another thrilling twist
… in the “Tenor-Go-Round” saga at the Metropolitan Opera. (La Cieca was going to say “Musical Tenors,” on the model of “Musical Chairs, but decides not to on the ground it’s an oxymoron. Anyway.)
So now, according to a photo from metopera.org, it appears that Edgardo will be sung tomorrow by…
… Neil Shicoff.
Â
Caballe’s Philips recording do have some common points with the audio only portion of what Netrebko
gives us today. A lot of people really relate to the lush sound of a voice with a lot of bloom to it.
But for me that’s about the limit of the appeal of it all. Maybe my own critera place me in the minority, I can live with that, but I’ve always been focused on what a singer “does” rather than “has”. I really don’t link slack sound singing which seems a characteristic of today’s (not the younger -late 90s/early 00s) Netrebko. I like pointed phrasing with a GOOD legato, not just a syrupy flow and I like clear articulation of the notes as well as having the words placed in the legato line. Netrebko does not consistently accomplish this and even her admittedly lovely sound sometimes turns a bit acidic and often sounds swallowed.
OK, Cieca, is that a little more specific than Balabanov’s comments? Notice I didn’t use the “s” word, or the “l” word or the “w” word. Although maybe sloppy would be a more precise term than lazy.
Note, I find a lot of these faults in Caballe’s recordings and performances of the 70s. For me she was maddingly inconsistent, often she would seem to offer a lush tone and an unending breath and stop there. Other times she was truly committed to what she was doing. Oddly, I find her work from the 60s (recordings only in my case) and the 80s more consistent. The Lucia I haven’t heard since it was new I don’t remember much of it except that the mad scene sounded uncomfortably high for Caballe’s voice.
was stephen costello busy? last time i checked he was an up and coming tenor who had done the role at the met to rave reviews….
Caballe actually recorded Come Scoglio and all of the triplets are perfectly articulated, as are the triplets in the Nazi’s version. And Berganza’s recording is on iTunes. Also fine – Kiri, Pilar, and the Gundula recording which is not from the same performance as on youtube.
And forgot Theresa Stich-Randall, one of the most gorgeous Mozart singers ever.
Sanford, Caballe’s Cosi was my first version of that opera, my favorite Mozart by far. However, to my ears, I hear rapid repetition of the same note in the triplets, not quite the same notes as Berganza seems to be singing. I’ve never followed along with the score (although I have it somewhere), but I believe that Caballe’s passagework is not quite “perfectly articulated”==at least not in the Philips recording.
I also think te Kanawa’s version for Lombard is very fine, and I believe she gets rather unfair criticism for occassional sloppiness. Her trill was near perfect, and her singing sharp not always so apparent on record as it was in person. I was in the audience at the Centennial Gala when she lost her place in “Dove Sono,” but I don’t hold that against her. I haven’t heard the Lorengar version, but I do have the Janowitz “live from Salzburg” recording with Boehm, and haven’t listened to it since I acquired it.
I’m in the tiny minority that finds Boehm’s EMI Cosi outrageously overrated, and never bought the CD having only listened to the LP a few times. I agree that Schwarzkopf was capable of fine singing in Mozart, of course, and prefer her singing of Fiordiligi on the mono HvK set. (Better casting, too, in my view–if one can stand the funereal tempos by today’s style.)
Caballe uses a light aspirate to articulate the fast triplets in her Come Scoglio. Some of the slower note patterns are more smudged. That being said I think it was one of her good recordings but not really in a class with the best
versions on disc. Sorry, it sounds to me very much to be studio bound like a lot of her 70s recordings.
The Kiri Mozart disc was the first one I bought of hers, and it has some fine singing on it. I followed up with her Verdi/Puccini disc, which was also fine. I then found a recording she made at about 17, in English, of arias such as Una Voce Poco Fa.
Bohm is a wildly uneven conductor to me. His Abduction, with Arleen Auger and Reri Grist is superb, but the Sull’aria duet on youtube is dreadfully slow and dirge-like; it feels twice as slow as most other performances.
I don’t really consider “studio-bound” as much of a criticism, since it was a studio recording. And actually, now that I think of it, Leontyne (not one of my faves) recorded Come Scoglio and did a pretty good job.