Jenny Levine

Levine’s legacy at the Met will be defined in part by the works he has introduced to its repertory. These include not only Berg’s “Lulu’’ but also Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,’’ that brilliantly synthetic score that seems to distill the musical essence of Weimar Berlin while serving up a scorching social and political critique that still resonates today.

This excellent session (recorded at Half Moon Bay in 1976) features trumpeter Blue Mitchell with four Northern California musicians: the obscure Coltrane-influenced tenor saxophonist Mike Morris, pianist Mark Levine, bassist Kenny Jenkins and drummer Smiley Winters. The repertoire is fresh, consisting of a nearly 17-minute "Pleasure Bent," the warm ballad "Portrait of Jenny," a song called "Sweet Smiley Winters" that is really a "Sweet Georgia Brown" line penned decades earlier by Coleman Hawkins, Levine's "Something Old, Something Blue" and a brief "Blues Theme." Mitchell is heard in prime form throughout the enjoyable straightahead set which contains a few subtle surprises.

Magdalena Kožená is a remarkable singer. Her voice is a somewhat light mezzo with many colors, and she can shade it to a whisper or impress with a fortissimo high B-flat. Her range is absolutely even from top to bottom and she never switches gears; similarly she refuses to push the voice at either end. Her reading of Eboli's "Veil Song" from Verdi's Don Carlos is seductive and insinuating, with just the right Spanish flavor in the low-register roulades–but they're soft-focused. Perhaps she has no "chest" register, or is afraid to use it?

Having dazzled us with her coloratura ability in arias by Mozart, Gluck, and her fellow Czech, Myslivecek, this luscious young mezzo-soprano now offers us a generous program of French arias–15 of them, widely varied in tone, weight, dramatic intent, and style–and conquers and convinces in them all. Beginning again in coloratura territory, an aria from Auber's rare Le domino noir catches our attention with the heroine's opening words, "Je suis sauvée enfin!" ("I am safe at last!"), in which she paints the picture of our out-of-breath heroine immediately.