sister act
Christine Brewer and Linda Watson will share the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in all performances at the Met this season. Lisa Gasteen was originally scheduled to sing Brünnhilde in the second and third cycles, but has withdrawn from the performances due to a back injury. Brewer will replace her in the second cycle, and Watson will replace her in the third.
But the Hunter Walküre clip is entirely off-pitch! at least a whole tone (and pehaps more) north of the correct one
“Witnessing her and Brewer together in Act III of Walkure could be operatic nirvana.†And it’s precisely the point where I find Meier wanting, since she is unable to soar
I realize that i’m late in replying to this, but I did feel like I had SOMETHING to offer, so here goes…
Sanford, Paoletta Marrocu is a good looking woman with a big, flexible (if not quite perfect) voice who (in Europe at least) was, for a while considered ideal for roles such as Abigaille and Lady Macbeth once Guleghina became more ensconced in the States and her compatriots (I’m thinking off the top of my head of Francesca Patane, Susan Neves and Sylvie Valayre) found their niches (for one reason or another) elsewhere. Since then, to my knowledge, she has tried to make her break into the States (never with the Met) and usually in roles such as Lady Macbeth and even ‘safer’ roles such as Maddalena in Andrea Chenier. From what I recall the reviews have been mostly positive, but still far from perfect. She’s not a ‘big’ name, but she’s still a committed artist that can sing a repertoire that not many people can nowadays, and can also look good in the process (something which, alas, it seems is more and more important in opera nowadays). We need more of her kind nowadays, IMHO, and if you’re interested in Marrocu, you might well want to check out Sylvie Valayre as well… another attractive woman with a big and very flexible voice that (if not perfect) can still interpolate a high e-flat into Abigaille’s duet with Nabucco (and as can be found on YoutTube). Now, I’m sure there will be many on here (whom I love and adore, and that keep me coming back here for more…) that will come up with nothing but vituperation and rage, and cite many reasons why these two women are nothing but garbage who don’t even deserve to be on stage and to whom the ghosts of Rysanek, Callas, et al are vomiting as we speak at the very mention of but still… check ‘em out!!
marshiemarkII, did you see the entire 1975 Ring, spaced out as it was over a period of five weeks. I took the train up and stayed off after the Rheingold I believe to hear Leontyne Price’s glorious Manon Lescaut. An interesting Ring, though Rysanek didn’t appear as Sieglinde due to illness, one of the very few major roles from the late 1960s onward that I missed seeing Rysanek in.
Since we have strayed to Rita Hunter, I well recall the following — heard in the 1970s in NYC and SFO: Her Met
Walkure Brunnhilde was the real thing vocally — the voice big bright very audible, secure and effective; visually, no way. Then, if you forgive me, I was in SFO for the Norma, including opening night, after which, yes, a local newspaper did publish a reivew “Enorma Debuts at Opera.” It’s true; somewhere I have the clip. It was beyond ridiculous. Norma entered Act I in harness with her vestals (or whaterver they were), said harness being made of strands of plastic mistletoe. Some fruit-cup costume designer really got it on; they came into the stage in profile and the sight was not to be believed. The singing was strong and, well, not bel canto, but not offensive. Yes, the coloratura was, um, simplified. I remember this evening very well it was so peculiar.
Later Madame Hunter moved to Australia where she had a good career. “If they don’t like me at CG or America, I’ll go where I am wanted,” she told a friend.
Good idea. But, you know, it WAS one of the better Wagnerian dramatic voices of our time.
Mrmyster you have to consider the source of the venom toward Rita Hunter. After all she had a real dramatic voice, she had power without a need to scream, she could manage a firm line, had a full dynamic range including a sweet pianissimo, the gym bunny attacking her prefers someone with NO breath, she has to chop up phrases and jump the beat just to keep going (it’s all there in You Tube), she has NO intonation, she is usually wobbling somewhere north and somewhere south of the pitch at the same time, she has NO dynamic range — she SCREAMS, and is usually too hoarse to establish a tone without maximum colonic pressure. I mean the preposterously ill equipped Hildegarde.
Rita in my experience sang six very strong Aidas, better than any I’ve heard in a decade or more, several thrilling Siegfried Brunnhildes where her effortless attack on the top, her long lines and her ability to make a crescendo on the breath as opposed to just screaming more were terrific. She managed some OK Walkeure Brunns and was wonderful at ENO in Gott — a performance of great commitment and abandon. The Norma was better sung in San Fran, without being idiomatic, she had a bad time at the Met, where chorus and extras laughed at her during the dress, and no one from the company greeted her or shook her hand at the end. So she wasn’t perfect. She was Flagstad compared to her detractor’s fetish object.
And of course the gym bunny hates fat people — she gave committed, generous performances, and did not need a teenage screamer (who also puts down Nilsson) who orgasmed the first time over a fraud and never got over it.
My dear Mrsjohnclaggart #136. First of all, I much admire your prose, which presents invective but with enough grace to temper the sting. But it brings us perilously close to the highly incendiary position of “The only good singers are dead,” which so infuriates so many of the younger posters.
The stereotypical fat soprano, I remark, almost always wears a Brunnhilde helmet. For better or worse, upholstery seems to go with the territory, although it is often carried to extremes; e.g. from my own experience the Donna Anna of Jane Eaglen, or her Norma, which emerged as the Pillsbury Doughboy with mistletoe. If her vocal performance had lived up to the hype, I might have forgiven a lot, but it bordered on the threadbare.
Behrens I saw and heard only via media, never live, so my impression is of a capable actress who involved me with the drama but never overwhelmed me with the sound.
