Karita... after hours
POSTED at
7:29 PM
10 January 2008
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41 Comments:
OMG I love this! Did I mention that Karita is absolutely a diva bombshell goddess even when she's not singing opera? Because she is.
good god, what are we coming to. she looks like a drag rip off of Peggy Lee. Late to arrive for the Manon Lescaut. Can you say......
Damn! that's the best (and hottest) cross-over I have ever seen. Wouldn't mind scissoring with that sister. Throw in those three dancers, too- the more the merrier, I say!
I stopped it. I couldn't stand it. Is, nowadays, cabaret singing going to be part of every soprano's repertory? Fleming has made her mark. Who's next? Georghiu? I don' think so. She's busy taking care of her wounded Orpheus! Maybe Netrebko's going to be the up-and-coming torch singer. That's what the Met really needs: sopranos moving from Broadway to the big house, and from the big house to cabarets and night clubs. The circle's complete and now we can rest in peace!
I have no objection to crossover per se. And I love KM.
But LORDY, that's embarrassing.
Is she supposed to be SINGING during the monologue to John's head?
Sorry, boys and girls, but this is really rather a successful crossover experiment. First of all, she has a low key where she doesn't have operatic resonance and vibrato in the voice. (Are you listening Renée?) Secondly, because the voice is pulled back we can hear almost every word - her diction is excellent and very idiomatic for a non-native speaker. Also she really does get down and puts the number over without artifice or condescension. And she looks hot and totally comfortable onstage, really eating up the place with charisma and sex appeal.
Karita, you ROCK!!!
I didn't know that Judy Dench and Eva Marton had a child...
But the voice itself sounds AWFUL- toneless and dull. And she's not putting it over, she's grimacing and gurning.
Listen you canary fanciers, you, Peggy Lee could never even in her heyday have been confused with Eileen Farrell let alone Jo Sullivan or Jane Froman. It is not about tonal quality per se but rhythm and attack. It shouldn't be a round pretty sound because that isn't how the song is written. Her facial expression are a bit overdone for the camera but probably looked natural from the audience's perspective in the theater.
You don't think that she has the opera singer resonance ad quality to her voice??????? She has that very open throat, round sound that SCREAMS opera singer. Pop singers have much thinner, smaller, tighter vocal quality. I LOVE Karita. I saw her nekked from 3 inches away, and I love her, but I don't like it when opera singers sing not-opera.
I don't like it when opera singers sing not-opera.
I agree - I think very, very few are truly successful. Only two come immediately to mind that I would gladly listen to, voluntarily and repeatedly, as something other than a novelty - Eileen Farrell and Anne Sofie von Otter.
Check these examples out:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=m8Wvkqm6NSg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5_DkSO3uw4w
I too love Karita, but this clip seems too calculated and stylistically forced.
It's funny that everyone claims that today's opera singers are crossing to pop, but singers back in the day have done that. I don't think it's a new thing. Think of Lily Pons, Helen Traubel, Eileen Farrell, Robert Merrill, and all the other great singers of the past whom we consider gods today. They took a stab at the pop genre and impressed a different crowd of fans than the higher brow operatic crowd they're used to performing too. This is not bad and distasteful. I think it displays Karita's unconventional artistic abilities. On the other hand, Roberto Alagna's forays into desecrating a work like Orpheus truly is a disaster. It may be opera, but I'd rather take this any day of the week (or night) rather than listen to a ridiculously produced, bastardized masterpiece.
I think she's tremendous.
Now. Who can tell me about the dancers?
I love when shiny poop is handed to me on silver platter. You all just be on crack to even consider liking this...I mean, the Del Rubio Triplets ran circles around Kareeta, and they were in on the joke.
Haven't we had this debate before?
Mattila has always had crossover skills, correctly deployed as the concluding number of her New York recitals.
When the great Broadway songs were written, no Broadway singers were miked and most Broadway singers had at least some operatic training. So the songs (obviously not the Phil Silvers/Bert Lahr songs) suited operatic chops, if not pushed to excess. Even today, a Dawn Upshaw or a Kiri Te Kanawa (or even Luca Pisaroni!) can pull them off if s/he knows what s/he's doing. (I've never heard Siepi's Cole Porter, but I'm told it's to die for. Tom Hampson's ain't bad, in the grander ballads.)
There were recorded embarrassments, of course, like Sutherland's Noel Coward, and Price's Right as the Rain, and Verrett's folk song LP. But I blamed the producers in great part.
And in the great days, the attempts of a Scotto/Tebaldi/ Baccaloni were endearingly hilarious, good fellowship at recital's end.
Who would willingly live without Mawrdew Czgowchwz's impromptu experiments in torpid third-stream jazz?
