Alex Hetherington and Ariane Cossette’s last recital as members of the Ensemble studio happened on thursday lunchtime in the RBA.  It was charming.  We got a varied selection of art songs bookended by a couple of opera duets.  They opened with “Miro O Norma… Si, fino all’ora estreme”.  They blended well with Ariane, as Norma, displaying considerable power and richness of tone without overwhelming her Adalgisa.

Next up was some CanCon with Ariane producing a very nice account of Celia Livingston’s jazz inflected and very soggy Kalypso and Alex doing a really nice job with Ian Cusson’s very long and dramatic Songs rom the House of Death; Or How to Make it Through  a relationship.  There was some really excellent pianism from Brian Cho here.

Ariane was up next with Korngold’s Drei Lieder, Op 22 and “These Summer Nights” from Rachmaninoff’s 12 Romances.  The Korngold was predictably death infused but rather beautiful.  Ariane’s singing was powerful and dramatic.  If I’m being super critical I’d say that for art song she would benefit from reining that back a bit to unleash when needed.  It would be even more effective.  Excellent accompaniment from newly minted Dr. Mattia Senesi.

Ok, so you want to do some heartstring tweaking in your final recital and what better than folk song arrangements.  So Alex gave us three; Geoffrey Pratley’s version of the enigmatic “She Moved Thro’ the Fair” from the Six Irish Folk Songs , Britten’s setting of At the Mid Hour of Night and Liz Upchurch’s lovely arrangement of Burns’ Ae Fond Kiss.  Jot a dry eye in the house I’ll wager.

The encore was a bit more upbeat.  It was a spirited account of Frasquita and Mercédès playing card duet from Carmen.

So it’s ae farewell to two lovely singers but not, happily, forever.  Alex is back next season in Faust and I can’t imagine we won’t see Ariane again sometime soon; probably in something quite dramatic.

Photo credit: Karen E. Reeves.