Evelyn Tubb - The Mad Lover (1993)

This is a problematic record. I cannot pretend to have enjoyed it, but then it may well be that 'enjoyment' is not its purpose, and that what I have just said is a tribute to its success. Mad scenes are probably as old as drama itself; certainly they were a well-established convention of tragic drama in Tudor England. The extension into song, documented on this record, belongs to the Restoration and the early eighteenth century, the 'Age of Reason'. It is a question of the appropriate degree of realism, and of what may be sacrificed in its pursuit. In many readers' minds the memory of a comparable disc by Catherine Bott (L'Oiseau-Lyre, 2/93) will still be fresh. It was reviewed by LK, who wrote: ''The earthy, slightly 'under-developed' quality of her voice... means that the music never loses touch with the feel of the spoken word, a factor which helps bring the performances an authentic whiff of the theatre.'' Now this new record by Evelyn Tubb goes further. What I guess LK had in mind by the 'under-developed' quality (the 'straight', vibrato-less tone, the absence of a modern vocal glamour) is far more insistent here, and the 'whiff' is not of the theatre but the asylum.
In another sense, 'under-developed' is the last term to use about either singer. Their technique enables them to deal brilliantly with florid passages of hair-raising difficulty. Evelyn Tubb has the skills of a virtuoso, as she shows right from the start in Blow's Welcome, every guest. It is also a kind of technical skill that is employed when she intentionally distorts, discolours and in other ways 'uglifies' the tone and the vocal line. Comparing her with Bott in the three items their programmes have in common, one finds in Tubb the more intense and specific concentration on meaning, but with Bott there comes instant relief for the ears.
On the new record, relief arrives in the form of some solos played on the triple harp by Frances Kelly, as delightful in the clarity and sweetness of sound as in its variety. Some of the songs should bring relief too, yet the discoloured (or poisoned) 'mad' tone persists in Tell me, ye brooks, and even the charming Spring Gardens suffers, as sung, from the pallid coloration inherent in vibrato-less singing and from an excess of coming-and-going within the musical phrase. But there is no doubt about the expressiveness—both of the singing and of the songs themselves. As Anthony Rooley says in his notes, if ''Morpheus, thou gentle God'' had been attributed to Henry, instead of to Daniel, Purcell, ''it would have been acclaimed as a masterpiece years ago''.'