parterre box

28 comments

• messa di voce says:

  Or maybe:

  “Not a duress of the voice, but a duress of the, how shall I put it, a duress of the energy, a duress of the corporal elan. The voice was in wonderful shape, and dare I say it, I loved listening to it!”

  on September 30, 2009 at 10:13 PM
• louannd says:

  It does sound eerily like the same production. But is this the full review? Disappointing if it is.

  on September 30, 2009 at 10:46 PM
• Noel Dahling says:

  Why is it so charming when Leontyne says things like “my voice was, perhaps, the most beautiful I ever heard”? If Renee ever said that we’d never forgive her.

  on September 30, 2009 at 10:48 PM
• La Cieca says:

  “I never sing an F in public. I sometimes do it in the shower, but there I may just be intoxicated by the soap.”

  on September 30, 2009 at 10:53 PM
• La Cieca says:

  Noel, the answer to this question may be found in the screenplay of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Of Holly Golightly, Martin Balsam says, “She’s a phony. But she’s a real phony. You know why? Because she honestly believes all this phony junk she believes in.”

  Miss Price is one of these blessed “real phonies.” Her world view isn’t realistic or even accurate, but, my heavens, she believes in it!

  I think it’s pretty obvious where that leaves Miss Fleming.

  on September 30, 2009 at 11:04 PM
• MontyNostry says:

  Those renditions of Price-speak are just brilliant. When you listen to her, you wonder if she is self-parodying — she is not a woman without a twinkle in her eye — but it is all genuine to her.

  on October 1, 2009 at 2:38 AM
• browser says:

  The Overseer – Thank you for linking us to your own review! HOwever, John Tomlinson was a replacement here. I don’t think that he would, under any normal circumstances consider singing King Mark. It’s a cantante role and that’s not what he’s about these days.

  on October 1, 2009 at 3:33 AM
• CarlottaBorromeo says:

  Indeed, Browser. It was never an easy role for Tomlinson and I wouldn’t want to hear him sing it now. But he was getting the ROH out of a mess when Salminen cancelled. It’s a great sadness that Salminen has not been heard in opera in London since, if my recollection is correct, the 1980 revival of the first (and to my mind most interesting) Friedrich Ring.

  on October 1, 2009 at 6:25 AM
• browser says:

  And whatever you think about JonTom vocally, he’s still bloody good on stage…

  on October 1, 2009 at 8:09 AM
• Cocky Kurwenal says:

  I think some of the Tomlinson casting is getting beyond a joke. He may well still be good on stage, but he is in absolute tatters and King Mark is not the role in which to display what he has left to its best advantage. It wasn’t such terribly short notice, they could have found somebody else. They’ve sent Graeme Broadbent on as King Mark before now.

  on October 1, 2009 at 8:40 AM