Out there, in the dark
All of you who said, “Oh, Kiri te Kanawa could never do Norma” are feeling pretty silly right now, aren’t you? Of course, La Cieca doesn’t mean the Bellini druidess, a role the Kiwi songbird never could have mastered even at the peak of her career, whenever that might have been.
No, this Norma is the creepy aging diva who refuses to go away: “I promise you I’ll never desert you again, because after Der Rosenkavalier we’ll make another opera, and another and another. You see, this is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else – just me and the prompters and those wonderful people out there in the dark…” [NYT]
“As I pointed
out previously, it strikes me that Lucrezia Borgia is not well suited to
be a great role for Renee Fleming because the soprano is so “nice and
average.” When Lucrezia was publicly insulted by a gang of young Italian
thugs, she rented a hall, catered a banquet, and poisoned her enemies.
When Fleming found herself in the same situation, well, she picked up the
phone and told her travel agent to get her out of town on the next plane.”
James Jorden is a genius.
Good luck Cocky! Did you also cough up € 66,– for a Rosenkavalier ticket in Cologne? I just got mine in the mail, cannot wait.
Buster, that was tongue-in-cheek about Eva Lind, wasn’t it?
I was once with a TV crew imterviewing Kiri. When the camera wasn’t rolling there was a definite air of Ms Whiplash about her — stony-faced. As soon as she was ‘on’ it was a different matter, all sparkly eyes and engaging smiles. A true pro, clearly …
Nice conducting from Leinsdorf on that YouTube Kiri/Kathy Arabella duet.
Why was he allocated Verdi for RCA, though? He’s not too good in the 1971 Leontyne ‘Aida’, which is also let down by being recorded through a fug (and, it has to be said) by some of Leontyne’s latter-period mannerisms, though much of her singing is still glorious.
Y’all know that at leaset ten times as difficult for women to deploy a public persona than it is for men … right?
No, wait, why WOULD anyone here know that?
This thread reached a grand zenith around #66, IMHO.
Thanks for the youtube tip, Cocky. For a second I thought that it was going to be a video but it’s nice to have the audio.
@73 There was something incredibly exciting about Eva Lind when she was in her prime. I saw her Sophie, with a young Susan Graham, and Linda Watson. It was kitsch, no doubt, but I loved it a lot.
Buster, Rosenkavalier should always be a bit kitsch, surely. That is part of its appeal.
Buster- that interests me about Eva Lind. Her recorded voice has always struck me as white, thin and tweety so I can’t begin to imagine what she would have sounded like in an actual house.
I’m in danger of wearing out the Pieczonka/ Kirschlager/ Persson/ Hawlata Rosenkav DVD (aka ‘spell THESE, sucker’) mainly because Persson’s Sophie is so wonderful. She produces the single most beautiful note I have ever heard on ‘Ist wie ein gruss von HIMMel’