INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
I like to think that my musical tastes are pretty eclectic: jazz, pop, blues, Americana, metal, world music, ambient, prog rock, more. Operatic music and classical singing, though? Thanks, I’ll pass.
There are exceptions. I find tear-tugging beauty in “Ebben? Ne Andrò Lontana” from Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally, whether sung by Donij van Doorn or Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez.1 The German Lieder of Kurt Weill, as interpreted by soprano Teresa Stratas, produce gladness in my heart but confusion in my uncomprehending wife and children. Maybe it’s because the often sarcastic, gruff songs about the travails of the lumpenproletariat contrast with the purity of Stratas’s classically trained voice. That clash is precisely what I love about it.
It must have been after a recent Stratas/Weill listening session that Roon Radio started playing songs the algorithm assumed I’d like. That’s how I came across a classical piece that floored me. The first surprise: That unknown-to-me composition was written by Antonio Vivaldi. I’ve never liked Vivaldi, whose ubiquitous Four Seasons has always struck me as ignorable pap. But the ethereal “Nisi Dominus, RV 608: Cum Dederit,” I had to admit, is magnificent and moving.
The second surprise was that, contrary to my assumptions, the vocals I heard in that piece were not sung by a lyric contralto or a mezzo-soprano. I had to delve into liner notes and a Wikipedia article to grasp a reality my ears had rejected: The lovely voice I heard belongs to a man, French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, who has built quite a career on his pellucid falsetto.
That experience reminded me that not everything is what it seems at first. A well-known composer may have more range and depth than is clear from his most popular work. Vocals presumed to be female may be produced by a person with a penis. And LSA’s VT-70, the lowish-power, tubed integrated amplifier through which I played all the music mentioned
