Demi-filth?
Fiorenza Cedolins gets off to a bad start in this performance of Luisa Miller. La Cieca feels that if you're going to sing like that, you really should avoid the Grayson Hall wig.
POSTED at
8:27 PM
06 December 2007
Fiorenza Cedolins gets off to a bad start in this performance of Luisa Miller. La Cieca feels that if you're going to sing like that, you really should avoid the Grayson Hall wig.
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15 Comments:
The hairdo is the least of her problems!
looks like she needs to go pee really badly!
God, I always wondered what Cedolins sounded like; fuck, man, she could sing Norma at the MET!
Is that Luisa Miller or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
http://cultureonthecheap.wordpress.com
At her Met debut as Butterfly, she sounded like someone who should have been singing Nedda in Piacenza. I didn't think the Aida much better, and her acting there was pure semaphore.
Bring back Rita Orlandi-Malaspina!
Come back Mara Zampieri - all is forgiven!
Err, I don't actually see what the problem is. This is her entrance scene, and it's a pretty unforgiving and ungrateful arietta. I have hear MUCH worse live, and I fail to see how such spite is justifiable.
Cedolinis is a fine Verdi singer: she was magnificent in the Trovatore at the ROH a few years ago, although clearly an adherent of the can belto school. Her 'm'avrai, ma fredda ed esamine spoglia' was the best I have ever heard, on record or live.
I'd rather hear her than Georghiou anyday.
I attended the première in Parma and it was... well, something unique, in a filthesque sense of the word! The second cast soprano was far better than her, at least in the first act... After this Luisa, Cedolins cancelled the Aida in Barcelona and I'm afraid she will sing neither Rondine in Venice nor Lucrezia Borgia in Turin. However, she is supposed to sing Poliuto in Bilbao... and every Callas fan knows what such an opera can be!
Just to be completely fair it should be mentioned that if (as I suspect) this clip is from "Prima della Prima", that program mostly uses video taken from rehearsals in various stages of development and not actual performances. So let's give her that.
That being said, this role just didn't suit her well (judging purely from radio broadcasts). I greatly enjoyed (and highly recommend) her vocal performances in her DVDs of Aida, Tosca, and Butterfly. Right now she seems to be going through a rough stretch. That may begin to serve as an explanation for the hard-knock life hairdo.
she certainly is no better or worse than what you usually hear at the MET these days... and I sorta like those little chacha steps she did ... but back to the Moffo recording for the definitive performance IMHO...
Is Luisa supposed to act drunk at the beginning of the opera?
I was sort of expecting a Hildehard Behrens geschrei moment from Elektra (you know, the Metropolitan opera broadcast one... eeech). This is not THAT bad. It is not here role, most probably. Her decision to take all of those scales in staccatissimo is, um, odd. I don't like it. But it also sounds like she is doing it because she is limited by her technical capacities in that domain. if that is the case, at least she is intelligent enough to understand her instrument and get through those scales in the best way she knows how.
Her Tosca in Verona was really quite lovely. her Vissi D'Arte was more than beautiful, and very touching.
I too have seen Cedolins be very good -- 3 times as Adriana in Rome -- balls to the wall intensity and a real capacity to suggest dying slowly from poison. I also saw a hot Trovatore (2x), as good as any I've encountered in twenty years -- she didn't have it ALL vocally, but delivered a wild hungry performance that was thrilling in the last act. I also saw a terrific Tosca, where she played her as everyone's victim, then the sudden eruption of ferocity in act two was a shock -- and it might have been the 1000th time I've seen the opera. She held her head in her hands for a while before 'vissi' -- don't know why, but sang it well.
Sometimes these type of ladies don't work for everyone, and certainly they aren't always that versatile -- the Luisa is pretty desperate, though the 'tu puniscimi' isn't bad.
I will open myself to derision and say I have also seen Aliberti and Zampieri be thrilling -- mostly I admit in the 80's and thrilling doesn't extend to 'always really in tune and rock steady'. However when some joker can come on here and defend Ghoul's Norma, I have to say those two and Cedonlins got a lot closer to what their various roles required than Ghoul did. For one thing they knew the style and the language-- that said Mara was pretty rocky in prima ottocento (though I'm told she did it well now and again, the one tape and one pirated DVD I have of her Norma is pretty hair raising. However I still insist Ghoul was worse).
I was too distracted by the production to notice the singing much. What was that little dance she was doing? It was like Little Luisa on the Prairie. Icky.
How can Cedolins be a major singer when her neck is so scrawny, er, I mean thin! All the great singers have thicker necks. Why look at this woman! Smoking, drinking, never thinkng of tomorrow -- nonchalant. And she needs a lovely French Hermes scarf to cover her lack of neck.
Yrs very trly,
BETTE DAVIS
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