(Hard G..and then Soft G).

CH

I have no close sources but from what I understood, Sills was more bothered by the competitiveness of Galvany’s Elisabetta than by Tinsley’s in the Stuarda performances. Galvany interpolated and held more high notes.

As far as Sills’ comments on Tinsley, keep in mind that there were definitely two sides to the sills personality ; the one for public consumption and the behind the scenes one. I always remember her being very, very gracious when I met her as a fan
backstage at the NYST but obviously she was not one to shy away from a conflict or a perceived challenge. And she didn’t share the stage willingly with other sopranos.

I was not surprised to read Richard’s account because I had read somewhere a statement by Sills lavishly praising Tinsley for her performance as Elizabetta.

Of course you’re right, richard..the Bolena was last. Somehow I had wiped it from my memory. It’s really a shame that so many of Sills’ best years were before she was famous; every year in the seventies as her fame grew, the voice dwindled.

“SUCH a silly opera, really..”

HANS! I Love Attila; even if it was churned out during Verdi’s “galley” years in Venice, genius will out, and soon after did, with Macbeth. I’d put it on a par with Douglas Sirk’s ‘Sign of the Pagan’with Jack Palance and Rita Gam, from HIS galley years at Universal; easy to laugh at, but the craft is there.

I love that Trovatore too! It was one of the first opera videos I ever saw and it really made me love opera.

It seems like they enjoyed making it as well, although some of staging is a little corny. I wonder if Italian TV audiences got to watch stuff like that all the time? It seems there are quite a few of those old b&w vids out there.

I remembered Stuarda as being the middle
one of sills’ Donizetti Queens with Bolena
coming third (and I thought she sounded shredded in this last one).

I checked on her performance annals and
she did Stuarda three seasons starting in Spring ’72. Bolena came eighteen months later in Fall ’73.

Regarding Tinsley, I was impressed with her
Elisabetta. Again I remembered her returning
for at least one revival and the annals bear this out. Actually they show Tinsley
in all three seasons that Sills did Stuarda
allthough I didn’t remember this. Sills also was threatened by the other Elisabetta,
Marisa Galvany who LOVED to hold onto interpolated high notes as long as she could.

I saw Tinsley two or three times in Stuarda, I asked her back stage at NYCO if she was going to do anything else, she was noncomittal but I never saw her in anything else. Too bad.

Of course Odabella is not the least nasty thing Verdi ever did to a lead soprano – you have to walk out on stage and blast the top off the house! And all anyone knew of the score in those days was Sutherland’s recording of that aria – flawless and glorious, yes, but a recording studio version from a role Joan never risked in public (too smart to do so). So I was alarmed by Gencer at first exposure, but tried hard NOT to compare. The soft singing in the next act was indeed lovely; Hines was grand; and the tenor was wearing high-sandals to give him needed inches, only he kept tripping over them at dramatic moments. I forget who the baritone was. SUCH a silly opera, really – as Solera libretti tend to guarantee. Can’t think why the Met is doing it.

I’ve heard wonderful things Gencer did from later in the decade, but those two performances were not high spots.

I guess those Elisabettas are the only time I heard Tinsley, and she was the best thing in it. Sills’s preghiera (but then I never did like her singing) was not, IMHO, in a league with Caballe’s, Sutherland’s, Swenson’s or Devia’s. When I heard Theodossiou in the role, they cut the preghiera! Imagine my distress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sluzi-QGtyA

But then she sang and pretty much mopped up the stage with everyone else.

Caballe used to defend it’s use, saying that it was catalogued by Garcia as a legitimate vocal effect….which doesn’t mean it should be done on every other note, but Callas, Caballe, Scotto, and of course “the Gench” could use it very effectively.

“But for the unique combination of the coarse glottal stroke and elegant soft singing, you can’t beat Gencer.”

Who would want to? Glottal attacks ARE coarse. Even Caballe stopped using them during her best years. There are other ways to make musical points. The few times I heard her, Gencer either sang loudly or softly. There wan’t much in between. In her later years, she’d run down to the edge of the stage and deliver those whispered high notes like “asides” to the audience. By the time she made it to Newark and Carnegie Hall, her performances were little more than camp. The Attila was a lot of fun, however, with the lead singers obviously ignoring one another. Jerome Hines, the Attila, wore a flowing wig and long strings of beads and twirled around like a voodoo princess. The whole thing was hilarious but went on too long.

I think that Gencer is best heard on recordings in which her vocal shortcomings–passagio problems, registerial inconsistencies, and lack of dynamic variety, are not so apparent. (Perhaps she’s carrying a handheld mike, or maybe the recording engineers fooled with the volume levels.) Maybe she was much, much better before the late sixties, when I first heard her live in Europe.

She was as much Polish/Lithuanian as Turkish- on her mother’s side.