Flame on
Tending the sacro fuoco this week at Unnatural Acts of Opera will be that priestess of the primo ottocento Leyla Gencer. The diva sings the title role in Spontini’s La Vestale in a performance from Teatro Massino di Palermo, December 4, 1969. Ferando Previtali conducts, and the young Renato Bruson is heard as Cinna. Also in the company: Robleto Merolla (Licinio), Agostino Ferrin (Il Sommo Sacerdote), Franca Mattiucci (La Gran Vestale), Enrico Campi (Un Console) and Sergio Sisti (Un Aruspice).
For those of you in a more contemporary mood, Unnatural Acts of Video presents Denise Duval in one of her Poulenc specialties.
I wouldn’t like to be destined to be left alone listening to my records because there is only one- forty minutes of religious songs! I’d be totally batty before morning tea time!
Now I’m only sorry I didn’t do a concert in Japan so the chances of a pirated video popping up on Youtube would be a possibility. Life is so cruel- it seems I will just have to be content gazing out my window with an etherial look on my face.
Now I know how Zinka must have felt.
Baritenor – Like I said, I think if you are good, DAMN GOOD, you love what you do, you love making great music with great musicians, and you have a life and don’t forget that singing isn’t your life – IT’S YOUR JOB – you will be fine. Just love what you do, and don’t forget it.
Go, Leyla!
If you worry about your opera pipes getting gummy, practice the Great American Song Book. Study Bing, Frank, Dean, Sarah V, Prysock. We need great lounge singers. If you can’t sing one kind of music, master another genre.I’ll wait for you to give us In the Wee Small Hours, and Come Fly With Me.
Symptomatic of the insane way that opera singers are now viewed is a sentence from the NYTimes obituary of Rose Bampton. Allan Kozinn writes, “But she had a considerable artistic arsenal that included a strong, finely polished voice and a trim, statuesque figure.” Military metaphors aside, Kozinn’s equation of Bampton’s figure with her vocal ability is troubling, but not surprising. It betrays the prevailing idea that body type/shape is part of a singer’s artistry.
I assume Toscanini would not have used Bampton at all(at least for singing) unless she did have a strong highly polished voice. He was kinda picky about that stuff. Does anyone in century 21 at the greyoldthing know anything about Maestro?
Lfg-
You know, I DO have a great Robert Goulet impression….
Just remembered something from that Operanews article I mentioned. One of the singers who crashed in ’66 was Lisa della Casa, whose vocal problems supposedly were caused by her several packs a day smokin habit. I read somewhere that Caruso used up 5 packs daily of golwaus–probably what killed him.