San Francisco Classical Voice
In a pair of knockout arias, bass baritone Christian Pursell carved out richly drawn, lustrously sung musical portraits. Unfurling a voice of remarkable solidity and mobility from top to bottom, he closed out the first half of the program with the title character’s probing cavatina from Rachmaninoff’s Aleko. Pursell dug into the Russian lyrics and gave them a ripe, mournfully agitated cast. He returned after intermission as a preening soldier in Ambroise Thomas’s Le Caïd (The Qaid). Speeding through the pattering French lines, Pursell fused razor-sharp diction and wittily detailed moves into a second feat of operatic alchemy. STEVEN WINN