O light, o music divine

Looking pleased even from her side view, lyric coloratura Sumi Jo, a superstar in the operatic and cross-over music world, enfolds soprano Myramae Meneses in her loving arms during a master class at St. Scholastica's College in February this year. Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Ms Meneses (in white) and tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery (rightmost) at the Viva Voce's repeat of "Complicated The Concert" at the Lopez Museum in July Photo by Babeth Lolarga

The days are shortening, the nights are lengthening, and we just hurried past mid-November! I once wrote a former pen pal (Frank Cimatu, then on Friendly fellowship in Seattle) how my young children then wished that November could be skipped so that their eager hands and hearts could get on with the "business" of Christmas (unwrapping presents, receiving gold and red ampao envelopes and such).

Often and nearly forgotten during the lead-up to Yuletide are people for whom the merriment of the season feels like a stinging slap on the face, that is, they may resent it in their pain or lonesomeness. Is it any wonder that cases of depression are ironically high during this celebratory season?

And here comes the Culture Arts Events Organizer (CAEO) about to swing a balance between the celebration of the liberator Christ child's birth and putting The Beatitudes into action. Its concert, "Christmas Solstice," billed as an evening of timeless Christmas carols on Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ayala Museum on Makati Ave. will have for its beneficiaries children who need medical treatment for their cancer.

The three featured singers are among the most sought after following their respective professional debuts at the same venue in 2013 and this year: soprano Myramae Meneses and Stephanie Aguilar, and tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery. Pianist Greg Zuniega will assist them in their renditions of carols from the 17th century to the present. These songs include: Felipe de leon's "Pasko Na, Sinta Ko" and "Payapang Daigdig", the exquisite "Cantique de Noel" (also known as "O Holy Night"), Andrew Lloyd Webber's masterpiece "Pie Jesu," Cesar Franck's "Panis Angelicus," Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim."

The Handel aria, which is from his opera Samson, has been interpreted, each in their lovely way, by sopranos Renee Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa and Kathleen Battle (go to YouTube, my friend!). A bit of background on the lyrics is: "the aria summons the celestial hosts of seraphim and cherubim to hail the dead hero, with trumpet figures responding to the singer." (Source: http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/let-bright-seraphim-george-frideric-handel)

Let us go then, let us go with the angels as one imagines them descending as these are sung on Advent's first Sunday:

Let the bright seraphim
in burning row,
their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow.

Let the cherubic host,
in tuneful choirs,
touch their immortal harps
with golden wires.

Tickets are available at Ticketworld, tel. no. 891-9999, or the CAEO, tel. nos. 782-7164, 517-3763, 0920-954-0053, 0918-347-3027 or 0920-465-5725.

A little afternoon music in one's brief life

Soprano Myramae Meneses, second from right, with the other members of Viva Voce, leads the singing of Francisco Santiago's "Pilipinas Kong Mahal" that ended the second and last part of "Complicated the Concert" at the Lopez Museum and Library. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

The second time around "Complicated the Concert" was as lovely as the first, if not lovelier and more colorful in terms of costume and production details.

Camille Lopez Molina, Viva Voce founder who also served as assisting artist on the piano to the 10 classical singers (many, if not all, of them her students in voice), promised us earlier: "We've tweaked the program so it will be interesting even to those who saw the first concert."

We were at the May 31 concert, a prelude to June's historical milestones (Rizal's birthday and Philippine Independence Day). During that performance of art songs, from bel canto arias to kundimans, what struck the listener/viewer was the program's potent political content as images from the exhibit of Leslie de Chavez, Mike Adrao and Ea Torrado were flashed on one side of the wall, alternating with more slides of the museum's permanent collection of works by Filipino masters and photos of notorious figures in front-page news. (The exhibit, by the way, has been extended until tomorrow, Aug. 4.)

During the July 19 re-staging at the same venue, the singers' formal wear and an elevated platform that served as stage added a dramatic element. And this time the "tweaking" that Lopez Molina did with the program drew more dramatic responses. This audience member found herself copiously and silently weeping at Kristine Marie Balingcos' interpretation of Catalini's "Ebben, ne andro lontana" from the opera La Wally, a heroine's death aria before she throws herself in an avalanche. It's not an ordinary soprano who can acquit herself with that aria, especially if one has heard versions by Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi or the young Angela Gheorghiu.

