National Symphony Orchestra’s Vanessa Captures a Landmark American Opera at Full Force

The National Symphony Orchestra has released a new recording of Vanessa, Samuel Barber's first opera. Conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, it was recorded live in concert at the Kennedy Center on January 30 and February 1, 2025, and is based on Barber's 1964 revision of the score. The historical importance of Vanessa is no less than its music. The opera premiered in 1958 and was the first American opera the Metropolitan Opera in New York had commissioned and produced in more than two decades. In that way, Vanessa helped begin a cultural shift away from the dominance of European music and singers, a movement that Beverly Sills later accelerated. The story has a gothic mood and is set in 1905 in a mansion in an unnamed northern country. Vanessa, a wealthy woman, has waited more than twenty years for the return of her lover, Anatol. But when Anatol arrives, she discovers he is not the man from her past, but rather his son, who bears his father's name. His arrival draws Erika, Vanessa's young niece, into the circle of this ruinous love, and in the end the tragedy repeats itself without any knot being untied. The libretto was written by Gian Carlo Menotti. In this recording, Nicole Heaston sings Vanessa, J'Nai Bridges sings Erika, Susan Graham sings the Old Baroness, Matthew Polenzani sings Anatol, and Thomas Hampson sings the Doctor. The critic for San Francisco Classical Voice considers this one of the notable available recordings of the opera and emphasizes the strength of the orchestra and singers. Still, he notes that Barber's music, for all its atmosphere and orchestral grandeur, does not always bring the characters before the listener with the same clarity and depth found in the great European operatic tradition.

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