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.
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I thought it was very gracious of Dessay to host, considering that the Met built this production around her and even has a performance of it in the can starring her. (Is there any reason they haven’t released the opening night Butterfly and Lucia?)
I wish Netrebko had been a little more gracious to Beczala, though. Sure, she probably wished Villazon were there, but she barely acknowledged Piotr during the first intermission or the curtain call.
yeah I thought also both Dessay and Netrebko seemed uncomfortable around each other. I am not sure but maybe Dessay talked dissmisively about Trebko in the past (or was that machine gun coloratura Bartoli). I know that Trebko expressed admiration for both dessay and damrau recently in one of the interviews. I didnt see Anna snubbing Piotr at all. She was clapping during his bows and seemed happy for him.
So, I didn’t see the HD- because I’m not a huge Donizetti fan and because I also kind of resent being asked to pay upwards of twenty quid to sit in a cinema. But I’m pleased to hear that the general consensus seems to be that Netrebko did a good job. I’m on the fence about her as an artist (the only time I’ve seen her live was in a big screen relay of Rigoletto in the piazza at CG, so I can’t speak about what she’s like inside a house) but dear god the vitriol there’s been on here about her in the last fortnight or so was so distasteful that I was rooting for her. It comes back to that ‘reverse looksism’ thing that I mentioned over the Blythe Orfeo- because Netrebko is so obviously glamorous and attractive, which in its turn leads to print media getting excited about her- some people seem to (a) assume that she is a no-mark media creation who can’t sing and (b) to think that it’s acceptable to call her a whore. She may well not be ideal for this rep- in fact, I think she probably isn’t- but she is undeniably a major singer with a major instrument who is allowed an attempt at something outside her comfort zone.
I was interested, too, in la Cieca’s point about how difficult music can, or can’t, be made to look easy. It’s part of the excitement, I think, either way. A really thrilling ‘Grossmachtige Prinzessin’ is thrilling because and if it’s made to sound easy; on the other hand, something like ‘Parto, Parto’ only works if you’re conscious of how HARD the coloratura is at the end.
If one can get through all the clap trap for a few moments
and coldly and honestly review the afternoon the truly
best singing was done by Beczala ,not only in elegance of
style , but in phrasing the music,plus demonstrating a
beautiful voice – those used to Italianate goat bleating will
of course demur -but it is good to hear once in a while a
real masculine sound from a male who doesn’t sound neutered –
,under the guise of the misused words”bel canto”. Lord knows
Ms. Netrebko was not his equal and should not have been in this opera ,but vanity and ego drives people to do stupid things.and as long as an ignorant audience approves she
will continue down this road . Kwiecien was in better mettle in the duet with Beczala ,but had better get back to the studio before trouble really sets in . Beczala will become
a star only in the sense that the broadcast will bring him a
wider audience to join the following that he already has,and
make no mistake he has a discerning audience . Ms Netrebko
plays the star role quite well, I hope she noticed to-day ,that
the real star was standing next to her .
To me Netrebko never looks like a self possesed diva or a star full of herself ala Gherogiu when taking a bow at the end. She seems modest and shy and appreciative of positive response and generous to her colleagues. I am not sure why people are saying now that she did not acknowledge this and that. Maybe it has something to do with the hideous ghost make up she was wearing at curtain calls.
Well I will be a nay-sayer here but I thought AN was nothing more than ordinary and sometimes less so. I heard two almost cracked notes in the mad scene, no coloring of phrase, no bel canto style. Yes she got the final e-flat and dropped it very quickly, but it wasn’t virtuosic by any means. I have heard Sills, Deutekom, Welting, Peters, Devia and many others and they all brought something special and memorable to this music. AN, to my ears, brought nothing. I heard smudged coloratura, running out of breath, strange phrasing, all sorts of problems. I am glad that fans of AN are happy with her “triumph” but to me it wasn’t such a triumph after all. Just a singer having improved somewhat in a role for which she is not suited. And again since when did the MET become such a trying out place that singers finally “get it right” after the 3 or 4th attempt — when they should have it all together for the prima???
Ariel- so now an audience is “ignorant”- presumably IF they do not share your views!
This of course would not be “clap trap” like what the other posters wrote.
Sheesh! Some Queens!
Ashton, I agree. It wasn’t bad singing, but it really wasn’t good, either (and certainly not great). In this sort of music, AN can’t seem to settle down and sing squarely in the key: sometimes it’s a little high, other times, it’s a little low. She has some fine moments, but I think that there’s something rather basic about singing bel canto that eludes her.
Travesty? No. Triumph? No. Not to my ears.
When Dessay sang Lucia at the Lyric she did not sing the Mad scene in F. Lopez-Cobos did use his performing edition and opened the cut in the Quando rapito, but the essay in the program stated that the mad scene was going to be in Fb because after all the audiences would expect an Eb somewhere. His words, not mine.
