more news from the indian burial mound
Texted from the Met a few minutes ago:
During act 2 (still going on) a stage hand walked out in the middle of Tristan and Isolde’s first duet to move her yellow gown away from the torch and ensure it didn’t light! Meier and Seiffert just kept singing…
no, not JUST ONE person who hates Bostridge. More than JUST ONE hate him… MANY MORE!
Not as many people as SHOULD really be the case, perhaps, but then most people, on here and everywhere else, don’t actully know their ass from their elbow when it comes to vocal knowledge, though most pretend otherwise.
But TEST yourself with this easy “proof-o-the-pudding†question:
“do you love (or even like) In Bostridge in ANY way?â€â€¦
If your answer is ‘yes’, then you are a deluded, misguided poor sod who know bugger-all about voice and/or singing.
And that’s that.
Well look at that. I know bugger-all about voice and/or singing.
Thank you so much, LVPO, for letting me know.
Well, I’m no Bostridge fan, and I don’t think he’s right in Lieder either, because the voice has no range of tone-colours. He sings in head voice, and then just below that there’s a break which leaves him heading for big, big trouble soon.
But curiously, AJ, I DID enjoy his interpretation of Les illuminations. And when he first turned up as Hylas. And a redeeming feature of an Aldeburgh recital with Ades, Stravinsky’s Owl and the Pussycat. Aschenbach wasn’t a disaster vocally but terrible miscasting and he gurns and grimaces instead of acting.
The rest – Idomeneo, the other Britten roles, Ottavio, the !! Noel Coward !! disc, the very THOUGHT of Mackie Messer – makes me cringe. And now I won’t go to anything that looks good where he happens to be singing (most events at the Barbican). But LVPO is VERY rude.
I liked him on Desert Island Discs, very intelligent and decent as a person, in spite of rumours to the contrary (probably only rumours, spread by other English tenors who are jealous, some justifiably so as their techniques are certainly better).
One of the most touching moments of Meier’s Isolde for me was toward the end of Act II, when she raised her arm at the departing Tristan. It was such a vulnerable, such a human gesture, that brought to mind the fragility of Mélisande.
I agree with the commenters who say that this performance would be disappointing on CD. Her acting made the evening noteworthy, but the singing was unfortunately cringeworthy at times. Couldn’t she just have squeezed her buttcheeks together really hard for the last note of the Liebestod? Thank god the final chord from the orchestra was so rapturously beautiful, because we needed a chaser after that E # she ended up singing.
You are most welcome, armerjacquino;
very happy to be able to help.
Langridge sang Loge 11 times at the Met between 1991 and 2004, and very well indeed the two or three times I heard him do so.
The ballyhooed Oxbridge Wiccan scholar may be OK in LES ILLUMINATIONS but when he is asked to play a role, be it Aschenbach or Vere, I just don’t want to be there.
… AND counting…!
Well. LVPO, perhaps you can give us rational chapter and verse why you don’t like Bostridge, as I have. And don’t just say ‘how much time have you got’…
I’m still at a loss to account for IB’s extraordinary popularity worldwide – it can’t be the musicianship, because ‘worldwide’ doesn’t care for that, it can’t be the stunning voice – is it the Wicca?
It seems quite nice to have literate British personages come to these pages with their wit and wisdom, but I can’t help remembering a well-known English soprano (famed for Strauss), telling me once over tea at Santa Fe, “Ainsley and Bostridge have no voice; none. It’s ridiculous.” So not only do Americans disdain the odd lot of the British tenor! I had not long ago to listen to and review Bostridge’s Noel Coward disc. The singer’s notes are the most perfect lot of swill I have ever read accompanying a CD recording. The voice is really not bad for Coward (it’s more than Noel had), but the pretention of the man, his arch delivery, his mood! A narcissistic rooster who spends too much time in Savile Row and not enough at the Royal Academy. I just want to see a big Italian dick fuck him cross-eyed, as a friend of mine says, “rough and dirty, four times a week.” I mean, hellsafire, when you cannot sing Coward straight, just go open a tea shop somewhere. Oooops, listen to me! Untoward vulgarity; I do apologize. But I mean every word. And his name is supposed to help sell a Wagner album! Fancy! OY!
My only knowledge of Bostridge in opera is his Belmonte on the Christie recording, in which he is fine. Not good, not bad, just… fine. Rest assured that I’d take Schreier, or Winbergh, or Blochwitz, or, dear lord, the great Wunderlich over his performance.
I was blown away by his Illuminations, though, and I stand by that. I don’t think it makes me someone who knows nothing about singing, and I don’t think it’s got anything to do with nationality, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.