“mi” a name to call herself?
Just texted to La Cieca:
Am at Philharmonic dress. Her Messiaen was luminous. Far the best thing I’ve heard her do.
Which is excellent, brava, you go on like this. But, La Cieca being La Cieca, you know she is going to harp on this little gem:
Known as “the people’s diva,” she continues to grace the world’s greatest opera stages and concert halls, now extending her reach to include other mediums.
#31: “She probably has no final say about how she is presented and can’t edit the language but none of it has anything to do with her being personally secure or insecure.”
She is the client — it’s her fees that the PR agency is paid from — and the client always has a say in how he or she is presented. I’m sure she keeps tabs on absolutely everything. She has wanted created this diva thing, even though that’s not fundamentally what she’s about. She doesn’t have that (glorious) quality of a touch of absurdity that tends to go with a real diva!
Does anyone remember Francoise Pollet?She had a brief career at the Met.She made a beautiful recording of the Poemes pour Mi with Boulez.She was admired for her intensity and superb diction.Like Crespin she could sing in her native language and maintain a very open sound.
@33 Battle had such a cold sound
I don’t really agree. Battle was something that was just too good to last. For a short while, she had a voice that was very light, but still radiant (I’m going back 25 years).
I remember going to her first Met Pamina thinking she would be swamped by the part…not so, she sounded just angelic in the part.
But it was a natural voice and didn’t really retain that quality, just a few years later
her voice started sounding cloyingly sweet (I’m thinking of the Met cleopatras) and the sound was just sugary without any variety. Maturity didn’t help her, she started sounding
more and more furry and thick sounding in the middle and experience didn’t really add much to the picture.
I do remember having a video of her from a PBS Gala of Stars thingie where she sang a couple of spirituals including He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands that was just breathtaking. But again this is about 1985 or even a little earlier.
39: What I heard was that the original idea for the recording was Teresa Stratas, who inevitably canceled. Dawn Upshaw was the next soprano approached, but she declined either because she didn’t think the part was right for her voice or else because she didn’t think she had enough time to prepare. (Either reason is valid.) At this point a number of people in the industry were suggesting Fleming to save the show as she had both the right size and color of voice and is a very quick study. However, the Virgin execs didn’t regard Fleming as enough of a name to sell the CD; in particular she had little European reputation at that point. So they brought in Studer who turned out to be in not very good form in the limited number of sessions available to record her part.
The sometimes/often hysterical crap lobbed against Fleming that I read here reminds of of another American recently being splattered with all sorts of rumors/conspiracy theories/half..and complete… UN-truths/filthy name-callings/etc…any guesses…?
And , like that particular resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,,,Fleming has, from time to time…really let me down…and I’ve become somewhat more skeptical, in my “fan-dom” of both.
With Renee..the proof IS in the Singing…and she has given me many very satisified listening experiences…and a certain (more and more…) number of cringe -inducing ones , as well.
But some of the stuff being thrown out against her….”rude”…”ruthless”…are as laughable (well I ain’t actuslly laughing, too much) as the accusations that Obama is a Communistic Islamic illegal alien……
I’m not a Fleming devotee but some of her work is admirable and I like it. Certain epithets used on this blog are totally unbecoming. Fleming inscure? Every opera singer is unless mentally chalenged. Callas, Corelli and Pavarotti were among many others. It’s part of the beast.
Francoise Pollet did have a lovely voice but a rather dull, matronly stage presence that told against her. Her one role at the Met was Cassandre in “Les Troyens” and she was rather a dull dog in it but the critic at the NY Times was invoking Crespin, Lubin and Marie Bell and Sarah Bernhardt and Gods Know What. It had been a while since NY had heard a French soprano in heavier repertoire.
Supposedly she sounded much better in Europe in roles like Mme. Lidoine in “Carmelites”. I felt she deserved another chance in NY – like maybe a concert or recital appearance in the right material. Her opera career seemed to end up in the provinces and then petered out without getting any bad reviews – they just lost interest in her.
I thought Pollet sounded pretty impressive in the Erato Huguenots recording with Leech from the early 90s. But agree her career just sort of vaporized.
Pollet had a lovely, creamy sound, but her singing was a bit placid (though very tasteful) and her diction lacked the clarity and spice of Crespin. She made a lovely recital disc of big French arias for Erato too. I saw her in recital a couple of times.
Did anyone ever see Isabelle Vernet, Crespin’s pupil, who really did sound rather like Regine herself. She promised great things for a short time in the early 90s, then went down to being a mezzo and sort of disappeared.
I remember waiting backstage after that 1991 “Les Troyens” at the Met and meeting Ewing and Pollet. Both had their daughters in tow. Pollet was totally charming as was Ewing in a kind of spacy way – I remember that Ewing was wearing Doc Martens. I suggested she sing Vitellia in “Clemenza” and she seem intrigued with my suggestion. It might have worked for her before all the Salomes. Lois and all the standees were gushing over her shy adolescent daughter who was pretty with long hair “oh look what a big girl you are now, you were so little back when your mommy sang Carmen”.
Several years later I attended a performance of “As You Like It’ at BAM with a young actress called Rebecca Hall as Rosalind directed by her father Sir Peter Hall. With shock, I realized that this tall pretty brunette Rosalind was the little girl clasping Maria Ewing’s hand in the Met stage door corridor in what seemed just a few years prior.
I suddenly felt very old.