more edgardo
This is from last night. La Cieca should note that she was not at this performance (1/29/2009), but a member of the cher public armed with an iPhone was. The clip is presented for the purposes of discussion.
La Cieca will begin the discussion by noting that the scene is performed down a half step.
No.
Ugly, nasal, off pitch, Domingo does it better, and Domingo isn’t even a tenor.
This is really unfortunate. And Villazon had one of the truly most fascinating voices of our day and age.
A question for anyone with a technical sort of knowledge, can vocal rest and medicine do wonders for the voice? Especially if it is as frayed and unsteady as this? I’m thinking this is like a case of Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig.
Just a pity. Sheer technical problems. What a shame. The Met Orchestra very sorry to report was lack luster and not even close to their best. Brass flubs. Dear me.
Well, I have to dissent. WHile I heard clear vocal problems, and rest can, in fact, take care of some problems, I heard a fair amount of stylish, Italianate, bel canto singing. I’ve always found it hard to believe that voice came out of Mr. Bean. I can understand why a record company would want to pair him up with a soprano for marketing purposes, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have found a true bel canto singer to match him.
This is so sad to hear. The notes around an A natural sound frayed and his intonation is off – for example, the “io della morte” cadenza right before “fra poco” is entirely out of tune when the orchestra joins in again. He needs to stop singing now and get some rest, I’m concerned that by continuing in this manner he will do some permanent damage to his voice.
Where to start? Someone in another thread cited Licia Albanese as saying that if the voice wasn’t right the morning of a performance she would simply cancel. That brought to mind the time that when someone asked the immortal Jussi Bjorling how he wanted to be remembered he said: “Tell them I was an honest musician.” My point being that RV had to have known that people were putting down some serious cash for a performance that would be, to put it kindly, not up to the Met’s standards. At least the standards set by the likes of tenors dating from Caruso to Bergonzi. Which poses the ethical question that if you know you can’t deliver the goods as advertised do you still go on stage and give a performance that was simply dreadful? Is that being an honest musician?
Parenthetically, I went on you tube last night and found a performance of a duet fro L’Elisir with Bergonzi (age 65) and Roberta Peters (age 57) that in terms of style simply tosses RV and AN aside. Maybe not spectacular but honest and worth every penny.
Last word. Someone has said that there are no good lyric tenors out there. I have not heard them live but Beczala and Calleja seem to have a lot of promise and both seem to have not(yet) fallen into the trap of singing too often and in repetoire not suited to their voices. I would appreciate hearing from those who have heard them especially at the Met.
Tim
Horrible singing and completely out of the bel canto style! I have always found his interpretations too monotonous. You hear Villazón in several roles and you can immediately see he uses the same “tricks” in his “acting” through the voice. It is very sad to hear this wonderful aria in this “Malibran Version”, low and with the high notes clumsily sung. If this is thought to be good singing, then I have to go to the doctor and tell him my ears are making me hear bad quality where there isn’t.
What worries me more is not how he sang but that the audience goes wild about it!!!
I wonder if other singer had done all of this slight changes/things to the same aria…would he have been thought as great as many think Villazon was after what is so obviously a lack of technique and bad taste for singing?
Incredible! He DID take a long rest. It didn’t cure problems that are incurable. Let this be a lesson to singers who force their voice and sing roles that are too heavy for their voice.