Soprano Leah Crocetto comes to Easton
Young American Soprano Leah Crocetto has been enthralling critics and audiences with leading roles in “Turandot,” “Tosca,” “Il Trovatore” and more ever since her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2015. Praised by The New York Times for her “agile coloratura technique and a feeling for the Italianate style … with warmth, full penetrating sound and tenderness,” Crocetto astonishes with her powerful vocal splendor and an intrinsic understanding of the poetic meaning behind each dramatic role she tackles.
Yet it is as recitalist, not as prima donna, where Crocetto feels most completely herself. “The way I chose the music I perform in a recital is that first, I’ve got to like it, and second, I have to be able to relate to it and to be completely myself in front of the audience,” she says in a phone interview from her home in Washington, D.C.
“So when you hear me in a recital, you’ll see more of me than you ever would in an opera performance. That’s why I enjoy them so much.”
You can hear Crocetto on Saturday at the Williams
Center at Lafayette College in Easton. Her colorful and varied program includes works by Respighi, Poulenc and Rachmaninoff, as well as a new song cycle by American singer and composer Gregory Peebles, “Eternal Recurrence.”
The concert also features standards by George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers and Sammy Fain. Crocetto will be accompanied by pianist Mark Markham, an acclaimed soloist, collaborator, accompanist, chamber musician and jazz artist, who for 20 years was the recital partner of Jessye Norman.
Crocetto replaces internationally known soprano Deborah Voigt, who had to cancel because of unanticipated surgery.
A winner of the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Crocetto opened the San Francisco Opera’s 2016-17 season in the title role of Verdi’s “Aida.” Last season she sang Leonora in “Il Trovatore” with Oper Frankfurt, and the title role of “Tosca” with the Pittsburgh Opera.
This season Crocetto sings her first performance of Bellini’s “Norma” in concert with the North Carolina Opera, and will be soprano soloist in Verdi’s “Requiem” with the Melbourne Symphony. In May 2019 she will sing soprano II in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel.
Crocetto gives her inaugural recital appearance Nov. 8 at Carnegie Hall. Actually, her first New York City debut was as a jazz and cabaret singer at Sam’s Club on West 46th
Street, while she waitressed on the side.
“I did a lot of singing in cabaret houses in New York, so Gershwin and Arlen and all that is in my blood — I’ve been singing that all my life. But I do that in a way that’s not operatic at all. I don’t like to keep a barrier between me and the audience. Because of my background in acting, jazz and theater, I just want them to feel they’re part of it,” she says.
On Saturday, Crocetto will sing in Italian, French, English, Russian and even Greek. Among this wealth of variety are songs well-known to singers, but infrequently heard in recitals.
Crocetto’s choice of a set of songs by Respighi from early 1900s is especially interesting, since so little has been written about Italian Arts songs as opposed to opera, Italy’s more “serious” vocal genre.
“I love these songs — they are so deep and emotional. I think they’re way under-interpreted, and I want to bring them back,” she says. “The one I am ending the set with, ‘Mattinata,’ is just like a cry of Thanksgiving to God or Mary — it’s totally Italian, and very operatic.”
Gregory Peebles, composer, countertenor and member of the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer, wrote “Eternal Recurrence” for Crocetto in 2013.
She will sing the New York premiere of the piece at Carnegie Hall Nov. 8. “Gregory is one of my best friends. We’ve always enjoyed making music together and talking about music. So we were talking one day and I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you write me a song cycle,’ and he agreed. At the time of its conception, he happened to be going through the same things in his life that I was,” she says.
“We were both on the road all the time, getting burned out and having that eternal struggle of reminding ourselves why we chose to be in the music industry — you never have a place to call your own, or the time to make a home. Also, I just had my heart broken; Gregory was having his heart broken. We were relating to each other in a way that made it obvious to collaborate.”
The 10-section piece, for which Peebles wrote both the text and the music, is sung in a variety of languages. There are two instrumental sections and one completely improvised section. “We’re improvising the music on the spot — neither Mark nor I have any idea what the other will choose,” Crocetto says. One section is sung in Greek; another was inspired by the style of pop singer Sara Bareilles, whom both Crocetto and Peebles admire.
Although Crocetto loves singing in French and has always done French Art Songs in recital, she doesn’t get regularly cast in French operatic roles. “I love Poulenc. The poets he chose to collaborate with in his songs are these incredible women with such deep stories of passion and heartache and fantasy. But the bottom line is it’s all from real experience,” she says.
So what’s an Italian soprano doing, singing in Russian, as Crocetto will in a set of songs by Rachmaninoff?
“I love to sing in Russian,” she says. “One of my best friends is from the Republic of Georgia. She once told me, ‘Leah, the reason you like Russian music and you identify so much with it is you have a black heart!’ What she meant, of course, was that I feel things very deeply, especially the darkness in those songs, even in the rapturous one at the end of the set, ‘What Happiness.’ There’s so much turmoil in those pieces.”
Soprano Leah Crocetto, 3 p.m. Saturday, Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, High and Hamilton streets, Easton. Tickets: $35. 610-330-5009, williamscenter.lafayette.edu.
Schumann Quartet in Bethlehem
On Sunday, the Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem welcomes back the Schumann Quartet, so warmly received by audiences last fall.
The group, named for its two violinists and cellist, all brothers, has toured extensively in Europe and Asia, and is quickly making a name for itself in the U.S. The program, at Faith United Church of Christ in Center Valley, features music of Schubert, Hindemith and Brahms.
The Schumann Quartet was formed in 2012 when Estonian