The muse as mezzo
In recent times, there has been disagreement whether Colbran was a soprano or a mezzo-soprano. She called herself a soprano, but in those days the distinction was only between sopranos and contraltos; the mezzo-soprano category was to be invented later in the century.
In modern performances, however, the problem remains whether the Colbran operatic roles (a total of ten, plus four cantatas) should be entrusted to a soprano or a mezzo. In my view, since they differ in tessitura, extension and character, a few are best tackled by sopranos, but most are better served by lower voices.
The average opera listener may think that “Bel raggio lusinghier” was composed for a very high soprano, because the most famous interpretation of this aria have often been transposed and/or laced with stratospheric variations, which have little in common with what Rossini actually wrote (the aria goes up only to a A).
Armida has the highest tessitura (it goes up to a high C, although not sustained); La donna del lago and Elisabetta, regina d’inghilterra are probably the lowest-lying. The title role of Ermione requires vocalism of verismo intensity; Elena (La donna del lago) on the contrary calls for a gentle lyricism with almost no trace of coloratura di forza.
When Rossini first heard Colbran in 1806, he was 14 and she 21. In that year critics reported her extension ranged from a G3 flat to a E6 flat. However, what is certain is that by the time Rossini started writing for her (Elisabetta in 1815), the artist had lost her sovracuti and was not even comfortable with a high C. Rossini, with the partial exception of Armida, tends to concentrate her music in the middle range.
In addition to the ten roles expressively written for her, Colbran sang three other Rossini operas, La gazza ladra, Torvaldo e Dorliska, and most importantly, Tancredi, where she chose the contralto title role over the soprano role of Amenaide.
This long preamble serves to explain why in the modern Rossini renaissance a significant number of mezzo-sopranos have tackled some of the Colbran roles, most famously Frederica Von Stade (Otello and La donna del lago), Jennifer Larmore (Elisabetta) and Sonia Ganassi (Ermione).
For Colbran, the Muse
The music from Armida is the most fiendishly virtuosistic. DiDonato opens her program with “D’amore al dolce impero” — in which Rossini concocts every possible vocal trick : chromatic scales up and down, triplets, trills, and so on — with impeccable, clean agility and an optional, but expected, high C so bright and secure most sopranos would kill for it. She succeeds in depicting Armida’s sensuality without being excessively, languid, mannered or coquettish. Her attacks are exact and precise: just listen to the way she attacks “di smalto ha in core il petto.” She shows no hint of scooping.
The finale to this opera (the closing aria on the disc) calls for Armida to unleash her furor in a high tessitura, and Ms. DiDonato, in full take- no- prisoner mode, sounds like a wounded tigress. After such a performance the writer now wishes that she donned the vest of the sorceress in the upcoming Met Armida.
The mezzo-soprano excels also in more cantabili pages, such as “Mattutini albori” (La donna del lago) and “Giusto ciel, in tal periglio” (Maometto II), where she wields perfect breath control as well as a magnificent legato. The Willow song from Otello is sung with intensity and pathos. All the other arias, without going into details, show the same command of the bel canto technique and sense of style.
My only regret is the exclusion of Ermione’s final scene: judging by the ferocity shown in Armida, Ms. DiDonato would be a perfect scorned Greek princess.
Edoardo Müller seems to share the mezzo-soprano’s intentions and conducts the Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia with gusto and fearlessness, always careful not to overwhelm the soloist’s voice. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee makes a pleasant cameo appearance in the “Otello” excerpt singing the Gondolier’s sorrowful Dantesque phrase.
This recording is an unqualified success.
Anyone interested in reading another review can click on my name. I posted a review of the work in my blog a couple of days after the recording was released.
Joyce’s most recent entry on her blog argues that you don’t have to go to a “big name” school to learn to sing well. She started at Wichita State U. But she doesn’t mention that she went on to the Academcy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia (where she was from 1992-95, overlapping with Florez at Curtis, 1993-96). As far as I know they never met at the time. Still, although Florez did go to a “big name” school, he says it led him astray as far as singing went, and he really only learned how from Palacio in Italy.