This started going wrong before she even started singing, when she was standing still and going from side to side. And why is she wearing fishnet stockings on her arm.
I think it would be fair to say that some Broadway singers had at least minimal opera training, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to say most. While Jerome Kern was certainly capable of writing operetta-ish songs, Irving Berlin, Rogers and Hart, Cole Porter (usually), and even George Gershwin (especially early Gershwin) were writing in the popular idioms of the day. Showboat is certainly semi-operatic for Magnolia and Ravenal. And Porgy and Bess doesn't count, because it was written as an opera. Aside from Friml, Lehar, Kern, and Oscar Strauss , I would say that the soubrette voice really came into its own with Rogers and Hammerstein. The sopranos in Oklahoma, Carousel, King and I, and Sound of Music are all semi operatic. But I agree with earlier comments about crossing over not being such a recent thing. Lily Pons became a movie star. Helen Traubel starred on Broadway. Lauritz Melchior sang with Jane Powell (one of my favorite soubrettes), and Jeanette MacDonald tried for a long time to become an opera star. I don't have an problem with crossing over if the singer can do it well. Mattila can't, at least to my ears.
Gawd, she looks gruesome! That brown dress is hideous.
okay I love Karita's work but I'll be the first to admit some of her crossover forays aren't always successful (some of the numbers on the 40th birthday album come to mind). But take a look at some of the other clips from this concert, say "Lush Life/Come Rain or Come Shine", and she really gets the idiom better (this WAS in Finland, mind you). Either way, what comes through is honest... not just the patina of "poperatic" affectations that mar her other recent competitors.
Agreed that opera singers have been doing the "pop" crossover for a long time, and thank you, winpal, for reminding me about Eileen Farrell who was AWESOME.
But let's get real people - she wasn't singing 'Fever'.
A good opera singer could crossover to singing the same kinds of things as Frank Sinatra sang - croony, delightful things that are designed to show off beautiful voices - and could sing them well without them being OVERLY operatic.
But if we could transport back in time, and have Eileen Farrell singing, oh, I don't know - FEVER is about as good as it gets - it would be SLIGHTLY ridiculous, you have to admit.
Now, I don't have an enormous problem with a touch of the ridiculous - I am more than a little ridiculous almost every day - but it still has to be GOOD.
Julie Andrews singing "Jazz Hot" or whatever the name of the song from Victor/Victoria is, is slightly ridiculous, but it's still REALLY good!!
That's all I'm saying.
"When you've got it, flaunt it..."
http://cultureonthecheap.wordpress.com
... and if you haven't got it, flaunt even more of it as though you had.
If you want to get applause.
Is all I'm saying.
http://hanslick.blogspot.com/
Watched every clip available ....even before some were pulled. Humiliatingly wretched in every conceivable way.
Makes Fleming's dips into camp excess seem modest by comparison.
Good God this is was horrid stuff.
She reminded a little bit of the Dutch singer who sang "I Believe I can Fly" during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. But that was supposed to be campy and fun. And at least I was high. I'm stone cold sober for Karita's crossover. Speaking of intentionally campy, Bette Midler, who recorded The Peggy Lee Songbook (including a great cover of "Fever"), is doing concerts in vegas called "The Showgirl Must Go On". Anyone know if it's coming to New York?
Now she looks like some scary suburban swinger! eeek! Love the cross...yikes...
I love Karita, but this is scary. Why would anyone want to listen to this when there's Billie Holiday, Johnny Hartman and Dinah Washington, who sing it so much better. Opera singers should stick to what they do best.
I agree that there are limitations to an opera singer crossing over to this kind of material. But in my humble opinion, her rhythmic sense is freer than most opera singers'. She does not hold on the voice and make a big vocal showcase. That is only my perception. I am not at all speaking in absolutes. I did not care for some of the other clips such as 'come rain or come shine' because I think she places the voice too much. I am not a singer so I don't know if what I just said makes sense. I think in opera the voice is more important than the words and in cabaret the words and the naturalness of the speech pattern is more important than the voice. Again, I am only expressing my inadequate perceptions so don't get mad if you disagree with me. I actually welcome disagreement because it makes me think and learn.
I suppose we should look on the bright side. Opera singers crossing over to pop are generally more successful than the reverse. For true pain, try Michael Bolton's My Secret Passion (with Julius Rudel, no less). Or Streisand's Classical Barbra.
But all of these crossover attempts are at least interesting if the artists succeed in their primary fach and are trying something new and different. The worst of all are those who really don't authentically succeed in either genre (well, artistically, if not financially). I'm thinking Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman, Paul Potts, Il Divo, ...
It comes down to this - either you can sing jazz or you can't.
