pretty poison
Yesterday, a performance of Lucrezia Borgia was telecast in Europe (previously recorded during a July 6 performance). This Christof Loy production from the Bayerische Staatsoper features Edita Gruberova in her first staged Lucrezia, in the company of Pavol Breslik (Gennaro) and Alice Coote (Maffio Orsini). A selection of clips follows the jump.
Gruberova is one of the wealthiest singers around. She has concentrated her career in the houses that pay the most money (Zurich, La Scala, Munich, Vienna and many big visits to Tokyo). In fact her break with the Met was the salary cap – they paid her too little. She has been able to afford to start her own personal label, Nightingale. Gruberova’s second husband is Friedrich Haider, her personal conductor who is younger than she is.
It isn’t the money at stake here, she has a large personal fortune. I think it is the need to stay active and maintain her place in the world of opera. To show that she can still do it and that people still want her. She probably like a lot of older singers has good nights and bad nights. If you come on the good night, you think that time has stopped and she will go on forever. On the bad night it is like “Hang it up, girl!”. My experience with older singers is that it takes them a while to warm up. I remember Kraus and Freni starting the evening sounding old and by the end of Act II sounded like their old recordings from the sixties and seventies.
Gruberova seems on this outing to have started out strong and probably was fatigued by the final rondo. Certain roles are written for divas in their prime not parts for veterans like Adriana and Fedora. Gruberova does have guts to keep trotting herself out as Norma and Lucrezia Borgia at her age. These are marathon roles and killer parts for young singers.
Well if she is as rich as you say then ego must be the reason she keeps at it. And once a performer gains loyal fans, she or he can do no wrong, even if they in fact do. So leave Grubie to her demons and her destiny. She’ll clearly do what she’s got to do. Who was the famous actress who died on stage performing? Geraldine Paige? I forget.
Sorry, Page (correct spelling) didn’t die on stage, but singer Richard Versalle did:
1996: Opera singer Richard Versalle died onstage at the Metropolitan Opera during the company’s premiere performance of The Makropoulos Case when he suffered a heart attack while standing on a sliding ladder attached to a file cabinet. He was stricken after singing the line, “Too bad you can live only so long.”
“Well if she is as rich as you say then ego must be the reason she keeps at it.”
Couldn’t she be doing it just because she loves doing it?
To clarify- saying that someone has the right to earn her living isn’t the same as saying that they’re short of, or need, money.
She has a job. People ask her to do her job. She does her job.
Dame Isobel Bailie didn’t sing for remuneration but for the love of art. And she never brought her public in Hull or Huddersfield cheap rubbish like Donizetti or the Strauss lot.
Nor did she ever sing louder than lovely.
I remember Gruberova giving a blazing performance of Puritani at the Met in the early 1990s; I thought it was great bel canto; and as for singers at 62, I remember Birgit Nilsson singing the Dyer’s Wife in San Francisco circa 1980, and it was stunning. . .
#76: Mr. Vicar: what you wrote is full of loaded statements. First off Baillie is spelled with a double l. I heard her on youtube singing “Annie Laurie,” ostensibly more elevated “rubbish” than Donizetti or Strauss. Nice voice, pleasant. Faultlessly correct.
I’m guessing you’re British. You take a lot of pride in being teddibly, teddibly discriminating. You probably wear Herringbone blazers and bow ties. You sit in a wing chair with your legs crossed, eyebrows raised in fastidious mindfulness, absorbed in your exquisite sense of discernment. You’re gobsmacked on anything that offends your keen sensibilities – such as non-British singers, and barmy codswallop as Donizetti and Strauss.
Salutations! You’re a fine bloke, me mate.
What a load of bunk from this Rishoi person who fancies the senescent Slovak songbird.
Save your loo attendant tips and buy some records of Lizzie Harwood’s singing.
Niel knows I love him, but I have to weigh in on the clips I heard and say that I don’t think at this point in her career Lucrezia Borgia is the right role for Gruberova. It might be dramatically proper but vocally, I think it tends to expose her limitations. For one, the things that used to come so easily to her (a trill, especially) now requires noticeable effort. There’s a definite beat to the voice at times. Also the core of her voice to me sounds a bit hollow, like she has the notes but not the ability to color the music.
I think Gruberova (and this might sound harsh) might be better off doing what many sopranos of a certain age do — lighter, less challenging roles and concerts. That’s a win/win situation — Gruberova could still impress her fans with some old favorites (Zerbinetta’s aria), the audiences will love her, and most of all, she can pick and choose arias/songs that minimize her weaknesses and show off what she *can* still do.