parterre box

178 comments

• Sanford says:

  Kashania, I haven’t ordered anything because I found so much I wanted that I couldn’t narrow it down. I’m thinking, though, about the Moffo Puritani, which I saw at Tower (Oh, do I miss Tower Records) but didn’t buy.

  on February 27, 2009 at 4:24 PM
• marshiemarkII says:

  AJ, yes exactly, well it was Cocky who pointed that out to me first, back in September (?), and then I went looking, and of course Vaness sings it come scritto, and Dame Joan sings up to the high C, which might please an opera queen but doesn’t seem so right. That Behrens saw the Lamentoso right away is fascinating. She had sung Bach for many years while she was a law student in Freiburg, with no less than Karl Richter, so she had that music in her veins, and explains why she turned out such a glorious German singer, it’s only one direct line from Bach to Wagner and then the last with Strauss.

  What we do not know is where Ubaldo Gardini got the idea. He is still around as a conductor and music professor in Tokyo, and Behrens told me very recently that right after our chat, she got a request for a few words on Ubaldo for a book that will be published about him in Japan. Very strange cosmic alignments, right? Maybe someone could ask him, he must be in his 80s.

  on February 27, 2009 at 4:44 PM
• marshiemarkII says:

  AJ just a reminder, I am marshiemarkII, and as I see that the original Marshie is around, in other threads, I want to assure you we are most definitely not the same person. Marshie’s idol is Studer while mine is Behrens (to state the obvious )

  on February 27, 2009 at 4:48 PM
• Sanford says:

  Marshiemark, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. But you’re both wrong, as moffo reigns supreme.

  on February 27, 2009 at 6:28 PM
• marshiemarkII says:

  
  You are sweet Sanford!

  on February 27, 2009 at 8:19 PM
• Sanford says:

  And I stand corrected about chest voice in Verdi. I listened today to two very different singers singing Verdi. Both gorgeous and neither with chest voice. Gwyneth Jones in the Miserere from Trovatore (on Opera Depot) and Victoria De Los Angeles in Ernani, Involami on Youtube. Both were pretty and hit all the notes, but there wasn’t much slancio and certainly no chest voice.

  on February 27, 2009 at 8:26 PM
• mrsjohnclaggar1 says:

  Callas great in Pasolini’s Medea? That’s preposterous. There’s one scene of upset where she behaves like the shrieking women who’ve stayed two days in line to get into Walmart on Black Friday and rush the doors.

  His love of long shots catches the fat lady waddle, while any number of close ups catch her looking old and strange. The two audiences I saw it with howled, hysterical at her carrying on. Anyone who thinks that’s acting let alone ‘great’ acting is a fool, and in fact has never seen good acting (let’s forget great). Of course the same is true for the Behrens nonsense.

  I think Pasolini was a great artist and a great man but I think he used Callas and I have worked with enough ‘great’ directors to know how many lies are told for many reasons (see Behrens — yeah that generalized neurasthenia, that overbite and those popping eyes would have convinced you in close up!!).

  Like most opera singers Rysanek needed the music to react to, to provide her with emotional cues. You can see in the George London memorial concert where she and James King sing the end of act one of Walkeure. He just sings, but she lives in the music, harmonic change, motific underpinning are in her eyes, she moves her body in time. Without music she would be lost. She only had a small interpretive range. Those who didn’t like her thought she was always the same, a crazy hysteric who couldn’t sing in tune.

  I think she did develop some personae well — Kostelnichka (but NEVER better than with Eve at Carnegie where she didn’t even move) and the Countess in Pique Dame, and whether she had really thought about how a Norwegian girl would act or not, she was a persuasive Senta dramatically (but the soaring vocal moments and her mad rapport with the equally crazy London put it across). Of course the idiot above never mentions her terrible intonation — for MUSICIANS — she was a difficult sell.

  And as Senta and Sieglinde she had a real rival in Crespin who was overwhelming, had a gorgeous immense sound and DID sing in tune (nor did she need to run around to get it across — her eyes spoke straight to the back of the Old and the New Met).

  The Empress was probably her best part because it let her go very high and sing very loud, and the heavy orchestra and Strauss’ overheated counterpoint let her sing ‘in the cracks’ without it being such a problem.

  But in the Italian roles she was vocally and musically a disaster, except for the Lady Macbeth, though I think the sheer shock of her persona got her through a lot of it. Of course if one were in the club, then dio ti giocondi in act three and the death scene were harrowing and unforgettable in Otello but she actually sang the role badly. She also sang Fidelio and the Marshallin badly, really unable to tune or focus her voice in them with any confidence (though the DG Fidelio documents her singing well — but was before she got to the Met). Ludwig in Fidelio and of course Della Casa, Crespin and Schwarzkopf were infinitely better as the Marshallin, the best acted I ever saw was Soederstrom in DC, a complete performance — every glance and gesture telling and apparently spontaneous but the voice well projected and attractive. Soederstrom was also an amazing Fidelio — I don’t know what the fool above means by trying to parse ‘acting’, opera as opposed to theater. Pat Brooks and John Reardon and Donald Gramm and Norman Treigle and Soederstrom and Kirsten Meyer were part of a school — they sang as others spoke and their naturalness and truth were very powerful in opera as they would have been in the theater.

  There’s nothing wrong in wanting voice and more voice. It’s the queen fetishists who excuse something like Behrens by saying: “she acts!!!” Because of course you can’t call that short breathed, unmusical caterwauling singing.

