Lassée Come Home
POSTED at
8:34 AM
24 October 2007
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29 Comments:
Goodness! This is the first piece of singing by her which has disappointed me owing to sheer technical inadequacy. It apeears that it is no longer simply a question of taste, but rather a question of diminishing vocal resources. However, it should be borne in mind that she is being recorded by someone with rather bad equipment, and that she is being accompanied by a piano, rather than orchestra, which of course makes a difference.
I thought her singing of this ariette on her 'Homage' disc was rather under par, but nothing compared to this.
Btw, how much airbrushing do you think was done to the images of her on that album? It's more brush than face it would appear
Throw this girl a fish, she barks like a seal...when she's not squealing, yelping or moaning.
What a shame. I really liked her once upon a time.
The "polite" applause is a result of (a) the placement of the pirate's microphone, which naturally picks up the applause of his or her immediate neighbors, at the expense of not getting the whole ambiance of the ovation, and (b) the intentional fading at the very end. You can't really judge the ovation from this single tape. If the point of this blog post is to embarrass Fleming by showing that La Scala isn't buying it, then point not made. The singing, on the other hand, is a different issue entirely. First: wrong choice of song.
Thanks la Cieca for the clip, do you think you could post someone singing the same piece to compare it to? Is it the grace notes on the scale up that sound canine? Some performances (If I remember correctly) have different versions like repeated staccato notes instead. There are two notes in each of the ascending sequences but the tone is not her best. Perhaps she should have tried different ornaments? I don't like some of the straight tone on the top notes of the downward arpeggios toward the end. It sounds shouted or screamed or like an operatic sigh. I don't know if I am familiar enough with it to understand what the problem is. I would youtube it but don't know the name if it.
Thanks in advance.
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Cheryl Studer please stop! You were never very good and no one is missing you. I remember The Vespri and Tell at La Scala - it was soooo bad and you looked soooo funny in your Mrs Piggy costume. Please give us a rest.
Fleming... hasn't she got anyone advising her? Seriously. Who coaches her? You can't teach good taste I guess, but this is really BAD.
OMG! I'm so excited... I didn't know "Souvenir" opened again? I can't wait to this, it's third re-incarnation. Fleming must be wonderful as Flo-Fo-Jen!!!
Oh good -
The Cheryl Studer psycho has shown up here (of all places).
It is no secret that La Cieca is probably Fleming's LEAST enthusiastic fan, so hearing this poor rendition of the coloratura showpiece from Gounod's Mireille is not much of a surprise. Really Cieca, isn't there anyone else for you to pick on?
The piece is certainly NOT a good fit for Fleming - even if she were to keep her mannerisms held in check (which she mostly is able to do on the studio release of this track). Here though, the scooping and swooping makes her somewhat ungainly approach sound even worse than it needs to. It is a fivolous piece - one best suited to high, light coloraturas, and is almost always CUT from productions of the complete opera due to its difficulty and ill-fit with the remainder of the role. For example, Freni (as famous a modern-day Mireille as we can find) never even attempted the piece to my knowledge. It is admirable that Fleming tries to stretch her capabilities, but this particular effort turned out rather poorly, I'm afraid. Oh, and I agree with Giorgio - one can't really tell about the applause at all. (Though I myself certainly wouldn't have contributed much had I been in attendance).
Maybe she was nervous -- you know? after all that screaming in Lucrezia Borgia in the '90s -- and all the people shouting her down -- haha Some things just never change...
wow...fleming is usually not one to fall apart like that! I mean technically.....
what WAS she thinking?
That people can actually find excuses for this monstrosity by saying it's the wrong choice of repertoiry is beyond me. 75% of what she has chosen to sing has been wrong, yet she keeps making the world suffer.
I can only imagine what kind of 'improvements' she'll add to Violetta this time around, the prima is less than 2 weeks away, brace yourselves.
Yup ... sounds like a voice up for an Armida ... what???
Erstegeiger - it is "O Legere Hirondelle", and if you'd like to hear it sung properly, check Sutherland out...pretty untouchable...
M.I.d'O
The honorable thing to do after Dancing All Night or yelping like a shih tzu is to scream "O, Florence Foster Jenkins, avanti a Dio' and leap from the battlements.
Oh please, La Cieca!! Please post this as an mp3 so I can keep it in my souvenir collection. Or should I say, my "Hommage" collection!
Someone talked about bad equipment of recording...this can be true, but I was in theatre the night of the concert and O legere hirondelle was a sort of comical and tragical performance by Fleming, people around be were astonished (in a bad sense)...but all the concert was like O legere hirondelle in terms of technique, she was always out of pitch...and the voice was even small. She didn't sing just O legere hirondelle in a bad way, she sang the whole concert this way...
I can tell it for sure, in theatre the effect was even worse than in the recording.
Shabran
Ho hum. Here we go again.
This clip is from a recital a year ago, and it's the second time La Cieca has posted a clip of Renee singing this ditty. Just in case you Renee haters didn't get the joke the first time.
Most singers have made some unfortunate rep and stylistic choices. The difference is that La Cieca doesn't often post them. You can be quite sure, however, that La Cieca will post every miscue out of Renee's mouth.
I don't suppose La Cieca would post her exquisite Berg songs or Korngold arias from the recent Proms. No, I didn't think so.
In Milan she sang even the Korngold aria...like O legere hirondelle...
I did not know they let poodles (the dog, not the diva) bark onstage at La Scala nowadays.
... and is she singing in a language that only dogs can understand?
Her programme of Berg and Korngold at the BBC Proms was good (though it left me cold when I saw it on TV) because her voice, personality and style (rather than her increasingly frequent lack thereof) are far more suited to the lines of German late Romanticism than to French or Italian coloratura.
This kind of traincrash is the result of Ms F's desire to be some kind of universal prima donna assoluta rather than a singer who can excel only in certain repertoire.
She should know better than to sing this, or anything similar. But obviously she doesn't care if she does know.
Perhaps the Met could stage Rosenkavalier with Guleghina as the Marschallin and Renaaay as Sophie. Stephanie Blythe could sing Octavian.
This is very poor rep choice. First, she doesn't have the right voice for it and even if she did, she clearly isn't in command of it. So why bother? I agree that usually she's fine technically but is lacking in style and taste. Here, she's not up to snuff technically.
As much as I hate to bring up the N word, Anna is definitely lacking in technique, style and taste. I'll take Renee any day.
And, don't tell me you have to see Anna to appreciate her. I've seen every performance of hers at the Met except in War and Peace.
That is one shitty ditty.
Fleming sings this better than Netrebko could, I'm sure. But that's not much to hang one's hat on.
And unless I'm mistaken, this is the same piece that La Cieca used for a little Lassie segment on one of her old podcasts -- one about Eschenbach and Susan Graham being stuck in a well or something. Pretty funny.
LaCieca,
I love the Fleming bashing, because it's deserved... her and any artist who has NO CLUE when to stop their shinanigans. If they choose to produce such filth, then they deserve to reap the consequences. The ornamenti even go off what she intended at one point... yikes.
Sad that this stuff passes for the artform these days.
BTW Erstegeiger - I was able to download the clip via my regular "RealPlayer" software. I have all of Reeeeneeeee's filth on my PC, lol. Such entertainment!
Evenhanded opines:
"It is no secret that La Cieca is probably Fleming's LEAST enthusiastic fan ..."
Not while I have a breath left in my body.
Evenhanded opined:
"It is no secret that La Cieca is probably Fleming's LEAST enthusiastic fan ... "
Not while I have a breath left in my body.
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