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.

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.)

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.

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 does give us gorgeous moments as Lucia, as long as no cabalettas are involved. Her first part of the mad scene is sublime.

It’s interesting, though, to think how few people seem to remember Ms. Perry.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Gretry
Ettienne-Mehul
Gounod (Philemon et Baucis)
Chabrier (Le roi malgre lui)
Rossini (Otello)
Haydn
Vivaldi

I remember that Lucia. Dessay was fantastic in it.

Travesty? No. Triumph? No. Not to my ears.