I remember that Lucia. Dessay was fantastic in it.
Let me restate that. The essay said the mad scene was going to be performed in Eb…. etc etc etc
Guys, this is all very well, but opera is not only netrebko or placido or renee or lucia. Opera is literally half my life and I like to explore rare works besides the repertory pieces. I have not heard anyone being interested in unknown operas that have recently been performed and that it΄s difficult -if not impossible- to find and listen. Last year sigurd’s salammbo was played in france -I think marseille- and it’s impossible to find a pirate. Ditto massenet’s ariane which was played in saint-etienne. I hope decca releases halevy’s clari because of cecilia-voix du cabinet- bartoli. I’ m also looking for mercadante’s pelagio and thomas’s le caid. Why all the interest is focused on a singer or a repertory opera we have heard a million times, while we are not interested in pieces we don’t know? Do we really love music or we just love bashing the prima donnas?
Well, I still go to the opera in the hope of hearing something good. No, Netrebko’s Lucia wasn’t in the Callas-Sutherland league, but neither of those ladies are around to steal her work. It’s sad, but life goes on. Damrau and Dessay aren’t La Divina or La Stupenda either, but I am glad to have seen them as Marie and Lucia. They are among the best singers for this rep today, even if they aren’t perfect. People complained about Callas and Sutherland when they were performing. Some opera queens are never satisfied. I heard AN’s Giulietta in the Paris Capuleti last season and that is probably her best bel canto role to date and I’m really looking forward to hearing the recording and Covent Garden performances with Garanca. Promises to be one of the vocal highlights of the season, whatever the naysayers think. I think those who would rather hear Annick Massis – lovely Comtesse Adèle in Count Ory at Glyndebourne and Matilde di Shabran in the Teatro Rossini in Pesaro – are deluded in thinking she could be a star Lucia at the Met.
Michael, your point is well taken, but the reason she engenders so much discussion is precisely because this role is so well known. Had she picked an obscure opera, most of this discussion wouldn’t have happened. But when you step into a role that has been so closely associated with the likes of Pons, Sutherland, Callas, Sills, Moffo, etc, who each not only sang it exquisitely but brought something unique to it *and* sang it in appropriate bel canto style, it would be unrealistic to think you didn’t know you were opening yourself up to so much criticism. But as long as you mention a wish list of obscurities:
Gretry
Ettienne-Mehul
Gounod (Philemon et Baucis)
Chabrier (Le roi malgre lui)
Rossini (Otello)
Haydn
Vivaldi
Way back in #39 I made a comment that was disparaging of Ms. Netrebko’s actions and preparation for the HD Broadcast. I should not have made that statement and am sorry that I did. May she and all forgive me.
167 Karnal – You got it right ! I’ve heard them all LIVE!
in concert or opera from Korjus who could bury them all
just in technique to Maynor, to Melchoir to Flagstad to Kiepura to Vickers to Callas to Tebaldi right up to to–day with Beczala
who follows in the great tradition.
As for “queens ” it seems a subject you are more versed in than I ,so I leave it to your expert knowledge .
Netrebko and Beczala are good friends, and I thought she deferred to him during the first intermission. During the curtain calls, it looked as though she deliberately stayed back to give him a solor bow. Whatever. The theater was packed, it looked and sounded terrific, and much as I thought I’d miss Rolando, I didn’t.
Contrary to apparent popular thought, singers are (or should be) musicians, as well as theatrical performers. While she is a beautiful girl (not a real actress imo, but others here disagree), she is in no way a musician – she slouches piggishly thru the music in a way that wouldn’t get her out of a 3rd rate conservatory in Rostov-on-Don – can you imagine if a violinist or pianist gave such a performance? They would be laughed out of the the first concert hall, never to be heard from again. But we are supposed to accept such lazy, slovenly work, because she’s beautiful, and can manufacture a huge tone (the manufacturing of, btw, which is the basis of all her technical problems, but I digress). There are standards of quality, and they are important to some of us. She doesn’t measure up.
balabanov: La Cieca might find your argument more convincing if you could be more specific. Expressions like “slouches piggishly” are not musical terminology.
We get that you don’t like the way Netebko sings; you’ve said that dozens of times. But you’ve never made it clear what specifically strikes you as “lazy, slovenly,” perhaps because you’re spending way too much time kicking Straw Anna (”we are supposed to accept such lazy, slovenly work, because she’s beautiful, and can manufacture a huge tone”).
La Cieca has never been inside any conservatory on Rostov-on-Don and she’s not up on the latest rankings, so she’d hardly know what the standards are at the third-rate schools there. It does seem to La Cieca, though, that singers, particularly gifted ones, are often not held to the same stringent standards of technical perfection that instrumentalists are, so it’s at best disingenuous to act as if this “problem” has suddenly cropped up with the advent of Netrebko.
