I don't know what surprised me more:  hearing Amanda Mace for the first
time last year at the Oregon Bach Festival or finding out just now that
she will sing the title role in "Fidelio" this summer at Stuttgart's
European Music Festival.

The surprise in Eugene had two components:  how good she was and how young.
Mace single-handedly overcame the mild-mannered academic exercise of "Messa
per Rossini" by Verdi contemporaries, now rightly unknown, and she put life
into the performance, roused the audience, accomplishing that daunting feat
at age 24.

The Stuttgart stunner is single and simple: Mace, now 25, is about to sing
Leonore.

All of it - the whole opera, in concert version.  Although Mace has been
singing Wagner, those are arias.  I think even that's foolish, however
well she has been performing (her "Dich teure Halle" is outstanding).
But to take a young voice (young both chronologically and by its sound)
and subject it to the demands of "Fidelio" in a live concert performance -
that's really asking for trouble.

Another strange aspect of the story is that the man responsible for Mace's
appearances is Helmuth Rilling, director of both the Oregon and Stuttgart
festivals, a man who has found and nurtured scores of singers.  If Rilling
wants Mace to sing a Leonore at 25, he must know something that excludes
the soprano from the rank of vulnerable singers - and I have no idea what
that may be.

I was so much taken by Mace's projection, dramatic appeal and charisma in
Eugene that I neglected to emphasize her occasional but clear intonational
problems.  If you challenge a not yet fully developed instrument and still
unreliable musical security with a heavy, difficult role...  Does anybody
remember Ann Panagulias and her Lulu in 1988 or, for that matter, Joan
Carroll's, in 1963? I may be wrong, but a premature Leonore may finish
off a career almost as surely as Lulu.

The Stuttgart "Fidelio" (Sept.  1) will have a fascinating cast otherwise:
Jonas Kaufmann as Florestan, Franz-Josef Selig as Rocco, Sibylla Rubens
as Mazelline, James Taylor as Jaquino, Markus Eiche as Don Fernanco, and
Dietrich Henschel as Don Pizarro.  A two-part presentation (Act 1 on Aug.
27, Act 2 on Aug.  28) features Christiane Libor as Leonore and Klaus
Florian Vogt as Florestan.

Henschel sings "Die Winterreise" on Aug.  29; Christoph Pregardien presents
a recital on Sept.  5; after Missa Solemnis and a dozen other major works,
the Ninth Symphony concludes the festival's Beethoven observance on Sept.
8.

Janos Gereben/SF
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