White women can’t jump
Says a spectator at last night’s Tosca: [The final leap] “did seem poorly timed– Mattila ran to the top in slow motion, switch to stunt double appeared obvious. No boos followed– unenthusiastic applause instead. Neither Scarpia took any bow.”
As for the interminable second intermission, a Met insider tells La Cieca, “They’ve been rehearsing the leap before act 3 before every performance to make sure the lighting is timed correctly, but that wasn’t the cause for the delay. I think it had more to do with the conductor [Joseph Colaneri] taking his sweet time.
Sigh…the spelling always gets me.
Galouzine’s top is NOW (not NOT) very constricted…
Voigt had the same trouble coming down off the high note at the end of ‘Vissi d’arte’ as Mattila (and I might add, many other sopranos) had (only worse); it seems to be a precarious precipice to negotiate.
“Something like Steber, who I did not think had a success with the role …”
Would you care to elaborate on that astonishing opinion?
#72 After that high Bb, the singer must transition, I believe, to a high Ab then down to the G. Many a soprano has come to grief at that point. I think Voigt didn’t know where she was after flatting the Bb, so she ended the aria quickly and unceremoniously.
I thought the entire performance lackluster.
Even Morris had his problems – and the less said of the tenor the better.
#74 Alto – sorry bud, but richard is right about Steber and Tosca. It was not a match. I heard Steber sing Tosca three times in person and all were uncomfortable and flawed. First at Lewishon Stadium in concert, and she crashed on the Vissi d’arte Bb — she just could not sustain it and it literally swooped down; she got it, but then it fell. The whole evening was pushed and yelled. Steber imagined she had a bigger voice than she really did, and she was killing herself in Puccini (except for some truly beautiful early Mimis one of which I heard at the old Met on a Saturday night – early 50s, Alberto Erede conducted); next was in Chicago around 1958 with Bjoerling and Gobbi — she strained and pushed all evening, and came a cropper on the Act III very exposed high-C, of all things; it just was not there and a kind of gargle cameout; then finally at the Met a year or two later with Bergonzi — the poor woman just struggled with it and was pathetic. I take second place to no one in appreciation of Steber’s merits — but she was not a Tosca and really could not sing it well, never did. She fumed at the Met …. “They said I do not have a Puccini voice…” Well, they were right, she didn’t. She was begging Bing for Musetta !!! at the point when he said to her, “You cannot sing your roles and I have nothing more for you.” Again, he was right. By 1962 she was finito.
So many sopranos I hear having trouble with the Act II
aria do so, I believe, because they make it too big… and the run up to the Bb is simply bulldozed out, then they don’t have the muscle to control the high note and the following cadence — the best Vissis I’ve heard occur when the singer approaches it quietly and sings it quietly, and keeps the voice within bounds for the final measures.
If you listen to recordings, or performances, where that happens, I think you may agree. Marton, Gorchakova, Guleghena … of of them I heard live in Tosca, and they bulldoze out the measures before the Bb then their high tone is either flat or incomplete and the phrase following is unrealized. I’ve never heard it fail; but, then, I did not har Nilsson in the role.
“I take second place to no one in appreciation of Steber’s merits …”
You certainly have a funny way of showing it. I know a great many people who would never say the things about her that you take the trouble to say. You have a right to your opinion, of course, but to agree with Bing’s assessment and then to claim that you are chief among her appreciators is absurd.
brooklynpunk: I’m so sorry I missed the Steber tribute. I cycled between txting and the intermissions (I listened via iPhone). I would have loved to have heard that feature.
I wondered about those rolled r’s of Voigt. Not even Callas rolled them so much and I was confused about Voigt’s point. A couple of times, they seemed to interfere with the musical line, IMO.