So, care to specify which phrases strike you as slovenly or whatever other adjective you care to apply? Care to expand upon what these “standards of quality” are, and how Netrebko fails to “measure up?” Otherwise, it’s just more of the same old spouting, and frankly it’s kind of a bore.
Just finished listening to the Sirius bdcast of a 1956 Forza with Milanov. Wow! She was in terrific voice that day. Now, that was singing!
Over the weekend, I listened to Caballe’s studio Lucia. Despite the fact that it’s a studio effort (with re-takes, etc.), she still managed to smudge some of the scales. So, I guess she, too, was a “lazy pig” (and a “whore” to boot!).
Caballe was not in good voice for that Lucia recording. She was capable of better.
Kash, I adore Caballe–but her Philips recordings were done in a period where she was getting very lazy about articulating the fiorature. I Masnadieri suffers from that as well. Much of what was written about her at the time, and just after that, made mention of her being an “apparently lazy musician,” also noting her sightreading at recitals and concerts. I’ve heard comparably few real trills from her on record, either–unless one counts the quivering sounds she’d make on one note. (Perhaps she was taught to do that. I’m not a bel canto expert.)
I don’t think the Lucia is her best effort, and she certainly gave the impression during those very busy studio recording years that she could ‘turn it on’ or ‘off’ relative to how careful she wanted to be with her singing.
Though the coloratura isn’t sparkling and she sound a bit matronly, I still like that Lucia recording very much. My point is that people are much less likely to call Caballe nasty names than they are poor Nebs, even in cases where she could be accused of similar shortcomings.
She was called those and many worse names than that during the 80s.
She got her fare share. Sometimes she brought it all to herself, (as lazies go, Montsy could be a lot lazier than Anna, IMO), but generally it was all very unfair, just like in the case of AN.
La Cieca,
Bravo for your candor and honesty. You’re a class act, besides knowing opera and voices like nobody else. It’s been a sport on this blog to kick Netrebko dowm. This ad nauseam assault with unsupported generalities is intellectually dishonest. Is Neterebko a perfect singer? No! Can she do better? Yes, if she tries harder.
On the other hand, she brings a stage presence that gets into your heart and mind, like no other. Opera singers, like all humans, cannot be perfect all the time and under all circumstances. That would be inhuman!
You know, Constantine, I was thinking along those lines earlier today. I was watching Gundula Janowitz singing Come Scoglio on youtube, and she doesn’t articulate any of the triplets in the final part of the aria, and it’s *still* a gorgeous piece of singing. There are sopranos who sing it with more accuracy, which is great, but far less passion, beauty of tone, and elegance. Also, I listened to Eleanor STeber sing the Lucia Sextet (and Come Scoglio), and Janet Perry sing an aria from Fra Diavolo. Georgeous singing from both.
It’s interesting, though, to think how few people seem to remember Ms. Perry.
I love the Caballe recording for one reason: Jose Carreras. That’s the recording he should be remembered by, followed by the Simon Boccanegra of the same era.
Caballe does give us gorgeous moments as Lucia, as long as no cabalettas are involved. Her first part of the mad scene is sublime.
I agree. Carreras is gold in that recording. Caballe still has many exquisite moments. The two of them are splendid in the act 1 duet. They both rise to the challenge of the slow tempo and pour out glorious sounds.
There is a place between absolute hatred of Netrebko and the blind praise of some of her followers. This was a great Lucia to experience in the theater, I am sure, but it does not come up to the standard set by a lot of singers (living and dead). She deserves her fame and the love of her fans, God knows the talent is substantial, but this was not an entirely successful assumption. Like La Cieca has said, she probably needs a couple of strong mentors to work on the finer points. Callas, Sills, Sutherland, they all had that kind of guidance. I don’t know if finding that collaboration will be possible for Netrebko. Who makes those kind of sacrifices today?
Speaking of “Come Scoglio,” I can recall only one recording I’ve ever heard where the triplets are very cleanly articulated: Berganza recorded a Mozart recital, fairly early on, I think with Pritchard. She sang both of Fiodiligi’s arias with acute precision. The recordings were not always easy to find in the USA, so I had to import a CD from the UK at the time.
For all of Berganza’s beautiful technique (and she was technically very accomplished, to my ears), one could listen to that Mozart recital and decide that it didn’t add up to much emotionally, as she seemed somewhat reticent in the studio at times.
I’m sorry that Caballe didn’t work just a bit harder on some of her recordings that required technical care and polish–because she was always worth listening to otherwise. If she didn’t offer the stratosphere as easily as Sutherland, her legato seemed purer to me. I’m also pissed she didn’t get to record more Mozart…
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.