An evening with Aprile
Attached you will find the song lineup for last night’s Aprile Millo recital, though as the saying goes, there were some changes to the printed program.
The first half went more or less as planned, though after the R. Strauss a man exiting the auditorium tripped and fell in the aisle, hit his head on a railing, and was knocked unconscious. A doctor was in the house, so he started to tend to the injury while the house staff called 911.
Meanwhile, Aprile re-entered and started to introduce Lynn Harrell. The audience shouted out to her that there was a man down, so she announced we should remain in our seats to wait for instructions. They took a 30 minute intermission while the EMT were summoned, a stretcher brought in, etc. Then something like the final 2/3 of the recital followed.
My very favorite thing she did all night was the opening of “O sole mio,” that easy, liquid middle voice legato on “Che bella cosa na jurnata ‘e sole…” It’s not bel canto, strictly, because it’s so natural. It’s just simply beautiful singing.
Of the “among,” Aprile elected to sing Fanciulla, Mefistofele, the Zaza duet and the Trovatore duet. Explaining that she was still weak from dieting, she asked our indulgence — which was not necessary for the music sung (the “L’altra notte” in particular was just superb) but rather for the decision to quit while she was ahead in the operatic section and round out the evening with a few (more) parlor songs: “Danny Boy,” a sort of “Wedding of Jack and Jill” piece and then she closed with “Musica Prohibita.”
The middle voice is still lovely, and she needed only about a number and half to sound fully warmed up. She ended most numbers around F or G. She did sing both the written high C in the Fanciulla and the unwritten one in the Trovatore, took a huge if ungainly B-flat (I think it was) in the Zaza, and an absolutely sterling high B in the Boito.
She has indeed lost some weight, emphasized by the tight basque bodice, low sweetheart neckline and crinoline skirt of her concert dress. If you think of Elizabeth Taylor circa 1980 as Leonora in “Trovatore,” you have the effect. The coiffure was quite elaborate, with a big teased wave in the front, a braid embellished with jewels, and a silver lamé mesh snood.
I’ll leave it to the cher public to detail the names and deployment of the dozen or so assisting artists, which included Our Own squirrel’s boyfriend Michael Fabiano.
Millo was a great hope at one point. The voice was large, ample. Like her idol, Tebaldi, there was some difficulty accessing the upper register (seeds of doom), but in the 90s youth covered all.
Unfortunately, the years of singing Verdi exacerbated the upper register issues (a wobble started to creep in) and her confidence went out the door. Her mannerisms which were endearing in the early days (is channelling Renata or Zinka today) became intolerable eccentricities (I cannot imagine someone like Gelb tolerating her for more than the time it took to have her escorted from his office).
Also, her near fetishism for Tebaldi and Zinka was ultimately a real problem for her. It meant that she never made a mark as HERSELF.
A good lesson for singers far less gifted than Millo.
By the way, I have everything she ever recorded except for the Luisa Miller. The Aida is the best since Price. The Trovatore Leonora is again the only modern recording that can be even mentioned in comparison with LP, and the Elisabetta di Valois are as fine as any on record.
I alway wondered why Millo has so little regard for Leontyne. God knows she would have been a much better model for career management, vocal longevity and good high notes.
There is not a single opera you can cast Miss Millo properly nowadays and let’s be frank abut that: she is totally unreliable and cannoot sing a whole production run.
I think Aprile’s actual weight nowadays is unimportant. Certainly many singers have been fatter (Montsy anyone? And VdlA also got very large later in life), but Aprile has been very open in her blog that she *feels* fat, that she is trying very hard to lose weight, and that she feels like her appearance is preventing her comeback. It’s kind of like how “fat Callas” never looked that fat to me — she just looked like a sort of overweight, big-boned soprano. But it was important for Maria to lose that weight.