Ms. Karita sings Strayhorn honestly and with taste. I say, bravo. If you are embarrassed, perhaps what embarrasses you is the idiom of the American Songbook.
Sorry girls, I just don't hear wretchedness here at all. What I hear is her good rhythmic freedom as Josephine mentioned, and she has the ears for the harmony.
Dave - humiliating? Really? Now who's over the top? Humiliating is finding Steisand's Classical Barbara album at Tower Records in the Comedy bin!
If you really want to wet your panties, have you heard Thomas Quasthoff scatting on YouTube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkwKK-NjryU&feature=related
you see, what it comes down to is this, in yet another opinion offered here.
Eileen Farrell sang her jazz and braodway and she was an honest to goodness JAZZ and broadway singer. Bing threatened to fire her! For those days, Gelb most likely encourages it.
Karita Mattila is not a jazz singer, remotely not even close. It is more honest than renee's riffs or attempts at jazz which to ME, just sound awful. This is honest sorta, but I question, why? Who needs Mattila in that?
Much less any opera singer? YOu either is or you isn''t......and honey chil; she ain't.
Josephine.... Your perceptions are hardly inadequate, whether anyone agrees with them or not. They're yours; own them. Don't let us make you back down and feel like you have to apologize for them. I may not agree with you, but I respect your opinion nonetheless. And I will always forgive you for being wrong... hehehe.
Poope Luvr is so right saying:
"Now she looks like some scary suburban swinger! eeek! Love the cross...yikes..."
Karita, undoubtedly a handsome woman in that strappling blonde way, tends to make herself look like some kind of Nordic madame or the ex-wife of a Baltic oligarch.
Still, her words are much clearer here than they usually are in opera.
"Dave - humiliating? Really? Now who's over the top? Humiliating is finding Steisand's Classical Barbara album at Tower Records in the Comedy bin!"
Wow! You are right, that is even MORE humiliating.
It's not that Mattila isn't honest enough, it is just that she sounds and looks so dreadful.
More, please.
OH MY GOD! I just had an epiphany. When I was in high school every time I walked the halls the kids whispered B.O., and now I know what they were saying. They were calling me a Baltic Oligarch. Thanks you all for solving a 20-year mystery
sanford
thanks for that vote of confidence. I tend to think that I do own my opinions even though I don't want to appear "opinionated." A touch of humility becomes a person. I am lucky to have seen miss Mattila is 2 operas and one recital during my trip to NYC. As much as I love her and want to support all of her musical offerings, and as much I think there are merits to her cross over work, I probably would refrain from paying money to go see her doing anything other than classical music. Call me old-fashioned, but I would rather hear her in Arabella than in "Come Rain or Come Shine".
Sanford, is that better?
Josephine, that was lovely.
Josephine, you are the one person on here who DOESN'T want to appear opinionated ...
der richtige
well, as I mentioned I do have opinions but do not have any intentions of voicing them in a harsh way or in a way that is insulting to other people. And I most certainly don't want to appear as if I am making statements that hold true for all human beings.
I saw the HD Macbeth. I had seen the opening night in NYC back in October. Does anyone else feel that there was an amazing improvement in Guleghina's singing? I still tend to agree with those who have posted comments about her lack of technique for this kind of music. But in the house back in October I am sad to say that she had trouble singing the role. I was afraid she was not going to be able to finish the performance. But today, she sounded much better.
Sorry that I have broken the Mattila thread.
I watched "Stormy Weather," and it's just wrong. She makes an entrance worthy of a legend (which La Karita just might end up as), but the scope of the arrangement is was wayyyy too big, and she sings it as such. Also, I get the impression that she's acting as a jazz singer rather than just singing jazz. Yanno', she might sound better if she just sat on the piano, because--oh my, does she have a great crooning voice. I'm really enjoying listening to "Lush Life," though. I think it sounds great. And the transition to "Come Rain Come Shine" is just masterful. The following song is sort of spotty--some of it works, some doesn't. Now, "Vodka" is really fun. She acts / delivers it brilliantly, and the staging is delightful. Plus, I think the high notes she throws in (not originally written, are they?) are totally appropriate. You can tell she really loves jazz in all of them, but "Vodka" is the one she does the best job with. I don't really have anything negative to say about it.
Bah humbug- while I also don't normally like or enjoy opera Singers crossing over- I do think some posters have got their heads up their own butts.
This wasn't half bad at all- I've heard a lot worse. As for criticising her looks- take a look in the mirror honeys!
I don't like the song either- but what the heck is wrong with a diva taking a little time out and doing something light if she enjoys it for once. Nothing forces any one of us to so darn precious.
I love Birgit singing I could have danced all night- it's a hoot and she obviously enjoys doing it immensely but don't you think some of you are taking yourselves just a wee bit too seriously?
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