Her Potential Is Here; Next, Experience

Inexperience and a certain naivete Monday night characterized Marjorie Elinor Dix’s debut recital on the Jose Iturbi Gold Medal series at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

The young American soprano, who has already sung minor roles at the Metropolitan Opera, showed promise, but.... She should have asked her audience to stop applauding between songs. She should have warmed up more thoroughly before her first item, Beethoven’s aria “Ah! Perfido”--indeed, she should have warmed up better for the entire first half of the evening. She should have given more thought to her programming, which looked fine on paper but which she couldn’t quite pull off.

Dix’s attractive soprano could turn into an important voice; she might sing Aida or Sieglinde--her brief program bio said she has already sung Fiordiligi. But more seasoning needs to be done in this young career. The long warmup in this performance took up most of the program. Songs by Beethoven, Schubert and Richard Strauss, and Ravel’s “Sheherazade,” proved generally pallid and unconvincing. Words were pronounced but meanings escaped the singer.

Only in the final group, excerpts from Berlioz’s “Nuits d’Ete,” did the voice actually blossom and the singer’s temperament really show itself. The Berlioz songs revealed the voice’s true timbre, its impressive height, Dix’s ability to sing long legato lines and to project passion.

At the end, as if to prove that the artist is also self-critical, Dix repeated Strauss’ “Zueignung,” as an encore, and to greater success than the first time.

Her proper and accommodating, but often also perfunctory, pianist was William David Hobbs.