status?
Since we in New York are not going to hear Rolando Villazon until (at the earliest) April 8, La Cieca thought it would be interesting to share a recent document of his singing. Here’s a scene from Act 3 of Werther, as sung in Paris earlier this month.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1EpdcOzw8o4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
(Thanks, tenore23!)
Are his toes really hairy or are those just shadows giving them the hobbit look?
Neither one has much of an upper register.
I think the innate timbre of the voice is alluring. But, oh my the passaggio and above need to be reworked completely, if that is even possible. Some bright stars just burn too quickly.
I’m going to be very blunt. Neither voice is suitable for this repertoire. Neither voice has enough weight or heft to compete with the orchestration, particularly in the upper tessitura where the voices thin out. La Graham is actually very wonderful singer—when she sings appropriate repertoire like Mozart, Gluck, and Handel, she is unmatched. She is a wonderful technician, perhaps not the most passionate of singers, and her talents and skills are highly showcased in the repertoire that made her famous. She certainly does well as Octavian and Komponist. As far as the French repertoire is concerned, I cannot fathom why this woman insists upon her forays into Berlioz and Massenet. Singers like Crespin, Norman and Obraztsova, just to name a few, had the kinds of voices that lent themselves easily and well to that kind of dramatic orchestration. If Miss Graham feels she is incapable of singing Carmen (she has said that the tessitura is too low for her, and it is, I’m sure), what would make her think that Charlotte is a better match? This is a singer who, in her element, can show a stunning display of technique and musicality, all of which is hindered and lost in her attempts at the more dramatic roles.
As for the tenor here, well, enough has been said. There is no reason to beat a dead horse, especially one that has been expired for quite some time.
Can I be really sincere? I listened to this clip of Villazon and he his singing the same way he sang in the last 5-6 years. Werther’s tessitura is easier for him than Edgardo’s so he doesn’t do the cracks he did in Lucia, anyway he didn’t start singing badly now, he always did…for sure when you’re young you can sing badly for some years, then you’re done. I am surprised many started hearing Villazon’s problems just now.
Late 30′s, the first likely time that the lack of a really sound technique will begin to catch up with a singer.
Up until now, youthful freshness and energy allowed him to mishandle the passaggio and push his top without it sounding so weak, bad and/or unreliable.
But there comes an age for any singer when youthful freshness and emergy will not longer allow you to fake the top notes. For him that time has come.
In a way, Villazon is lucky that this caught up with him at a time when he is still YOUNG enough to rework his technique.
It would take a few years of diligent work but he is young enough to do it. He probably would not have to stop singing entirely – just take say a year off with diligent study and then start performing gradually and under close tutelage until he mastered the new technique.
My other question is why on earth is this woman singing Charlotte. Not only does she sound like a soprano but a too light one to sing this role. I am not opposed to soprano Charlotte’s but they need more color than this woman has. Is she really even a mezzo anyway?
Since when is Charlotte a dramatic mezzo role? Is Obratzsova really a paragon in this role? Haven’t lyric sopranos and light mezzos succeeded in it for generations? Emma Eames, Geraldine Farrar, Victoria de los Angeles and Teresa Berganza plus Von Stade come to mind. Gheorghiu sounds fine on the EMI recording, don’t know that she could replicate it without a mike.
I heard Graham at the Met and she was fine as Charlotte, plenty of voice and good sense of the style.
She’s not a mezzo. I’ve heard lyric sopranos with a better lower register.
Quelle disastre.
In better days, I think Graham would have been cast as Siebel.
Villazon is still capable of singing piano in the middle register, but there’s not much else to recommend his singing.