tour de force
La Cieca has just learned that veteran soprano and beloved camp diva Katia Ricciarelli is treading the boards again, this time not in opera houses but rather on whatever it is they call the Italian version of the Straw Hat Circuit. The bionda bombshell is currently touring in a play with music by by Peter Quilter entitled Gloriosa!, playing the legendary Florence Foster Jenkins:
Una cantante ricca di fascino che Quilter rende ancora più seducente suggerendo l’idea di una donna coraggiosa e determinata ad ottenere il massimo dalla sua vita, una donna che insegue i suoi sogni e ne affronta le conseguenze. Un’occasione per Katia Ricciarelli di mettere in luce quella parte del carattere che sicuramente divide con Florence Foster e che certo non le difetta: la determinazione e il coraggio.
La Cieca naturally expects any of her cher public who may be in or around Italy in the coming months to make every effort to witness this latest effort of La Ricciarelli, “artista multiforme e dalle infinite curiosità ,” as the press release puts it.
It was written for Maureen Lipman and premiered in London a couple of years ago. A pretty slight piece, entertaining enough but doesn’t really stay with you.
I’d KILL to see Ricciarelli do it, mind. Anyone seen the clips of her on Italian reality TV on YouTube?
Should that be Fiorenza Foster Jenkins?
Maureen Lipman and Katia Riccarelli. Peas in a pod, of course.
Was La Ricciarelli ever any good? I’ve really only heard her on a Ballo with Domingo, which isn’t bad exactly, but there is a disastrously flapping, flat top c (admittedly, it is the very tough one nearly everybody screws up in ‘ma dall’arrido stelo divulso’ or however we are spelling that), and nothing very special in the rest of it. She has always struck me as a kind of Rosalind Plowright figure – nobody can quite explain how she got where she did.
I think this is kind of sad.
Was Ricciarelli good? Take it from me she was good. I saw her often, in London and in Europe and she was always good value, vocally & dramatically. And if she wants to enjoy herself these days then why not? Better than staying home and listening to her old recordings I think. [I saw her in Ballo, Boheme, Traviata, Luisa Miller, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Carlos, & I Capuletti et I Montecci, L' esule di Roma, Aida and also in Falstaff so I think I am allowed an opinion in the matter.]
Ricciarelli was terrific, and can be heard near her best in a slew of DG recordings from the 80s- albeit sometimes in parts a size too big for her voice. The natural vocal quality was immensely beautiful and she had a real ability to shade a line with great sensitivity. And I too don’t see what’s sad about her forging a career as an actor.
And if you want to know how Plowright got where she did, listen to the Giulini Trovatore. The prime of her career was incredibly short, but while it lasted she was the real deal.
Cocky, early on Ricciarelli had one of the most ravishing Italian lyric sopranos ever, a sound that conveyed vulnerability and fragility. In particular the upper middle and highest register had a lovely ethereal quality. Even when she was miscast in heavier parts like Amelia in Ballo, she retained a rich Italianate tone, though of course by that time she was beginning to push for volume.
She was at her best in Rossini, where she shaped the line with style but retained a charming simplicity.
I saw Riccarelli a number of times – as Elisabetta (can’t remember much about it, but I was only 17 and much more interested in seeing Grace Ann, also in the cast), Amelia (underpowered), Aida (with a below-par Pavarotti in a disastrous Ponnelle production; the whole thing is better forgotten), Giulietta (excellent – the best thing I saw her do) and Desdemona (she certainly looked the part). She was definitely a heavy-ish lyric rather than a spinto. Apart from the lack of a substantial top, I was always rather bothered by her ‘détaché’ legato -not enough use of portamento – and the fact that the tone never really shone. Bel canto was definitely where she was at her best, but the BBC broadcast excerpts from her Donna del lago earlier this week, and I was once again aware of those deficiencies.
PS That’s Bellini’s Giulietta rather than Offenbach’s. To judge by her recorded Micaela, French wasn’t ever her ‘chose’.