A truck rumbled along East Speedway just as the sun was giving its last yawn April 9, adding a percussive thump to celebrated soprano Corinne Winters’ performance of “Tatyana’s Letter Scene” from Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin.”
Throughout her hourlong recital at the east-side Mountain Oyster Club patio that Friday evening — the first of two sold-out performances to open True Concord Voices & Orchestra’s spring “bubble” season — Mother Nature and man attempted to steal the attention from Winters. But as birds chirped, adding a sweet chorus to Copland’s “Twelve Songs of Emily Dickinson” and those trucks tried to interrupt her finale, Winters never skipped a beat.
The performance, one of the highlights of the 2021 Tucson Desert Song Festival, came months after it was rescheduled back in January as the state’s COVID-19 pandemic numbers rose. You got a sense from the socially distanced, masked audience sitting on the idyllic patio that a little truck distraction and a low-flying helicopter weren’t going to spoil the moment for them or Winters.
“This is a very exciting evening for me because it is my first night on stage in 15 months,” she told the audience as a few people started making their way into the private club’s glassed-in dining room visible from the patio. “I’m overjoyed and overwhelmed being here.”
In an emotional, often breathtaking and mesmerizing performance, Winters gave us a taste of what we had been missing as Tucson venues remained shuttered, their marquees promising to return soon. She soared to the highest range of her soprano in the finale of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Summer Night’s Dream” as a plane roared in the distance. By the time she hit the forceful exclamation of Copland’s “Why do they shut me out of Heaven?” the birds had fluttered off into the early evening sun.
Her program tipped its hat to women as lovers, nurturers, muses and patronesses, with works by Debussy, Copland, Rimsky-Korsakov, Strauss and Tchaikovsky. A highlight came at the end, when she performed Tatyana’s aria from “Eugene Onegin,” a role that she performed for the first time with Arizona Opera in 2015. For a brief few moments, with a voice as big and achingly beautiful as it was for that 2015 performance, Winters took us back to Tucson Music Hall and a time when we weren’t consumed with conversations about masks and vaccines.
Winters’ recital kicked off True Concord’s four-event spring bubble season. Music Director Eric Holtan said 18 vocalists arrived in Tucson in late March and after isolating 10 days and being tested for the coronavirus, will perform three more concerts over the next month.
“The Trailblazers,” Friday, April 16, and Saturday, April 17, at Mountain Oyster Club, 6400 E. El Dorado Circle, off East Speedway. The concert streams May 7-21.
“Music for the Royal She,” Wednesday, April 21, at St. Francis in the Valley, Green Valley; and April 24 and 25 at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, 7000 N. Resort Drive in the foothills. Video stream May 14-28.
“The Goddess: ‘Carmina Burana,’” April 30 at Green Valley’s Community Performance & Art Center, 1250 W. Continental Road; May 1 and 2, Loews Ventana Canyon Resort. Streams May 21-June 4.
For tickets, visit trueconcord.org. All performances will be outdoors with limited audiences following COVID-19 safety protocols and will begin at 5:30 p.m. Performances also will be streamed later through True Concord’s website.
