Brownlee Shares New Album with Erin Morley

Lawrence Brownlee and Erin Morley on the cover of their new album (from the Amazon.com Web page for this album)

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee is likely to be familiar to many San Francisco music lovers. He made his debut in a performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) in the fall of 2016, followed by his recital debut with San Francisco Performances in March of 2018. One week from today, Pentatone will release Golden Age, an album of bel canto duets that Brownlee will share with soprano Erin Morley. They perform with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester led by its chief conductor, Ivan Repušić.

It should be no surprise that the album will begin with Donizetti, who commands three tracks for the operas La fille du régiment, Marino Faliero, and Don Pasquale. Indeed, he is the only composer to be allocated more than one selection. Nevertheless, all of the other composers as just as familiar: Gioachino Rossini (Le comte Ory), Georges Bizet (Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth), Léo Delibes (Lakmé), and Giuseppe Verdi (Rigoletto).

I have to confess that I have come to enjoy Brownlee’s voice, first through his SFO appearance and then through his recordings. One way of putting it is that he knows how to find the “bel” in bel canto. He has a gift for delivering high-pitch climaxes without ever making them sound forced. One might almost say that he knows how to prioritize the music over the musician! As a result, while bel canto is far from my favorite genre when I attend my SFO subscription performances, I have to say that both Brownlee and Morley deliver thoroughly engaging tracks on this new album in both their solo and duet performances.