sind halt aso, die jungen leut’!
La Cieca wants to give a quick “shout-out” (as the youngsters say, they tell me) to “critic, novelist and record-store clerk” Daniel Stephen Johnson, who on top of all that is not only one of our newest and nicest commenters, but a smart and sassy blogger in his own right. He writes somewhat in the style of a younger, more hirsute Alex Ross, which La Cieca means in the nicest possible way.
The following YouTube clip has nothing to do with anything, except in the sense of “jeunesse.” And now, if you’ll excuse La Cieca, she has a hair appointment with Hippolyte.
just coming back from the muti dress rehearsal of verdi requiem at the cso. i’m glad i went! there are now a few open tickets for friday night, but it’s not perfect, so once was enough. his rapport with the orchestra and chorus is AMAZING (they didn’t look like they were so into dudamel last week). he told jokes and got really great playing out of them, especially when he insisted the choristers work with the text and the musicians play in a vocal way. he had some interesting digressions about the way text and music fit together:
1) urging the chorus to remember the meaning of “dies irae” so they didn’t seem like southern italian women who asked their neighbor in church what kind of fish she was making for dinner between prayers.
2) slamming tenors who hold “vincero” too long … reminding singers to work with the words not against them.
borodina just makes everyone else look subpar, although her husband is not bad (certainly a bigger voice and a more interesting artist than john relyea). olga’s voice fills the hall so effortlessly, and her lows are unbelievably powerful. the tenor brought nothing to the picture, and frittoli has no business singing this music with this orchestra, especially when you think of leontyne and debbie singing the requiem with this orchestra. i still have debbie ringing in my ears — sure this was more “italianate,” but you couldn’t hear 50% of it. frittoli was disengaged until libera me when she finally started to feel it, but her voice doesn’t cut, she sings sharp, and it is wobbling like late scotto without all the things that made scotto special to compensate (you remember scotto is one of my favorites, including in this very piece).
the good news is they are recording it (olga’s third!) on the resound label so everyone can hear what an exciting time it’s going to be with muti — everything sounded so EXCITING under his baton, and he is thrilling to watch without distracting.
and lord he’s fukn easy on the eyes — as the kids say ’sweeeet”
will take a little longer to evaluate his blogging
OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!
This is too much. I want to thank everybody who believed in me: JoJo, Greg, Nico, Greg, Alex, Greg, La Cieca, and of course the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Hey, I used to be young and hirsute! Time’s a wacky thing.
Sind doch nicht nur die jungen Leut die so sind!
I LOVE Dan’s blog. Great to see a plug on another recent love of my bloglife.
I used to wear her suit, but then I stopped doing drag
Welcome, DSJ, to Bloghalla. The depressing part is that the picture en blogge doesn’t really do him justice.
Doug – thanks for the comments on the Muti Requiem, damn that man knows how to get an orchestra and chorus to work with him. During the Otello here he had the Teatro dell’Opera gang sounding mighty fine.
Love Dan’s blog, thank you LC for calling him out – is that like bringing someone out?????
They still get upset when you grind at high school dances – Sister Mary Stella would be so please….
seems like they are recording quite a few Requiems. The one from Rome with Pappano is also being recorded. Harteros, Ganassi, Villazon and Pape sang three performances and EMI recorded them.
Feldmaschallin: I saw the Rome requiem last Friday and commented on it. It was not, IMHO, a great evening and the recording engineers have their work cut out for them. We have another performance with the Scala forces coming up in June which also sounds like a recording project: Barenboin, Fritolli, Giordani and again Ganassi and Pape.
“I saw the Rome requiem last Friday and commented on it. It was not, IMHO, a great evening”
That would seem impossible, seeing as the best Verdi Sopran since Maud Cunitz was involved.