The woman puts down her sewing kit, she leaves her mother, the house, nothing can stop her, not a lock, not a bolt, she goes to the man she loves, for whom she is the whole beauty of the world. She goes out to sea with him, with the man who is more longing, more a poetic idea than real. she drowns heavy dark romance, gothic, a hundred years old, murky chords, piano garlands getting lost in the vague. The voice hovers over this, wonderfully full of euphony, which in the next moment breaks at the narrative, at the drama, because this song by Rebecca Clarke is nothing else. Soprano Golda Schultz recorded it for her first solo CD, among 17 others. Without exception, songs composed by women.
Golda Schultz grew up in Bophuthatswana, at that time an enclave in apartheid South Africa where there was no racial segregation. She first studied journalism because she wanted to ask people questions, then soon singing, in Cape Town and at the Juilliard School in New York, became a member of the ensemble at the Bavarian State Opera and began a groundbreaking career that took her to the Salzburg Festival, Milan and led to the Met. And she always sang in pieces “in which two men fight over a woman, and she ends up dead,” because that’s often the case in opera. But on her first CD she wanted to let the women do the talking. Mostly with texts written by men. But not set to music.
The forgotten Emilie Mayer was considered the female Beethoven during her lifetime
She went looking with her pianist Jonathan Ware and asked friends on Facebook. “A waterfall of names came up, we could easily do seven completely different programs with it.” For the CD entitled “This Be Her Verse” (Alpha-Classics) she chose five female composers: Clara Schumann, Emilie Mayer, who was considered the female Beethoven during her lifetime and has been forgotten today, Rebecca Clarke, who against her will composed by her father, Nadia Boulanger with her highly elegant, French grandeur and Kathleen Tagg. She wrote three songs for Schultz, intelligent, musically inspired and disparately designed dramas based on lyrics by Lila Palmer: A woman is not an island, the confetti rain is over, the bed is empty. “The songs tell what it means to be a woman in the 21st century.”
When Schultz performs her “18 Brilliants”, some organizers ask if she could also sing Schubert, but then the listeners come to her and say thank you. Some because they got a voice, others because they understood something. And probably also because they were carried away by a voice that seems to be able to do everything without effort, that delivers balm, the finest poetry, but also great, stirring opera. An “Erlkönig” is also included, not by Schubert, by Emilie Mayer. Introspective, without the masculine need to do something or the idea of being able to help. An atmosphere full of mystery, uncertainty. Brilliant. All women, probably apart from contemporary Tagg, composed against resistance because they could not do otherwise. Golda Schultz can’t help but sing these songs.