Of course no one can match Pape’s brilliant combination of resonance and sharp attack, which hits one over the head like a kind of sharp-edged blunt instrument, a kind of shillaugh with razor teeth. But Van Horn comes close and what’s more his vowels are brilliant, and as a result his passagio as well.
As for Golda Schultz, who thoroughly unsettled the audience at Tuesday’s Rake’s Progress to the point of appreciative disruption, with her unexpected mid-first-act musicianship in Anne’s aria “No Word From Tom,” she seems to have mastered the art of a big, thrilling-sound that is not big at all, the kind of trick that Kathleen Battle used to play, the trick of making the audience come to her.
What delights.