonight with Weber's "Der Freischütz," one of the few great specimens of German Romantic opera before Wagner, on whom it exercised a considerable influence. The opera tells the story of a marksman whose ability to win his beloved depends on his success in a shooting competition; unholy pacts and supernatural visions ensue. The modern-dress production marks the return of Sam Helfrich, who previously directed Opera Boston's versions of Weill's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and Handel's "Semele." Gil Rose conducts.
Tonight through Tuesday at the Cutler Majestic Theatre; 800-233-3123, www.operaboston.org 