There have been few pretenders since. Brewer stands a chance of being at best another stopgap, but she is most distinctly in the “ample” column. So unless Grane comes galloping over the horizon bearing the next Great Hope I don’t see much need for any more Rings for a while. And even if that miracle DOES occur, where the Hell are we going to find a Siegfried to match her?
134 Jay, no unfortunately I only saw the Gotterdammerung in 1975. I did come from Boston also for that, imagine I had grown up with the Nilsson Ring of course and GD was already my favorite opera, so how apt that it would be my very frist time ever at the Met. I came with a friend and we had tickets one in the Orchestra and one in the Grand Tier so we exchanged places for the acts. I think I saw Act 2 from the Grand Tier and 3 from the orchestra. It was pretty overwhelming for a young kid, I “saw” things that weren’t supposed to be there during the Immolation, as I found out later from Schuyler Chapin
Interesting parallels again as the following year, me and my friend came down from Boston again, for Sylvia Sass’ debut as Tosca, and finding out that Leontyne Price was singing Forza two days later, we decided to stay. Well the night in between was Walkure with my [incipient gay] boy obsession, namely James King as Siegmund, with already well-known monstruous Rita Hunter and an unknown soprano (you see she was not famous for her records…..) to ME: Leonie Rysanek. Suffice it to say, I was never the same again
And to think that exactly 19 years later I sat next to Leonie at a dinner party given by the Austrian Ambassador to Argentina after the premiere of Elektra at the Colon.
Interesting times indeed. Jay I wonder if we know each other? I am sure we must have overlapped many times since then at the Met
Jay, yes too bad that you missed the Sieglinde with Leonie in 1976, when she was transcendent, incandescent, make up another word….
I saw her as Sieglinde again for her demented 25th Gala in 84 (?), still magnificent. Finally she did do the complete role again and for the last time in 1987, with no less than the glorious Hildegard Behrens, but those were not good performances for Leonie, all the grand phrases clipped, cut short, etc. Her breath not what it had been…… a bit sad for me, Behrens at the height of her powers, and Rysanek a tad diminished. And yet the following year came the astounding Kostelnicka at Carnegie Hall, and well the rest is history, last with the sensational Klytemnestras at the Colon (95) and then Salzburg (96)while she was already deadly ill. What a truly magnificent artiste that was, one of the brightest stars in the firmament. I will always treasure that dinner just two years before she died.
Wotan, Vater, there are two issues here. One has been brought up by the Behrens fetish with his by now very sticky collection of furry toys made in her image. That’s a case of a know nothing living in some weird fantasy land making ludicrous claims about his fraudulent idol, now to the detriment of very capable professional singers, like Rita Hunter. The issue is not was Hunter one of the greats, it’s that like Shuard, Dvorakova, Kukhta she was one of the ‘goods’. She could sing the roles, mostly well and accurately, and on a good night, she in particular had a beautiful voice and fine control over it. Behrens was NEVER able to sing the roles well, cleanly, accurately (she constantly has to shorten note values and jump beats to keep going). I have posted here before about her ‘acting’ — she was just as preposterous as Hunter; more so, because she invented the pop eyed shoulder hunched mannerism as an all purpose ‘acting’ style, while poor Rita had to hope her eyes conveyed what she was feeling, because moving about the stage was a challenge.
As to all great singers being dead, well it’s hard to say. There has been a HUGE contraction in big voices capably handled in the past quarter century. They’ve been around — I was stunned when I first heard Licitra in a rehearsal at La Scala in 1998. The quality was there, but not much else was, and he appears to be shot. Gorchakova had a GREAT voice and was a fantastic presence on stage, but she collapsed and burned, partially done in by Gergiev’s machinations but mostly by her own craziness. Voigt, though never a big favorite of mine, had an outstanding spinto voice but traded it in for sleeker chassis — and so on.
Into the 60′s these singers would have been supplanted by people emerging every five or so years who had enough sound for the biggest roles in a huge house. But that is no longer the case — someone like Brewer, a ‘white hope’ for some is in fact a woman of advanced years (singer wise) who is probably already dealing with the physical problems that assail aging singers. In the standard rep we are confronted by the yowling Ghoul, the third rate Racette, the uneven and I think unattractive sounding Giordani — and the problem is that while there were always popular singers whom one didn’t like, there were always others sure to turn up and do better. But those extra layers just aren’t there any more.
A particular peculiarity now is of the dark, heroic-piccolo tenor. Villazon, a lyric with a small voice being peddled as a kind of spinto — I believe his best years (were there two?) are behind him. Or there is Filanotti, a fine singer in so many ways, but evidently damaged vocally and pushing into heavier parts. We have Kaufmann who is better technically but has yet to convince me that his voice is big enough for the big roles at the Met. There is Vogt, the best of the four, who has a most beautiful floated tone, but I wonder how wide his range would be in a place like the Met.
Of course one can argue that Urmana and Botha are very impressive voices — she however is very dull. I think he’s terrific but he’s about the only one who springs to mind who is in his prime (Zajick and D’Intino are terrific but neither is young). There is no great Verdi baritone in the world (Hvor is best at mezza voce, which projects well and sounds beautiful but when he sings louder he changes his production and belts). A singer like Dessi, who will show up at the Met next year has everything but a lush spinto voice.
But all this means is that some of the standard rep is no longer as viable as it was. Instead we have fantastic performers in Baroque, Classical and 20th century music. Upshaw and Finley in L’amour de loin are phenomenal, the overlapping groups around Christie, Minkowski, Jacobs and Hain contain highly communicative singers (Petibon, Gens and Richard Croft for example). Because the rep is different it even allows a charming sex pot without much voice like De Niese to work well live (she’s a bit more of a trial on record).
Unfortunately most of this doesn’t work in a house the size of the Met, so there is a problem there (even in the standard rep, the singers around can do much better in your average European sized house). But what can be done?