Dmitri Hvorostovsky delivers his native repertoire at the Met Museum

By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer

January 13, 2003, 5:14 PM EST

NEW YORK -- Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky's solo recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a marriage of 19th-century Russia and ancient Egypt.

On Sunday evening by the Met's Temple of Dendur, the Siberian-born singer offered gems of the Russian repertoire in which he's all but unrivaled.

Hvorostovsky also demonstrated the range of his musicianship: The first half of the program was devoted to art songs by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Anton Rubinstein, while the remainder of the evening was filled with great Russian operatic arias.

Some critics consider Hvorostovky's fine voice somewhat small for the cavernous Metropolitan Opera. But at the city's other Met, his rich vocal sonority easily embraced the ancient stones of the 15 B.C. temple on the Nile, with the stage set against a reflecting water pool.

The 10 art songs on the program probe the subtleties of the Slavic soul in love _ mostly unhappy love. Human emotions are mirrored in nature images ranging from Rimsky-Korsakov's sea waves awakening a turbulent soul to Rubinstein's twirling, bubbling river carrying a man's infatuation, with text by Tolstoy, to the "silvery luster" of a tormented night in a Tchaikovsky song.

Hvorostovsky's seemingly endless, arching phrases expressed the introspective intimacy of solitary souls in love. His vocal palette produced colors from refined whispers of sound to heartfelt eruptions that poured out, seemingly without having to take a breath.

Some of the music, like Borodin's "For distant shores of native land" (with text by Alexander Pushkin) and arias from "Prince Igor," is steeped in Russian patriotism, portrayed by characters from the boyars of the upper nobility to wild Cossack warriors who all but raped women. Somehow, Rimsky-Korsakov transformed the violence into art, in his opera "The Czar's Bride."

A highlight of the evening was three arias from Rubinstein's opera "The Demon," a staple of the repertoire of the great Russian bass Boris Chaliapin. Hvorostovsky's voice, more lyric and brighter than his late countryman's, painted the devilish character with a passionate powerhouse of sound that was nevertheless under total control.

The baritone was accompanied by the Russian-born pianist Yelena Kurdina, who provided stylistically authentic, well-articulated support for his voice.

Hvorostovsky ended the recital with two oddly chosen encores, given the Russian theme of the evening: two Neapolitan songs he has recorded.