Ekaterina Siurina: Where Is My Beloved?
Delos

If there's one thing about Ekaterina Siurina's latest album that could invite criticism, it's a set-list whose ground's been covered countless times before: in featuring arias by Verdi, Dvorak, Cilea, and Puccini (four in the latter case), Where Is My Beloved? won't, admittedly, win major points for originality or daring. There is, however, a great deal otherwise to recommend when the performances by the soprano, conductor Constantine Orbelian, and the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra (KCSO) are nothing short of glorious. The finesse of her delivery, her sumptuous tone, and the emotion with which she delivers the material make the fifty-three-minute release, recorded at Kaunas Philharmonic in July 2022, an enthralling listen from start to finish.

If she sounds comfortable singing these pieces, it's due in part to the range of experience she's accumulated since making her professional debut as Gilda in Rigoletto alongside renowned baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The prize-winning Siurina, a one-time student at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, has appeared in productions of La bohème, La traviata, The Rake's Progress, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Carmen, and others and has performed on many of the world's finest opera stages. She's also distinguished herself in concert performances of Carmina Burana, Mozart's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, and others.

Four-time Grammy nominee Orbelian has been called “the singer's dream collaborator” (Opera News) and the performances on Siurina's album show why. Her every vocal gesture is supported with sensitivity by him and the KCSO, such that every nuance is attended to with precision. Under his direction, the orchestra follows her with the care of a piano accompanist. The conductor has appeared on over sixty recordings for Delos (the KCSP, with Orbelian, more than twenty) and is thus well-primed for this set with the soprano.

The album opens with “Mesicku na nebi hlubokén” from Dvorak's last and most popular opera Rusalka. First performed in 1901, the opera's tragic story-line concerns the water nymph Rusalka who's fallen for a human prince. Against a softly shimmering backdrop of harp, strings, and woodwinds, Siurina enters, her voice exuding control as it gracefully leaps between registers and conveying intense longing as she pleads with the moon to help her win the prince's love. The four Puccini arias follow in sequence, “In quelle trine morbide” from Manon Lescaut given a moving reading first and a heartbreaking treatment by Siurina of “Senza Mamma” from the one-act Suor Angelica second. Two Madama Butterfly selections come next, “Un bel di, vedremo” beautifully rendered by the soprano in moving seamlessly between tenderness, anticipation, and hope, and “Tu? Tu? Piccolo iddio!,” Siurina expressing the sadness of Cio-Cio-San as she bids her child farewell during the opera's tragic final moments.

As familiar is “Io son l'umile ancella” from Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, which the soprano and KCSO illuminate with delicacy and precision. She and the orchestra also shine in their elegant handling of Arrigo Boito's “L'altra notte in fondo al mare” from his only completed opera Mefistofele. In this third act aria from Boito's treatment of the Faust legend, the imprisoned Margherita emotes sorrowfully as she awaits execution, with Siurina giving poignant voice to the peasant girl's sorrow and loneliness. Capping Where Is My Beloved? are Tchaikovsky's “Iolanta's Arioso” and “Tatiana's Letter Scene” from Iolanta (his final opera, first performed in 19892) and Eugene Onegin (first performed in 1879 and based on the novel written in verse by Pushkin), respectively. At three minutes, the joyful “Iolanta's Arioso” seems but an appetizer for the fourteen-minute epic about the romantic travails of Tatiana and Onegin.

December 2023