It was an enchanting evening with Victoria Oruwari at the MUSON
Centre on Sunday, February 21. Performing selected songs from the classical
period and more contemporary West End Musicals, the visually-challenged Oruwari
enthralled the audience with her voice and magnetic stage presence.
The recital kicked off at 6pm prompt as promised. Before the
night was over, many could decipher a theme to the evening’s performance.
Oruwari, a trained soprano, was accompanied by Babatunde Sosan on the piano.
Both graduates of the Trinity College of Music, London, it was
their first time performing together in Nigeria. What the audience was getting
that night was a result of a week of solo and two days of joint rehearsals.
What followed was no pointer to this. Oruwari started off with
‘Tornami a Vagheggiar’ an aria from Act 1 of George Handel’s ‘Alcina’.
Translated as ‘Return to me to languish’, the aria is the story of an unlikely
love triangle between two women and a man. With this love song, Oruwari grabbed
the audience’s attention and did not let go till an hour and a half later. She
followed this with ‘De Vieni Non Tardar’ (Oh Come, Don’t delay) from Mozart’s
‘The Marriage of Figaro’.
Oruwari obviously enjoyed teasing the audience with how high her
voice could go, tackling Rossini’s ‘La Pastorella’ with the dexterity of a
primadonna and working her vocal muscles in Bizet’s ‘Comme autre fois’.
Charlotte Church could not have delivered better renditions of the aria from
‘Les Soirees Musicales.’
Before the interval, Sosan treated the audience to a piano solo,
‘La Cathedral Engloutie’ (The sunken cathedral), a prelude by Claude Debussy.
In Sosan’s rendition, the listener gets a feel of the cathedral bobbing up in
the sea, the bells signalling time for mass and the priests as they officiate.
The music rose and fell to depict the appearance of the cathedral and its
eventual disappearance from sight.
Summertime
The second part of the recital was dedicated to contemporary
Broadway and West End musicals. First up was the popular jazz lullaby
‘Summertime’ from George Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess’. The only thing missing
from Oruwari’s version was Louis Armstrong on the trumpet. This, however, did
not reduce the jazzy feel the composers’ intended for any performance of this
stage classic. Oruwari could as well have been Ella Fitzgerald.
Fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber were placated with ‘Think of Me’
from the evergreen ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ In this musical, the revelation of
Christine Daae as the new star of the Opera Populaire becomes almost
indisputable after she sings this song. In a voice that could upstage nearly
any diva, Oruwari entranced the Agip Recital Hall’s audience and had them
clapping as the song finished.
True to her promise to perform songs by Stephen Sondheim in the
composer’s honour, Oruwari performed back-to-back hits from ‘The Follies’,
‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ and ‘Into the Woods.’
Apart from being a fan of Sondheim’s, Oruwari’s tribute was also
in early celebration of the renowned composer’s 80th birthday anniversary
coming up in March.
Losing my mind
First in line was ‘Losing my Mind,’ from ‘The Follies’.
Questioning her state of mind, Sally sings this song about her unrequited love
for Ben. Oruwari adds some drama to her delivery, as she turns left or right to
the lines of the song: ‘Not going left – not going right’
Next in the Sondheim tribute was ‘No one is alone’ from ‘Into
the Woods’. In the notes accompanying songs in her line-up, Oruwari writes, “In
this musical, Sondheim and Lapine explore the darker and more complex elements
that exist in fairy tales and relate them to things that occur in real life.
They ensure that all the fairy tale used in this musical are true to the
original. No one is Alone is sung by Cinderella in her maternal role of
comforter to the lost characters in the woods.”
The plot is drawn from many of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales
and in its musical performance, more enchantment is added to the already
enthralling stories.
A playful but disturbing tune was ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’
from Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ musical. Sung by an imprisoned Johanna when she
cites a bird singing by her window, the song is more about herself in captivity
than about the singing bird. But Johanna concludes, “If I cannot fly, let me
sing.” And sing Oruwari does.
I feel pretty
Concluding the Sondheim tribute was ‘I Feel Pretty’ from West
Side Story, Leonard Bernstein’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic
romance ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The words reflect
Maria’s happiness at going to the ball, a feeling Oruwari embodies on stage and
dramatises to full effect with her voice, especially when she sang, ” I feel
fiszzy and funny and fine, and so pretty, Miss America can just resign!”
This performance was rewarded with the loudest applause of the
evening. Oruwari, however, reminded us in the programme notes that this song is
Sondheim’s least favourite.
The presumed conclusion to the evening was Oruwari’s performance
of ‘Much More’ from Harvey Schmidt’s ‘The Fantasticks’. Like the heroines of
the previous songs, Luisa ‘spends her time daydreaming of a more exciting life
than the one she is living.’ Part of this song’s opening lines read, “I am
special. I am special. Please, God, please don’t ever let me be normal!” The
audience could not resist applauding and saying, “Yes, you are,” to the truly
special Victoria Oruwari.
Giving a standing ovation for what they thought was the last
song of the night; Oruwari surprised everyone by giving probably one of the
best renditions of popular folk song, ‘Oluronbi.’ It was a fitting conclusion
to an enchanting evening.
Speaking after the event, Oruwari justified her very inclusive
choice of songs, “My aim with my music is to integrate people more and to let
everybody come to my concert and enjoy what they hear.”
No one could deny their enjoyment of the evening.
Studio Visit will return next week.
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