  And I’ve seen almost no top line singers who contradicted the mood of the moment physically, even if all the magic was in their singing (Caballe in costume was probably the biggest offender).

  Someone on that list of idiots, Opera-L (‘tell me, are there tunes in Peter Grimes?’, or more recently “Britten’s writing reminds me of cats in heat” when he wrote some of the most beautiful vocal music of the 20th century, including in the Michalangelo Sonnets, the most beautiful writing in Italian since 1930) quoted Gockley of all people putting Tebaldi down as ‘remote’.

  But her Butterfly, beautifully presented and very detailed physically was an overwhelming emotional experience. In her prime she understood that simple worked best for her but that meant that Mimi, Maddalena and Desdemona were marvelous — Tosca was a big sing rather than an acute impersonation and worked or didn’t on that basis — Manon Lescaut was more emotionally ‘true’ in acts three and four than in the first two, though she delivered some of those high lines in act two with pulverizing force and beauty, Leonora (Forza) was felt but more dignified than demented except from the Pace on, where on a good night there were tons of emotion in the body and face as well as in the voice. Later on she became quite lively in Gioconda though she was screaming a lot, and the Minnie, though unlistenable in sound was astounding to witness. (I’m talking about the live tapes, I love her studio effort on Decca).

  Leonie was also a camp in some ways, and that led serious people to dismiss her. In Dalibor (Vienna) her carrying on with a long black cloak (and hiding everybody who didn’t get out of her way) was — well some people were thrilled, some appalled and some were a little of both. The Salomes I saw were impossible and her tuning atrocious — and the video and tape evidence doesn’t contradict that impression. The Aix performance under Kempe with Vickers camping it up as Herod is probably her best shot but there are still problems keeping her voice in line.

  So this creeps’ aesthetic shilly shallying is just more hidden agenda bullshit. There have always been great opera singers who were good to great actors in the theater sense, as well as very many who had great voices, emotion and temperament but who were physically limited. Behrens, like the ‘great actress’ Maria Ewing is in neither camp.

  Though of course Leonie was presented in her prime (interrupted by the occasional vocal collapse) in a wide range of roles, and Magda was only seen late in a few roles here in the USA, I think they were similar, charismatics who could on a good night really excite an audience, but limited by pitching and other vocal issues (Magda of course did not sing roles as demanding as Fidelio).

  One must accept that greatness in the theater is very often evanescent. What a pity there is so much video of Behrens but virtually none of Leonie in her prime. About thirty seconds of her Senta from Bayreuth exists — maybe there’s more, no one has ever found it. The Walkeure concert act one with Jerusalem is very, very late and he doesn’t cover himself in glory — it’s way too much from her but you get the idea. The complete Walkeure from France I’ve only seen in bad prints and it’s late too. It would be wonderful to have live video of her Fidelio, of any of the lead roles (Elisabeth for example where she gave some horribly sung performances but the third act was almost unbearably moving), another of her best and most sure fire roles Chrysothemis should have been videotaped earlier. There is a thrilling Klytemnestra with Jones and there is that kinky movie of her as Elektra for which Nilsson never forgave her (I have mixed feelings about it as a whole but do love everybody in it a lot of the time) but it would be wonderful to have her Empress.

  But I think with Leonie, sadly, that if you didn’t see it on the good nights (there were some really bad ones) you will probably never get it.

  on February 27, 2009 at 9:18 PM
• Cocky Kurwenal says:

  MarshiemarkII – Thank you very much! That is absolutely fascinating and I am very pleased to have it cleared up.

  I think it is hugely effective, and a little shocking. I mean, there is a debate about whether to ornament Mozart or not, but to actually go ahead and alter the harmony takes balls. I think Mozart wrote it the way he did because he wants it to be utterly stark and to the point, so I think going up to the high C as Dame Joan did is a terrible idea (incidentally, I feel the same about the very end of ‘Tu che invoco’ from La Vestale – recordings of Callas exist where she goes up to a C, and also down to a C in others, and the latter is so much more dramatically effective). Slipping the neapolitan in makes it richer (and therefore less stark, so slightly goes against what I’m presuming was the composer’s intended effect at that moment) but it is so much more tragic and deliciously fruity. I had presumed they’d found some alternative source that included the neapolitan but no – the 3 of them cooked it up together! Incredible.

  ArmerJ, it’s here:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfnYQTl56tQ

  Unfortunately it does feature rather a lot of the raised shoulders and popping eyes that Mrs J C never misses an opportunity to criticise, and the voice catches and is a little disobedient and generally un-Mozartian, but she turns it into a 5 minute mad scene and is both affecting and thrilling, somehow – the audience goes wild before the orchestra finishes.

  I have the DVD of the whole thing which reminds me how much I love unreconstructed Mozart sometimes (I’m not referring to the sneaky neapolitan – I mean Mozart lavishly done to the best of everybody’s ability with no concessions to the authentic performance practice movement). Pavarotti, Cotrubas, Von Stade all sing brilliantly – Behrens sits oddly amongst them but convinces totally.

  on February 28, 2009 at 5:03 AM
• armerjacquino says:

  I think I’m going to have to find this DVD- wonderfully wrong but wromantic, as Sellar and Yeatman would say.

  It’s a funny old cast, as you imply. I’m wracking my brains to think of an opera in which Pav, Cotrubas, Von Stade and Behrens would be perfectly cast together…

  on February 28, 2009 at 6:19 AM
• Cocky Kurwenal says:

  Faust! With Behrens as Martha (MMII, please forgive me).

  on February 28, 2009 at 6:29 AM