Applause greeted the soprano as she walked across the stage to the concert grand piano in Christ Chapel.
Julie Adams, an award-winning opera singer, alongside her accompanist, Brad Blackham, professor of piano and keyboard studies at Hillsdale College, performed a Valentine’s Day concert the evening of Feb. 14. The program was titled “Bella Notte,” or Beautiful Night, which featured a variety of classical and contemporary love songs.
The program began with Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s, “Song to the Moon,” an aria about a mermaid who begs the moon to carry her feelings to a prince, Adams explained. The aria, sung in Czech, had a pleading and abrupt ending because of the last line of the song: “Moon, don’t disappear!” which happened to be the climax.
Following, Adams sang three pieces from the Romantic-era German composer Richard Strauss’s “Acht Lieder,” a set of eight songs composed for piano and voice. Each piece explores the “journey through love,” and “asks for honesty and vulnerability,” Adams said as she introduced them.
Jennifer Heil, who traveled from St. Helena, Calif., to attend the concert, said William Blake’s poem, “The Lamb,” was her favorite. “It was beautiful,” Heil said. American Composer Lee Hoilby put the poem to music, and has elements of love, simplicity and nature rooted within simplistic melodies and emotional complexities, according to Adams.
Each song that Adams performed addressed an element of love, such as vulnerability, loneliness, or hope, and also represented Adams’s path as an opera singer.
“It was like a little musical journey of my story, where I am now and my career in opera,” Adams said. “I started out with mostly opera and art songs and then I kind of did the second half of coming back home sort of thing, with going back to the music that I fell in love with, which was musical theater.”
Adams’ talent for acting is evident in her performances.
“In my experience, many opera sopranos with extraordinary voices do not have Julie Adams’ use of her subtle expressions vocally and in her facial and physical body movements to dynamically touch the ‘veins; of an audience,” Melissa Knecht, chair and professor of music, said.
The program carried the audience through the sorrows and excitements of love, and Adams captured the themes of each piece with her passion for singing while Blackham matched her through his accompaniment.
“I loved hearing ‘Goodbye, Goodbye, World,’ from ‘Our Town,’” Heil said. “Julie sang it with so much emotion that I could envision the play.”
While the first half of the concert was primarily nineteenth century composers. The second half featured modern Valentine’s Day classics such as “My Funny Valentine” and “La Vie en Rose.”
“Julie has been a joy to collaborate with, it’s been fun and really easy putting this program together with her,” Blackham said. “I hope we get to perform more after this recital.”
Adams and Blackham received a standing ovation after they finished “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” from Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical, “Carousel.” The song has since become an anthem for many sports teams around the world.
“ I follow European soccer, and there’s a team in Liverpool, England and their fans sing that song before every match,” Sophomore Paul Heil said. “I’m not a fan of the team, but it’s a cool song.”
