soaring instruments
Here’s the solution to the Elfte Brautnacht! vocal ID quiz:
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.
Miley Cyrus has been suggested for various roles in the Celine Dion Callas biopic, in that thread.
Google ads strike again. I’ve never seen so many disgusting recipes for Spam as on my gmail…
This will make a couple of earlier posters jealous …
I saw a FroSch in Munich in 1988 with Studer, Gwyneth and Fassbaender. Can’t remember who the men were, I have to confess, which is a bit shameful, because Barak is a role I’d love to sing if I had the voice for it.
And I saw that Covent Garden Arabella with Popp and Weikl, which was one of my greatest operatic evenings ever. I was snivelling away at the end. Popp might have been a wee bit on the light side vocally for Arabella, and a wee bit on the round and saftig side physically, but who cares? She had such soul and spirit. (Having since seen Mattila in the flesh as Arabella, and Renee on DVD, I realise that Popplet has ruined it for me for ever – it’s hard to love either of those two gals, admirable though they can be in different ways.) And I doubt Weikl could be bettered as Mandryka. He picked her up and swung her round at the end and it was completely heartwarming.
I can’t resist slipping into my anecdotage to join
in the chorus of praise for Dame Gwyneth, whom I
feel privileged to have seen in so many memorable performances in New York and San Francisco…
specific dates escape me, but there was a period in the late ’80s-early ’90s when she was often in splendid form….a Ring cycle at the Met, her definitive Farberin with Dohnanyi and a towering
Elektra with Thielemann (his American debut, I think) in San Francisco…such an amazing confluence of gifts : a beautiful woman, a charismatic performer, that enormous voice which
yes, could be unruly or unresponsive, but at it’s best effortlessly encompassed the heroic and the
womanly.
Thackeray – if only a recording of that Munich performance would surface. On the face of it not unlikely given the amount of broadcasting done from Munich over the years, but I would have snapped this up if I’d seen it anywhere….
Or indeed any recording of Fassbaender as Die Amme! The only FrOSch evidence for her we have is as one of the maids/offstage voices – I think it’s in the Karajan 1964 performances (the one where Popp is the Falcon/Guardian and Wunderlich the Apparition of a Young Man!!)
hagen: the fassbaender maid/offstage voice in frosch is actually in the munich live set from 1963 with borkh and fidi under keilberth, but nonetheless it is great to have such a token of the young fassbaender – but to have her as the amme would make my day…
when it comes to gwyneth, i too saw her ortrud in lohengrin at covent garden early in 1997 (it must have been february as i remember queueing for a last minute ticket/standing ticket outside when it was snowing … that was before they sold standing in advance and when one had to queue outside the opera house, gosh luckily things have changed since), which was the first time i came across her singing and even though she had a considerable stage prescence, i thought the singing per se was by far the worst i had ever heard so far. then i bought the lohengrin set under kubelik from 1971 (or 1969?) and i found her ortrud on there terrible as well. so for me that spoilt gwyneth for a long time.
i still don’t like her voice but have since heard her first operatic recital, which is very good indeed. but as i heard her giving vocally such an under par performance in lohengrin that really put me off her. so i personally always approach her with caution, but then i didnt see her live in her heyday. i dont like the studio recording that she made of ägyptische helena and i used to her her late wagner recital on chandos (which i resold very quickly) BUT her excerpts of the trovatore leonora on youtube are absolutely lovely and what i have seen on there of her elektra is impressive as well…
but that ortrud, that ortrud … it still makes my ears ache
I heard Mary Costa many times in the 60s and 70s. Her Met Manon opposite Gedda, Bacquier and Tozzi is still the best Manon by far and I saw Sills, Fleming, Swenson, Brooks, Netrebko and others in the part.
Costa was also one of the great Violettas of all time and was a superb Marguerite in Faust, Margherita/Elena in “Mefistofele,” Rosalinda, Musetta, Rosina and as Titania in the American premiere of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Like many other great stars of that time, she lacks the recorded legacy but the pirate recordings are really the best way to assess Costa’s work.
In addition to San Francisco Opera, which was her home house in the U.S., Costa had big successes in other important opera houses — Manon, Violetta and five other roles at the Met, Violetta at the Bolshoi and Covent Garden, Giuletta in “Capuletti” opposite Simoniato at Carnegie Hall, Manon in Lisbon and Geneva with the Paris Opera on tour (opposite Alain Vanzo.) She had a big success as Musetta for the Met’s historic first tour of Japan in 1975. Someone mentioned already that she also starred as Cunegonde in the first London production of Candide and at the request of Leonard Bernstein returned to the role for the opening week of the then new Kennedy Center with Bernstein conducting.
The BBC also mounted full television productions of “Traviata”, “Faust” and “The Merry Widow” for the diva. She has spent the last few years working hard to bring desperately needed funding for opera and symphony orchestras serving on the Advisory Council of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Oh yes…The Dalibor with both Rysaneks is such an experience.
And yes…the Gwyneth Elektra in San Francisco was one of those great apocalyptic nights.
speaking of lotte rysanek … in the 1958 kna ring from bayreuth she really nails her hojotohos as helmwige, it is absolutely riveting!
I ALWAYS check who is singing Helmwige in any Walkure I see or hear – there have been some fabulous ones in the past who have gone on to greater things!
Isn’t that interesting: Irene Theorin was infinitely the best of all the sopranos in the Royal Opera Walkure, and how her Helmwige made sure we knew it – so quite right, Hagen d’Arse.
I still want to hear her do something bigger (Brunnhilde, for example). Reports of that have been mixed.