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 Lisa Gasteen was originally scheduled to sing Brünnhilde in the second and third cycles, but has withdrawn from the performances due to a back injury.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.
Mrs jc, who is the yowling Ghoul? (Or am I being stupid here?)
Though I haven’t seen him live, Lucic seems to have a real Verdi baritone sound. Is it less convincing in the theatre than over a mic?
Inquest- it’s Guleghina.
Just worked it out before I saw your post, armer. Not a singer who really enters my consciousness. I did see her once as Maddalena at the Royal Festival Hall with Cura, must have been around 1995. All I can remember about her was the decolletage. A less strapping tenor than bodybuilding Jose would have got lost down that gap in the Urals.
It seems that several events have conspired against us. I can picture the scene several years ago when the current Met season was supposedly being planned. A. Retire the old Schenk production with a grand good-bye. B. The orchestra is certainly up to it and Levine must know it will be close to his last statement on the subject. C. Good. Put it on the schedule. Someone will show up to sing it because someone always does.
I remember a radio broadcast at least ten years ago on which Levine said they could cast any Handel opera, but not Aida. And yet Aida keeps showing up on international schedules. But if we don’t do the big Verdi or the Wagner, there will be nothing for the big voiced potential youngsters to strive for. On the other hand, if we keep doing them inadequately, audiences will start staying away.
Perhaps we can use the economic catastrophe as an excuse to put into mothballs the big operas for the duration.
HEY –
that would be a good contest for La Cieca — one which might even be forwarded to Gelb and others. Nominate twenty operas which currently exist in good productions or are already in the construction phase which can be
A. Adequately and excitingly cast by currently active singers
B. In the aggregate form a plausible season and
C. Use at least one highly vilified singer (from among the many on this blog) in a role for which he/she is most eminently suited.
I get to pick the most obvious one — IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA with Hvorostovky, Florez or Brownlee, and (stand back, folks) Netrebko alternating with Joyce Di Donato.
Wotan, Vater, I work with singers here in Philly, sometimes intensely (just did a work through of Aida believe it or not). There was a very strong tenor, probably not Radames for the Met but with a rock solid technique, good musicianship, a really easy top right up to a well mixed high D, which he demonstrated for the hell of it, beautiful words and reasonable looking (not fat). He probably has a B plus timbre — but so does Beczala. But when we went through the score and discussed things like the portamento markings in Celeste Aida, or the need for a piano on the A sharps in the fuggiam duet, he told me he’d been discouraged from ‘showing off’ and doing these things. That American houses wanted ‘white’ voices (he was half Latin in ethnicity but had a very Italianate sound) and he was passed over (when he could figure out why) for people with brighter timbres, less vibrato and no ‘squillo’.
Without suggesting he was on their level, by those standards Tucker, Del Monaco and Corelli could not have had careers at all in America, and Peerce and Bergonzi would have had a hard time not to mention Labo, and Fernandi (the first fabulous, the second very good for a number of years).
In talking to Aida and Amneris and a bass without much musical ability and no ability to count at all but a strong, black tone I had the idea that the people who cast really have no idea how these roles ought to sound, and how young people (I mean in their mid 20′s to early 30′s) sound in a studio.
Aida had no chest adjustment and wouldn’t use one — so her voice was already starting to be unsteady and turn white at the top under pressure — exactly what the old manuals predict when the chest is not properly integrated into the whole voice (not the same thing as abusing it or taking it too high –two sins of the young Callas). Amneris had a good chesty adjustment but said she’d never get work if she sang that way — again people wanted ‘high’ bright voices.
I have the impression that people who cast today go with the people who were stars when they were young — Riciarelli and Carreras as ‘spinto’ singers rather than as modest lyrics (I know they could both scream, which is why neither had more than a six year prime). The idiot Jonathan Friend when he took the Met job, went on a date with a fellow who kept raving about how great Astrid Varnay was. Johnny had had it after a while, and said, ‘you mean that woman who does Mamma Lucia?”
He genuinely had NO IDEA that she had been a premiere Brunnhilde and Elektra with a technique strong enough for big Verdi (not an Aida or Leonora/Trovatore you could love for sound alone but extremely assured in those killer parts).
That ignorance is passed on and passed on — some of these people don’t like big voices and the hype often goes to the limited. I won’t mention my particular hate, but lets take Heppner, a ‘white’ voice, entirely without squillo, large but not really big — forgetting his tendency to fall apart at least twice in every run — he is someone who has never had any impact on me aside from my understanding he could actually get through the roles like Walther uncut (I’ve seen him how many times — 12?) — I’m sure Ben is uncut, agree? — and Tristan (11 times, God help me). His Otello was ridiculous, the wrong sound, the wrong manner and no words, the Chenier, a joke. I may have seen 10 or so Lohengrins but there Vogt exists — and I rejoice in Botha who while perhaps without the last degree of ‘specialness’ in the timbre is wonderful. But Heppner is the star with all those records –
There may have been a decline in poor young people with impressive natural instruments in cultures where people heard opera singing one way and another, who sometimes started to study, and sometimes just started auditioning, picking up tips from veterans in provincial gigs, all of whom felt that even a modest career on the stage meant earning more and working less terrible hours than papa or mama at the local cigar factory, I think the big voices are out there. But I think few are successfully discovered and encouraged properly.
There was a time when there might have been three Gorchakova type singers in the world, so her combustion would not have been a really bad thing — but there was only one, evidently, and when she declined she took a whole swath of the rep with her. Same thing with Licitra and there are probably others.
Anyhoo, the tenor I liked is heading for Germany with wife and child and giving himself two years to see if he can make enough connections to live.
My prayers go with him/them.
Your horror stories are indeed that, particularly that tag line “you mean the woman who sings Mamma Lucia.”Oh, that hurts in organs I had removed decades ago.
MJC: What you have related is certainly disheartening, but sadly not surprising. There is a definite “American” voice, and it is one that I hate hate hate. They make lovely little susanna’s and despinas, ottavios and ferrandos, but that’s about it. I suppose people like Friend find the full-blooded, full-throttle singing of corelli, tucker, etc. “distasteful” and opt for voices that record nicely, though he’s obviously forgetting that the MET is an opera house, not a record store.
The even sadder thing is when singers believe they have to compromise their voices and their art in order to be hired by these ignorant casting directors. Any one of us could do a better job.
So, what ever happened to Martile Rowland?
Mrs J. C. – You make continuous good sense, and I thank you for your news and information. Keep it all coming
Big voices, indeed any well-trained voices, are on the decline, and I see little to change that trend. Giant houses such as NY, Chi and SFO devouring small voices in big roles is no help. But that wont change either.
Mrs Harshaw used to say, “singers don’t sing as well as they should today because they are not trained adequately in the basics,” and she would go on to illustrate, and she was right. And will that change?
And then you have “opera composers” today composing not operas with lyric reach and beauty, but rather plays with music, and that does nothing for vocal development, either.
Sometimes a good one will come along and San Francisco Merola’s Elza van den Heever may be MAY BE a case in point. Her voice is not for everyone, but it is the real thing and it works technically. We shall hear her Anna this summer at Santa Fe; that will tell more.
It’s interesting to contrast the decline in vocal training with the vast improvement in the general level of technical polish and ability of instrumentalists, as compared with the first half of the 20th century. I wonder why they have gone in such divergent directions? Both however, have gone the same way in terms of artistic quality (with exceptions of course). Most everyone nowadays is generic and homogenized, lacking that last bit of individuality which singers/instrumentalists like oistrakh, richter, callas, etc. had.