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.
Perfect. I have suffered 7 months of “statutory noise nuisance” by “neighbors from Hell”. And you have now provided me the ultimate deterrent. Or failing that, Mutually Assured Destruction.
Dear jdjeff–
I didn’t mean to impugn individuals who suffer from conditions such as yours–I meant those who cannot
discriminate good singing from bad. Having perfect hearing
doesn’t mean that he who has it also has perfect taste; nor does having compromised hearing mean that one cannot
hear perfectly what an artist is about. One hears at the
altitude of one’s consciousness. I knew someone who heard Birgit’s Turandot many times, but always longed instead for Anne Drummond-Grant’s Katisha (a great assumption, by the way), but still…
The fool yelling Bravo! must be Merritt’s agent or manager or personal assistant. Let’s go with P.A., and part of his job is to record everything Merritt sings with his little recorder hidden in his jacket pocket and to yell Bravo! after every aria. Even so, I’m sure he is not paid nearly enough. Some jobs are clearly worse than other jobs.
Is this really from 2008? The last time I saw Merritt was in San Francisco in St. Francois d’Assise as The Leper and I saw in the program that Herod in Salome was another one of his roles. I thought he had safely entered the “character tenor” fach, and it dismays me to see that he is trying to go back to the big tenor roles that actually require good, secure, polished vocalism. What next?–another attempt at the Puritani Arturo?
Who in the world would hire Chris to sing arias with orchestra? Where was this? We hear Chris at Santa Fe as a comprimario – at most. He could barely sing Herod and he did not get by at all in The Tempest — in this aria we hear exactly the problem: he can make the noise but he has no pitch; he seems either sharp or flat and the voice has little dynamic control. Time to re-tire, as the Firestone ads used to say.
MrM/sfe
What in the hell…..I must listen again.
Its funny, aside from the screaming maniac (his boyfriend?) the rather faint sounding applause seems polite at best, and you do hear scattered boos in the distance.
Time to join the faculty at IU.
Good Lord. This is AWFUL. He was not in the same county as the pitch. WHY sing this???
Okay, I listened again.
The first time through I wondered if he was drunk.
The second time through I wondered if he even knew the piece at all, at times it seems as if he is composing as he goes along, or just completely forgot it in the moment and was flailing his way through behind the orchestra.
I’m a little in love with the phrase “not much worse than you might expect.” It’s not damning with faint praise; it’s damning with slightly-more-than-half-hearted derision.
Some of the finest shoutstimme I’ve ever heard.
A little on the Flo Fo Jen side of taste. Who let the claque out of the poofter’s palace?