Bass-baritone Eric Owens in recital

Eric Owens has been so persuasive in his recent opera productions that we think of him as a deep and menacing bass. (Think of the evil dwarf Alberich in the Met production of Wagner's Ring.) In fact his voice is more of a lyric bass, with gorgeous tone in the highest part of his range. His sweet baritonal notes are even more outstanding than rumbling pedal-like tones. At times Owens can be romantic and even downright comic.

Owens displayed these qualities at his recital in the intimate Perelman Hall, accompanied by pianist Warren Jones.

Owens is primarily a storyteller. After that, he's a singing actor and a well-rounded musician. Indeed, he studied piano, clarinet and oboe before training his voice. Only after those attributes do we focus on his singing per se, which is fine. But Owens makes his greatest impact as storyteller and actor.

He presented a program that included songs about disappointments and death. Literature for bass tends to fall in that category. By shading the words and using soft inflections, Owens conveyed the melancholy texts, like, "Everything ends which comes to be. Everything everywhere passes away as time moves on." His facial expressions and style of delivery— intense alternating with intimate— conveyed the meanings. Vocal pyrotechnics were subservient to interpreting the words.

Wolf's anguish

His first group of songs was by Hugo Wolf, known primarily for his lieder rather than any long works. Wolf could say in four minutes what Wagner needed 12 hours to get around to. The anguished "Michelangelo" songs (1898) on Owens's program were among Wolf's last compositions before he died of syphilis at the age of 43. Since his texts spoke of his inability to find resolution— "I am driven by a yes and a no, a sweet and a bitter"— Wolf wrote music with wandering tonality that sustained his tension.

Robert Schumann also died of syphilis. But Owens found quiet joy in Schumann's song, Muttertraum ("A Mother's Dream") as a mother gazes with delight at her slumbering little one, "so tender and cozy."

Owens exposed the other side of Schumann in Melancholie: "When will the morning come that will release my life from these bonds?"

Owens displayed beautiful legato in Schubert's Fahrt zum Hades ("Journey to Hades") where he sang of "oblivion" and "death" and asked, "When will these tortures finish?"

A lover's fickle eyes

After intermission came ten French songs. Most outstanding were Debussy's Fleur des Blès ("Field Flowers"), in which Owens sang of golden tresses, scarlet poppies and azure eyes, and Debussy's Romance, which sang of "lilies that I have picked in the garden of your thoughts."

Duparc's Invitation au Voyage ("Invitation to the Voyage") revealed warm expressivity, and Owens hit excellent high notes as he sang of his lover's "fickle eyes." Ravel's Chanson épique about Don Quixote also had radiant top notes, while Quixote's drunken serenade had Owens laughing and showing extreme extroversion.

The printed program ended with Wagner's obscure Les Deux Grenadiers ("The Two Grenadiers," in French.)

Owens sang Purcell's "Music for a While" as encore, with long line and tender grace notes, then Copland's setting of the folk song, "Shall We Gather at the River."

At the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York this summer, Owens will play his first Amonasro in Verdi's Aida and also star in Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars. I look forward to hearing him sing Wotan in Wagner's Ring someday soon.