filth a deux
Nothing could illustrate better the “strange intercourse” between artist and public than the following clip. Chris Merritt’s 2008 performance of the rarely-heard cabaletta to “Rachel quand du Seigneur” is not much worse than you might expect, but it is the “ovation” at the end that elevates the entire experience to the highest summit of Filth.
Stages of singing: bel canto > can belto > can’t belto > can’t canto
Obvious that Mr Merrit has entered fully into the last stage. Where oh where is his self-respect?
……and we thought Stefan Zucker was a joke!!!!!!!!!….I heard that already 768 Jews converted (even without plastic surgery on their….) because of this horrrrrrendous singing…
It’s a fine cabaletta, and dramatically necessary – Eleazar thinks of sparing Rachel in the aria, then hears a Christian mob exulting at the deaths of Jews and changes his mind, represented by the cabaletta. Too bad Shicoff could not manage it at the Met. (I forget whether Casanova sang it for Queler.)
As for Merritt … what a falling off was here. I remember his first Puritani at NYCO in … well, must be 78 or 82 or so … anyway, he had a lovely lyric tenor and easy E (did not attempt the F) trapped in a body the size of a brownstone with less stream lines. June Anderson was a spectacular Elvira too. Them was the days. This is … just awful … just … oh dear. Was he substituting for somebody sick in Vienna? couldn’t they get Rockwell Blake or Aquiles Machado?
Ann Drummond-Grant – not a Turandot, but one HELL of a Dame Carruthers! And Queen of the Fairies! And Katisha! Them was the days. I’d have paid to hear Nilsson as Katisha. She HAD the costume.