Certain types of music invite that kind of visceral response. By the time tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery was singing Schumann's "Stille Tränen," to mean "Silent Tears," with a slide closeup of an unknown man, a survivor of supertyphoon Yolanda aboard a C 130 plane that was evacuating him and hundreds of other survivors from Tacloban, Leyte, my handkerchief was soaked.

Romance filled the afternoon air with soprano Myramae Meneses' "Ah! Love but a Day." Not included in the first staging, this is from a song cycle by American composer Amy Beach with lyrics by the English poet Robert Browning: "Ah, Love, but a day,/And the world has changed!/The sun's away,/And the bird estranged;/The wind has dropped,/And the sky's deranged;/Summer has stopped./Look in my eyes!/Wilt thou change too?/Should I fear surprise?/Shall I find aught new /In the old and dear,/In the good and true,/With the changing year?"

But it was upon hearing for the very first time baritone Raymond Yadao sing Juan Celis Bautista's kundiman "Parang Maghapon Lamang" that one felt as though one's Filipino chest was being cut open without anesthesia. Levi Celerio's haunting lyrics tell of youth wasted. Even if it feels like the length of a life, whether it ends at age 27 or at age 88, is long in earth-time, in the eyes of Eternity, it is only the equivalent of an afternoon.

Ang buhay ko’y maghapon lang pala
Tila isang saglit sa akin ang ngumingiting umaga!
May awit ang ibong tanda ng pag-asa!
Pagsapit ng hapon, ay!, kay lungkot sa puso kong nagdurusa!
Kung katotohanan ay ganyan,
Bakit sinayang ko yaong unang sigla ng aking buhay!
Di na magbabalik kahit na kaylan man
O! ang buhay pala ay parang maghapon lamang!

Camille Lopez Molina and Myramae Meneses bracket two similarly dressed music fans (the blogger and Mercy Lactao Fabros).

With Manila Chamber Orchestra Foundation's Joseph Uy, tenors Nomher Nival and Ivan Niccolo Nery. Joseph once reassured me during a sad period in my life (I never seem to run out of these periods): "A golden tone from a good singer's voice erases all the frustrations in life." Amen to that, Joseph, amen.

Clear, uncomplicated, thought-provoking | Vera Files

Clear, uncomplicated, thought-provoking | Vera Files

Rising tenor

Camille Lopez Molina's voice took over Cherie Gil's in what to me is the most beautiful scene I've seen in a Filipino movie: the part where Gil's Regina Canedo stages a command performance of Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" in Sonata for the son of a hacienda employee. I let my tears freely flow. One doesn't need an English translation of the Czech lyrics to behold what beauty is at its purest form.

Many times I also teared up at the first solo recital of tenor Ivan Niccolo Nery last week at the Ayala Museum. Although the venue was moved to a function room upstairs because of an event at the lobby, where the Manila Chamber Orchestra (MCO) Foundation concerts are usually held, the change worked in Ivan's favor. The intimacy was called for by the art/love songs he interpreted.

I listened and watched closely when he enunciated his French (he used to hate it as a school subject) in Reynaldo Hahn's "A Chloris" and "L'heure exquise," the latter with words by poet Paul Verlaine, and in Gabriel Faure's "Apres au Reve." Again, Verlaine's lyrics brought back briefly that exquisitely photographed scene of Cherie Gil singing to the moon:

The white moon
shines in the woods.
From each branch
springs a voice
beneath the arbor.

Oh my beloved...

Like a deep mirror
the pond reflects
the silhouette
of the black willow
where the wind weeps.

Let us dream! It is the hour...

A vast and tender calm
seems to descend from a sky
made iridescent by the moon

It is the exquisite hour!

Belated bravissimos to the darling, shining tenor of the hour who took the tiredness away from his evening audience. And thank you for obliging us who wouldn't let you go with the encore of Donaudy's  "O Del Mio Amato Ben."

Most of the songs in Ivan's repertoire were love poems, particularly love lost.

Singing his Donaudy encore

With an admirer who hopes to write a song, or at least the lyrics, that he can sing someday 

A tenor who’s no average John | Vera Files

A tenor who’s no average John | Vera Files