I think that JDD (as opposed to JDF) didn’t have a great time in Philadelphia … more of a formative than a positive experience. My impression is that she kind of rebuilt herself afterwards, which is maybe when things really started to happen for her.
Exactly – it isn’t the school, it’s the teacher you have, who may or may not be affiliated with a conservatoire. Of course, if you don’t go to a conservatoire, you have to work much harder to find opportunities to perform, and you have to make damned sure you’re seeing the right coaches privately, but it can certainly be done.
Some people are lucky enough to have great instincts for singing as it is, and just need a little guiding hand, so it isn’t even a question of finding a great teacher – just one who recognises when to give you a nudge and when to leave you to it. It is galling when such people are passed off as a success story of whatever conservatoire they happened to be at when, barring any major misguided interferance from a teacher with an excessive ego, they’d have been a success no matter what.
I am the evil poster who said I found Joyce DiDonato ever so slightly dull, although I certainly didn’t state it must be BECAUSE she is down-to-earth. I haven’t heard the Colbran album, and based on this review and the comments above, I’m going to buy it right away. I was at the Royal Opera concert in which she appeared in the summer, and I was quite stunned by the beauty of her performance of the willow song from Otello (Rossini, obviously). If the whole album is anything like that, it is surely a must have. On the whole though, I do stand by what I said – I’m never less than very impressed by DiDonato, but for me she just doesn’t have the magic about her that would make her a diva I’d go out of my way to see.
For those who like stories about her down-to-earthness, my parents were at a concert she gave at the Edinburgh festival this year. There were terrible problems with the lighting in the concert hall, which meant that the stage lights failed at least 3 times when DiDonato was just a few bars into Arianna a Nasso or the Scena di Berenice (I forget which). She never once showed the slightest sign of loosing patience with the situation, despite having started and stopped the piece at least 3 times. It may even have been more. Anyway, once they finally sorted the lighting, she started it for what was at least the 4th time, gave a brilliant performance, and treated them to a fabulous encore as well. This wasn’t so long after breaking a bone in the ROH Barbiere, so having to come on and off stage so many times was more of a trial than it would have been usually.
Joyce is fabulous and I’m glad they’re producing Maria Stuarda for her at the MET. I wasn’t at first, a coloratura soprano would’ve been ideal but I’m sure she’ll be excellent.
The tessitura of Elena in La Donna del Lago is the perfect way to tell how Colbran’s voice was really like and I’m afraid Di Donato’s range is not as wide. I’m still curious to hear the CD.
I don’t know a lot about the voice type the role was written for, but I’ve always associated it with dramatic colorturas like Sutherland(HB). Joyce is a great Elisabetta so I don’t know why they don’t just have her sing that role. I’m apprehensive about her Maria it should still be great based on what I know about her this far.
She should do better than Neterbko as Bolena (a role I can’t imagine hearing her sing well).
Well, Frederica von Stade was a very good Elena in Donna del lago, and DiDonato’s range is comparable to hers; if anything, DiDonato may have a slightly larger voice.
Joyce always cites von Stade as her idol, but I think that she is actually a much more interesting singer than von Stade with a lot more substance to her tone and an expressive range that extends far beyond von Stade’s somewhat winsome charm (which was, of course, considerable in its way). And her Italian and French are much punchier. I’ve always liked von Stade, but I could never quite see what all the fuss was about.
In my opinion Elena is not the most representative role of Colbran’s gifts. Elena is an ingenue role, while Colbran was better known as an imperious tragedienne. Her most famous pre-Rossini role was Medea in Corinto (Mayr). Also, Elena lies in a lower tessitura than most of the other Rossini operas, and fits DiDonato’s voice like a glove.
Maria Stuarda was not written for a coloratura soprano. It was composed for Giuseppina Ronzi De Begni (who created also Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux, Fausta, Sancia di Castiglia, and Gemma di Vergy – possibly the most difficult part Donizetti ever wrote for a soprano), although the first interpreter ultimately was Maria Malbran. The role as written is not particularly high and doesn’t call for a lot of agility. It should be a good fit for DiDonato.
