Gian Carlo Menotti took as his starting-point for the libretto of Vanessa the atmosphere of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. His story is original, but the ideas that fired him can be found in the stories. One of Dinesen's heroines lives a secluded life, and although beautiful, she's forlorn – 'she knew that she did not exist, for nobody ever looked at her'. Vanessa, too, has lived her adult life waiting for the return of her faithless admirer, Anatol. When he does come, it's an impostor.
For an opera that's so seldom performed, Vanessa has been accorded a generous three complete recordings. This new one, recorded in London's Barbican after a concert in 2003, has splendidly vivid sound. Leonard Slatkin draws full-blooded playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, accentuating Barber's use of yearning, Puccini-inspired melodies, laced with a few nods to Berg and Strauss. The weirdest music, that for the ball in Act 3, sounds like some kind of Western barn dance, even though the setting is northern Europe.
Excellent though Susan Graham is as Erika, Christine Brewer is so much in command, and in such splendid voice, there's no doubt it's Vanessa's story. One problem is that the three female voices sound a little similar: Catherine Wyn- Rogers is a youthful old Baroness.
Anatol, the greatest cad in opera since Pinkerton, is made almost sympathetic by William Burden. Neal Davies does what he can with the rather stock figure of the Doctor.
But listening at home one is conscious of an awful lot of generalised mood music. Vanessa was the last gasp of American verismo: its Met première in 1958 was in the same season as Bernstein's West Side Story o