Tenor Mark Panuccio Keeps a Date in Kentucky
Art song, aria, virtuosity on the keys.
It was an evening to relish Sunday (October 3) in Greaves Concert Hall at Northern Kentucky University, and this time Eyjafjallajökull did not get in the way.
Eyjafjallajökull is the Icelandic volcano that erupted last spring, halting flights to and from Europe. Tenor Mark Panuccio was one of those grounded by the ash cloud, forcing cancellation of his April date on NKU’s “New Beginnings” series with pianist/artist-in-residence Sergei Polusmiak.
As a consequence, the spring happening became an autumn event and opening concert of this season’s “New Beginnings” series. Panuccio sang English and Neapolitan songs, plus excerpts from opera -- a dozen selections in all, demonstrating his versatility, artistry and winning stage presence. (It’s no wonder his fans were passing out “I’m a Fanucci” buttons.)
Ukrainian born Polusmiak lent his formidable powers to Liszt’s arrangement for piano of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” and Chopin’s Ballade in C Minor No. 1.
The two led off with English songs by Ivor Gurney, Roger Quilter, Thomas Frederick Dunhill and Gerald Finzi. In all of them, Panuccio calibrated his voice tastefully to embody and express the poetic texts. He opened with Gurney’s “Down by the Salley Gardens” (1938), a wistful setting of William Butler Yeats poem about paths not taken (salley is short for saileach, meaning “willow” in Gaelic). He and Polusmiak collaborated beautifully in Quilter’s love poem, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” (1897) as they did in Dunhill’s “Cloths of Heaven,” a poem by Tennyson about love and self-sacrifice concluding “tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Panuccio let his voice expand in “Sleep” (John Fletcher, 1607), a prayer for sleep’s “sweet deceiving” by Gurney, a World War I veteran whose experiences led to a mental breakdown. He concluded the English set with Finzi’s last completed work, the exquisite “Since We Loved” (1956) on a poem by Robert Seymour Bridges.
With Polusmiak’s performance of Liszt/Wagner’s “Liebestod,” the theme of love swelled to huge proportions. His playing evoked not just an orchestra, but a Wagner orchestra in all its power and might. It was easy to get caught up in the music as Polusmiak carried it forward toward the climax, a shattering one, capped by a soft, luminous ending.
Panuccio returned in italiano, including some popular Three Tenors’ fare. He soared in Salvatore Cardillo’s “Core ‘ngrato” (“Ungrateful Heart”), a 1911 classic written for Enrico Caruso about a tormented lover railing against the woman who has ravaged his heart. He followed suit in “Rondine al nido” (“Homing Swallow”) by Vincenzo de Crescenzo, a Pavarotti favorite comparing a swallow who always comes home to a lover who does not. The crescendo continued in “Lamento di Federico” from Francesco Cilea’s “L’Arlesiana” (“The Girl from Arles”). This famous aria/ lament about a shepherd in love with the wrong girl ends Ahime! (“Alas”), which Panuccio sang with an affecting catch in his voice.
From Federico to Frederic (Chopin), Polusmiak treated the Greaves Hall audience to Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in C Minor. He conveyed fully the romance and drama of the work, giving just the right lilt to the melancholy opening theme and moving with great agility in daunting virtuoso passages.
Panuccio’s other operatic selection was Che gelida manina (“How cold your little hand”) from Puccini’s “La Boheme.” He might have been singing in an actual production of the opera as he lifted and grasped his own hand to mimic the libretto (Mimi’s hands are cold from the bitter weather when she first meets Rodolfo). He shrugged nonchalantly on Vivo (“I live”) when he described Rodolfo’s life as a struggling poet.
He kept the Italian mode going with “O sole mio” and another Neapolitan song, the impassioned “Tu ca nun chiagne” (“You Who Do Not Weep”) by Ernesto de Curtis. The crowd rose to salute Polusmiak and Panuccio, the “Fanuccians” demanding an encore. Panuccio obliged with Virgil Thomson’s “A Prayer to St. Catherine,” dedicating it to a beloved teacher who died the morning of his senior recital (which had included the song).