soaring instruments
Here’s the solution to the Elfte Brautnacht! vocal ID quiz:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XTwS8d4eG5M" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Congratulations to S.L., who was first with the correct answers.
La Cieca will admit that the snippet of Mary Costa included in the quiz catches this lovely soprano in something less than her best form. So let’s hear Miss Costa on a better day, as Rosalinda in a performance from 1967.
I remember a totally bonkers interview Gwyneth gave to the New York Times in the mid 70′s after that bad spell. She blamed all her vocal problems on a misaligned “swivel” in her neck, and, thanks to a wonderful chiropractor (sounds like a verse from Cole Porter’s “Physician”), all those problems of pitch and wobble were now behind her, never to return.
robert: I remember that interview, but it was later – sometime in the 80′s when she tackled Turandot for the first time.
Actually, would have been ’84, since her first Turandot was with the Royal Opera on a visit to Los Angeles.
Everyone’s praise of Leontyne is lovely to hear, one of my favorites. Curiously, there are at least 5 versions of this with her on Youtube.
An audio only in concert 1959.
A audio only concert version from 1968 or so.
A concert video from San Francisco, late 70s.
A concert video from early 80s.
and the most remarkable, a concert from what appears to be her turban days, maybe 84 or 85. She still does it amazingly well, and she nails the top D-flat at the end of the piece. You do hear some age but the voice still holds together right up to the end (similar to Milanov in that respect).
Pardon me. By 84 or 85 I meant 1984 or 1985. Leontyne herself is ageless.
scifisci: to my ear, the studio Helena finds Jones in rather curdled voice, but I’m not a huge fan (nor an ardent detractor, neither) so YMMV. It may not help that in the studio, she’s singing with Barbara Hendricks, whose voice is prettiness itself.
Maury: I think there is generally an advantage in live recording of Jones, assuming she is in reasonably good voice on the night in question which is of course a total crapshoot, but that’s one reason La Cieca keeps coming back. The live Vienna recording gives a wonderful sense of the fullness of the sound in the theater that I think is very hard to capture from Jones in the studio. (Though the last scene of the studio Medea really does pin one to the wall.)
Lieber Thackeray, I do indeed know those You Tube excerpts and think they are amazing. The Färberin seems to have been a perfect fit for her voice and I only regret that we don’t have more recordings of her in it. Actually, I believe La Cieca herself was one of the first to make that recording available in its entirety on a podcast.
There was a period when I avidly photocopied old Jones interviews and in them she gave varied reasons for her vocal troubles. I remember reading about the neck “swivel”, which as I recall she said came from the advice of a trusted friend that turned out to be wrong. Elsewhere she has referenced a car accident and her attempts at having a baby (her daughter was born in late ’71 and she did suffer a miscarriage sometime in ’69 or ’70). But I suspect the reality is more mundane–that glorious young Jones voice of the 60s was not based on a particularly solid technical foundation, and look at her early roles! Plenty of big Verdi (Don Carlo, Aida, Forza, Trovatore, Mabceth), some Wagner (including Sieglinde, Senta, and Kundry), Medea, Leonore, and then Oktavian (a strange decision, I have always thought), and then Salome. It’s a tough repertoire and I suspect it caught up with her.
In the early to mid 70s she became considerably more cautious for a period, temporarily dropped some of the heavier roles, and somewhat surprisingly added Donna Anna to her repertoire. There is a tape of her from Vienna in this part and she is surprisingly good, very clean in the coloratura, and no doubt she added it to force some technique into her vocalism. It appears to have worked.
La C. at #47… all this Dame GJ talk last night, i had to get pinned to the wall…
and lucky for me, i also got pinned to the bed at the same time… and THEN i bought 3 new operas on Amazon…
Gladens my heart to hear all this talk of Dame Gwyneth. I recently bought that Don Giovanni and she really is a first class Anna. Siepi is great in the title role, Donath makes much more of Zerlina than anybody else I’ve heard (in a good way) and Leonie Rysanek’s younger sister Lotte has her moments as Elvira. I have also got a student recital of Dame Gwyneth from her time at the RCM when she was labouring under the misapprehension that she was a contralto. All very straight toned and a bit wan, but with plenty of signs of what she would become. I think the best I’ve ever heard her is a live Tosca from the ROH in, I think, ’74, with Sir Charles Mackerras giving a splendid and totally idiomatic, but also passionate and observant account of the score. I adore that studio Helena, but agree with La Cieca that live recordings really show you what it was all about with Gwyneth, and give one a far greater sense of the scale and refulgence of the instrument. Look for her as Chrysothemis on YouTube with Nilsson as Elektra. Absolutely amazing.
Incidentally, I’d always thought the vocal crisis was down to her womb prolapsing on the birth of her second child. I must say, I’ve never had any complaints about her recordings from the early ’70s, but then again I have a live Macbeth from the ’90s which is pure filth, and yet I love it too. The only recordings I’ve heard that I have some reservations about are the Siegfried and Walkure from the very famous Boulez ring. I think she found her voice so responsive and easy at those performances, and the Bayreuth acoustic so enjoyable, that she really got carried away and gave so much that it almost turns to screaming at the upper end. But the Immolation scene from that same run is what turned me on to opera in the first place.