Russell Braun

Blimey, a girl (okay, a hag) takes a bitsy blogging sabbatical and the world goes completely off its rocker. I mean, it seems that all anyone can talk about of late is the Russian fraud and a washed-up ruffian whose artistic “prime,” such as it was, lasted about half a minute. (I prefer Fiorello, in all seriousness.)

Be real, people: The interesting story about the Scala prima was how Lissner & Cie managed to spin a second-rate Aida directed by a shrivelled old queen whose own prime goes back, uh, half a century as a “renewal” of La Scala. (That, and why so many members of the press swallowed Lissner & Cie’s pap.) Well, at least la Sor got big-time traffic out of it.

Per carità, allow vilaine fille to talk some sense into your addled little heads. Baritone Russell Braun, profiled in this week’s Time Out New York, boasts a great heart, a beautiful soul, smarts, a velvet-and-chestnuts timbre, sublime musicianship, a sure, absorbing stage presence, first-rate linguistic skills… In short, he pretty much has it all.

I know that won’t please you sophisticates who like your singers drunk and unprepared for their gigs, but vilaine fille, a simple girl hag, eagerly awaits all of M. Braun’s New York appearances:

January 14, in joint recital with Isabel Bayrakdarian (go Canucks!) at the Morgan Library

January 20, peforming “Dichterliebe” at the 92nd Street Y, part of an all-Robert Schumann program also featuring the Tokyo String Quartet

January 26 – February 10, as Silvio in Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci at the Metropolitan Opera

April 26 – May 11, as Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, also at the Metropolitan Opera

(Check his schedule for additional dates in Atlanta and Canada.)

I saw Braun’s Figaro in 2003 at the Met, and it was the finest performance of the role I can imagine. I wrote back then:

The evening’s one consistently bright spot was the Figaro of Russell Braun, who entered as if shot from a cannon and remained a spry, winning presence throughout. Braun’s elegant, soft-grained timbre and meticulous handling of verbal and musical detail were a joy to hear; he was wily but not venal in his dealings with Almaviva, impish but not lewd in his duet with Rosina, and in every way he made a classy, endearing factotum.

There are sound clips at Braun’s site, though I don’t think they capture him at his best (and the one labelled “Largo al factotum” is actually “Come Paride vezzoso” from Donizetti’s Elisir). Like any for-real artist, Braun seems to do his finest work not in the studio but in the presence of an audience. In 2005, though, his CBC disc of Schubert’s “Die Winterreise” did take second place in the year-end list of best recordings I wrote up for Newsday.

Comments

[Giorgia]

Fact: Braun is a baritone.

Fact: Braun studies his roles.

Fact: Braun masters languages (i.e.: doesn't sound like *me* when I pretend to sing in German or French - but, well, if I had to debut anywhere serious I would study my role's pronunciation, too!!!)

Conclusion: yes, we do like Braun (above all, because of Fact #1, of course... ;)).