Recorded live at Barcelona’s Teatre Liceu in September, 1989, Leonardo Balada’s newly composed opera was given a fine premiere: the Catalan composer (who studied with Aaron Copland and teaches at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh), a thorough (neo-)Romantic who writes tonal music with occasional quirks and odd key jumps, had no less than the world’s two greatest Catalan singers at his disposal–Caballé and Carreras.
Balada composed genuine arias for each: Carreras, who sings the title role of Christopher Columbus, opens with an aria straight out of verismo, and Caballé, as Queen Isabella, is given some soft, melismatic singing as well as dignified outbursts. Their duets, though about politics and ambition, might be for lovers. For the most part, Balada keeps the tessitura a tone or two lower than Caballé could have handled 10 years prior; by 1989, when this was recorded, she was not the singer she once had been. And Carreras’ music is more muscular than lyrical, suiting the effort his voice production required by then. No matter, the roles are juicy.
Even juicier is the orchestral writing–the brass fanfares, the instruments that follow the vocal lines, bird calls and high-pitched violins that accompany the final scene–which is possessed of a type of magical realism. But after it’s all said and done, I couldn’t recall anything special, and I’ve listened a few times. I suspect this opera will have few revivals, and this recording will be a souvenir of an event. This is for the curious.