We simply don’t now was anyone pre-recording era sounded like in any role, so to presume which role is most representative of Isabella Colbran is sheer speculation. Even going by contemporary accounts of her singing isn’t a good way to judge they’re only opinions, not facts, just as someone declaring Maria Callas the greatest of all time is an opinion. While we may be able to speculate on her technical prowess based on what she performed and what was written for her, we will never know what she actually sounded like.
Not accurate, Elena’s tessitura is lower than most Rossini roles for Colbran but still calls for a soprano, not a mezzo. The very first duet with Uberto calls for a D. Same with the trio with the two tenors in act 2. The role doesn’t fit DiDonato like a glove, it fits Montserrat Caballé like a glove.
As for Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux, Fausta, Sancia di Castiglia and Gemma di Vergy, there’s PLENTY of coloratura music for the soprano in these scores that could be sung by Giuseppina Ronzi De Begnis but never by DiDonato in one million years, especially Gemma and Sancia. Elisabetta in Devereux calls for a dramatic coloratura soprano. Caballé said that she’d rather sing 3 Normas in a row than Gemma. So to say that Stuarda is good for DiDonato because it was good for De Begnis is highly inaccurate.
Monty Nostry: I have said before,of the strange phenomenon I have experienced many times. Of people that were not into opera – but who, on hearing Frederica Von Stade would run out and buy her records. Even the complete operas she appeared in! I can understand what it is, that attracted them. ‘winsome’ is the term you used. That may be so, but I think you sell Von Stade far short. It was that greater sense of a singer using natural in -built musical intelligence to quietly dig deep and capture the real essence of what, she was singing, without any sense of effort. She did not have to resort to any conveyed sense of ‘contrived busyness’ to achieve it. An example: take Desdemona’s aria from Rossini’s Otello, which has I believe five sections. Von Stade illuminated each, distinctly and progressively into a whole.. This was a thinking artist. She communicated ‘on other levels’. Likewise, two other examples of those having that special talent I can think of, were Lucia Popp and De Los Angeles. All three also had an unerring judgment what suited their voice regarding repertoire as well as knowing how ‘to hide the art of producing Art’.
THEY ALL SANG TO YOU……NOT AT YOU! And that is the real big difference!
At the opposite end of the scale we have say, Madame Bartoli presently, doing her vocal circus contortions. I do not want to be virtually shouted at., nor gain the sense of a singer virtually screaming ‘look at me, look at ME!-the artist -rather than the character they are ‘presumably vocally playing’. Can anyone sane relate to that vain situation? For myself, it just pisses me off completely.
Harry — I agre with you about Bartoli. I don’t mind a bit of the ‘look at me’ stuff if a singer is prodigiously gifted (say Price showing off her floats, or Sutherland showing off her ornamentation), but I find Bartoli a con — a ‘microphone singer’.
Anyway, as I said, I thought von Stade was a lovely singer in many ways, but a bit monochrome, a bit nasal, and a bit prone to smoothed-out diction. I also think she was a ’short’ soprano rather than a real mezzo. I saw her a couple of times as Cherubino, as Elena (La donna del lago), as Iphise (Dardanus) and, within the last five years, in a recital with other singers. The only time she really made an impression on me was as Iphise. I didn’t know in advance that she was singing in the performance (and I hadn’t had time to buy a programme) and I thought “This woman is good … She sounds like von Stade!”
I was also once meant to see her as Charlotee with Carreras. She cancelled and was replaced by the dreary Josephine Veasey. (Don’t tell Vicar John I said that.)
-I thought “This woman is good.. She sounds like von Stade!”-
Because you didn’t recognize her when she walked out on stage?
