Balcony box
Something new and interesting (La Cieca hopes) on Unnatural Acts of Opera: a 2004 concert performance of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, starring Anna Netrebko (Giulietta), Daniela Barcellona (Romeo) and Joseph Calleja (Tebaldo). Act One is the current podcast, with the second to follow on Friday.
Speaking of the lovely Miss Netrebko, she and Rolando Villazon will headline a gala celebrating 40th Anniversary of The Met at Lincoln Center next Tuesday. The concert will be webcast over the Met’s RealNetworks (and of course Sirius) beginning at 7:00 PM. Unfortunately, La Cieca has a prior commitment that night, but she is sure that you, her cher public, will want to chat about the gala here at parterre.com. As such, La Cieca is sending out request to you parterre.com regulars for volunteers to host the web chat. (Quite simple, really: you’ll need only to be online and on the chat site beginning at 6:45 and continuing until the finish of the broadcast.) If you’re interested in helping out, email La Cieca at lacieca@parterre.com.
NYCOQ-
Sorry. I’m a Los Angeles Jew. I Overanalyze EVERYTHING.
Is Straus’ opera of The Silent Woman going to be done in the 21st century by Gelb or anyone else?
la divinia due
I certainly hear what you are saying about expecting perfection from singers. Personally I have always preferred live recordings whenever possible, specifically for the ‘bumps’ that show up from time to time. One of my favourite live recordings of Shwarzkopf as Donna Elvira is definitely not her best- though it wasn’t her, it was the conductor.
I think the mistake people make is not in expecting perfection, but in expecting a very controlled generic production often out of the studio editing as being the only ‘correct’ way to sing. Now I hear it more and more live, and, its boring. I would rather have a singer miss a few notes, and yet have an exciting fresh clear and different sound.
I think this is different than a singer just not singing particularly well because they can’t. Or singing in a manner that does both the music and the composer a disservice. Look at all the different fachs of sopranos there are, and roles to meet those fachs. I used to respect Renee Flemming for her technical ability in a rather generic voice, but then she seemed to get into the groove of singing everything.
I think its right to complain when we as audiences are being fed a package that deep down inside we know is not particularly well produced. And there are still some packages that produce very well. Not as many due to this tendency towards genericness, but they exist.
Trebs, Dessay, Renee, AG etc most certainly do not suck. But for overall vocal production live, every role that they do that Devia also does, well, Devia just plain does it better. She really does. She might not throw in all the ‘acting theatrics’ that they do, but she sure does get out what the composer wrote in a pretty easy manner with a big clean crisp sound. And this is after decades of singing.
But hey, Devia doesn’t fit into that ‘pat’ ‘safe’ sound so many audiences, especially US audiences have been trained to believe as ‘correct.’ She is entirely unique in sound, so she is rarely viewed as a ‘star’ though she most certainly is one. I consider that today, the voices of Tebaldi, Callas, Freni and many others would have been stopped dead in their tracks.
From an audience member point of view, I feel if I pay a substantial amount of money for a ticket, I deserve to get a good performance and the real thing. When you have the real thing, like a Sutherland, you don’t need lots of advertising to fill the house. I’ll spend a lot of money to get to see and hear different wonderful voices like that in the same opera over and over again. I won;t spend more money if I see the same production, and hear the same sound every house I go to in the world.
My 2 cents and some extra.
Cheers.
Villazon still looks like Mr Bean to me.
So, it’s not just me … Villazon really has been (bean) cloned from Rowan Atkinson.
Devia-Fan–
Well said!!!! I agree with everything you said and I think you are right. I am so sick of hearing the same soprano voice sing every role. It’s the same sound whether you are a lyric coloratura or a lyric soprano–they all sound the same. There isn’t much praise going for uniqueness anymore. I will say that each artist sounds a little dissimilar on cd but in person they all blend in to one another in my opinion. I also agree that Tebaldi, Freni, Sutherland, etc wouldn’t have made it today. Sutherland simply due to her poor diction, which wasn’t as bad as they say. I don’t care how well she sang those melissmas, I don’t think they would even consider a 6 foot coloratura today, and for so many reasons mainly b/c she isn’t the young engenue type or b/c she was so much taller than her tenor partners, maybe her hair color was wrong or maybe she didn’t enunciate all her words. Who cares? She is still the voice of the 20th century to many. What a disservice it would have been to of not had a Sutherland. Opera needs to go out on a limb and choose something radical to stir things up a bit. Set a new standard instead of all this froofroo scooping and sliding about shit that we hear ALL THE BLOODY TIME. I am so over it already. Shouldn’t we all be over it. Do we like the road that we are headed down? These boring cd perfect performances. ugh.
The claws are out today in full swing.
ANd so glad as well that i wasn’t seeing things the first time I saw Villazon and though “Mr. Bean sings?”
I would have to agree that most CD performances today are uninspired over-hyped crap compared to the stuff of yesteryear (Rene Jacobs’ stuff being a possible exception — you might not like his conducting style, but at least he’s different and chooses people other than Renaaaay and AG for the lead). Though people seem to be saying this about all genres of music, not just classical/opera. Actually, I guess you could say our entire culture is becoming homogenized, or “dumbed-down,” or whatever. I don’t think the mantra of “lowest common denominator” is unique to the opera or even music world. I don’t really completely understand this, so I won’t try to extemporate on this. Anyway, my two cents on our current Top 3 lime-light names right now is:
1) Renaay – has great voice and technical ability, but uses them with extremely poor taste. I have the Cosi she did with von Otter and Solti from the 90s, and she sounded great on that, much more disciplined.
2) Angela Gheorgiu – I don’t think I’ll ever understand why people like her. I guess she’s got a good stage presence or whatever, but I always want to head for the hills whenever she opens her mouth. Her timbre is so… dull. I don’t mean boring, I mean lacks luster and resonance. It’s just so incredibly unsatisfying to listen to her sing.
3) Anna Netrbko – Love her dark velvety timbre, hate her utter lack of expression and control (well, not all the time, I think it depends on the repetoire). I first heard her on her Sempre Libera CD, and was overwhelmingly unimpressed. Then I heard the Rusalka song to the Moon from her first CD and loved it. She’s got a good natural voice, but I don’t think she should be singing all that belcanto. I’m thinking of getting her Russian Album: if she’s better in Czech than Italian, maybe she’ll be even better in Russian.
As for if these women deserve their fame? I would probably say no if you judge purely on vocal ability, but I don’t think that most famous people deserve to be famous (e.g. does George Bush deserve to be president?). Life’s just a bitch and people don’t always get what they deserve.