She had what Moffo had (at least to my ears), which was an inherent pathos in the voice. Sills had it, too, for me. When the characters were melancholy or suffering, I felt it. And von Stade has certainly marshalled her resources well, since she’s still singing. And to me, no one sang “drunk” as well as she did. One of my first experiences with her voice was the French Arias album, with “Ah, quel diner” from La Perichole, plus a gorgeous “D’amour l’ardente flamme”, the Beatrice et Benedict aria, and a stunning “Connais-tu le pays”.
“And to me, no one sang “drunk” as well as she did”
Not even Steber?
Well, we had just arrived at the theatre in the nick of time (not my fault we were late), so I was a bit flustered and I really had no idea who was in the cast, since I wasn’t interested in French baroque opera in those days, when I was young and innocent. It was also one of those productions where the cast wore weird, stylised make-up so it was hard to tell what they looked like. Jose van Dam and Christiane Eda-Pierre where also singing that night, so it wasn’t too shabby!
And wasn’t she exquisite?
Her singing in the Desdemona scene, is, I believe the best thing she ever recorded. It’s one of those moments where the singer and the music match perfectly. The melancholy, inherit in both the voice and the music, seeps into you verse after verse until you are just saturated in sadness. It helps too that Rossini wrote such gorgeous music…even greater than “Giuto ciel” or “Dal soggiorno”, I think. Interestingly, I never actually liked Von Stade in bravura, coloratura Rossini. Something about the voice got a little screamy at the top, and the coloratura never quite “moved” fast enough for my taste. For that kind of singing Horne and Berganza (who, perhaps had the most perfect coloratura technique of anyone I have ever heard) take the cake.
Interestingly, I heard a broadcast of Berganza in Una voce poco fa (Abbado DG recording) the other day, and I thought it was rather dull. Everything was in place, but this was an inordinately well behaved Rosina. JDD is far more sparky — and actually has more sparkling coloratura too, though Berganza did have a dark sheen to the voice that Joyce can’t quite muster.
MN, I always found Berganza’s recordings from the 60s a bit cool. Likewise, the arias on her Mozart recital, the Cosi arias are tremendous
in the polish she brings to them, but there isn’t so much emotion.
I only saw her once, in a recital mid 70s and she sounded much warmer and more engaging live.
Yes, I agree with you completely. BUT, the technique was remarkably free of tension, and firmly placed “sul fiato”…She could definitely be boring though. Strangely, in the masterclasses she did (you can see some on youtube) she is absolutely winning. She shows remarkable energy and intelligence, and she is often quite funny and very charming.
Listen to her in this Vivaldi aria and then compare it to Karina Gauvin…I must agree, she doesn’t really excite, but the coloratura is flawlessly dispatched.httpv://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=U4KEbMPN4jc
oops…here’s Gauvin.
Tamerlano, i don’t understand where you’re coming from with your description of Berganza’s technique as ‘remarkably free of tension’. I think of her as about the most tension-laden singer to have achieved major success! I find her absolutely unlistenable for this reason in anything other than coloratura show-cases (which, from her, can be just incredible, aided in a way by her coolness) – in other repertoire, I just hear horribly pressed, rigid tone that sounds like it’ll cut out at any moment when she gets anywhere near the top. Odd how our understanding of the goings on in this singer’s instrument are so divergent.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Von Stade… but I can’t help but thinking that even back in the 70’s there was a slight preference towards pretty girls with dress sizes in the single digits. Would she have become a star if she had been a size 16? Unfortunately, I think not.
In the last 30 years since the “coloratura” mezzos of the world have gone faster, stronger and higher. Really. Her finale in the Ponelle Cenerentola would now probably be considered very slow, under ornamented and under powered. Sadly, despite the melancholy beauty of her voice – those were my thoughts watching this clip.
And here she is in a gorgeous song with her daughter, Jenny Elkus.
Thanks Sanford, she sings popular music beautifully. And the way her lower register gets dusky and warm…ah, just gets me! I love it.
Am I the only one who thinks Von Stade sounds quite a lot like Rebecca Luker in this?
I hadn’t thought of it, Tamerlano, but you’re absolutely right! Especially Luker as she sounds on her new solo CD just released.