The rest is silence
On Monday, a A solo recital by Cheryl Studer sold so few tickets that the organizers of the event didn’t even bother to show up at the venue on the night of the performance. [Tagesspiegel]
Here, in happier days.
On Monday, a A solo recital by Cheryl Studer sold so few tickets that the organizers of the event didn’t even bother to show up at the venue on the night of the performance. [Tagesspiegel]
Here, in happier days.
That’sad. Studer is the Anti-Fleming.
What does this mean?
well, what’s happening with susan neves? she’s singing the overseer in elektra at the met???? i mean, how does one go from prima donna to comprimario roles? was serving woman #5 already taken??????
This article was originally published in July…
This is what happens when one gets one’s scoops from Opera-L and can’t really read German, I suppose….
(Erschienen im gedruckten Tagesspiegel vom 22.07.2009)
Marco Schmid always has some useful info on Opera-L…depending on your definition of useful that is.
I’m surprised he hasn’t been fishing for news of his other favorite Annette Dasch’s debut as the Countess at the Met. For someone whose European buzz is considerable, her New York debut seems to have passed without anyone noticing.
Anyone actually hear her?
Dasch is one of the most overrated singers today in my opinion. I have heard her twice. The first time as Pamina which was nothing special at all. But her Donna Anna in Salzburg two summers ago was ghastly. She cannot sing coloratura and the top is shreiked and off pitch. The timbre isn’t really anything special either. She is fine for a b house. What European buzz are you talking about? BTW does anyone know why she cancelled her Desdemona’s last month in Dallas? I have given her two chances in two different roles and it would take a lot to get me to hear her in something again.
Thanks, the correction is noted.
Dasch just got a very nice notice out of Steve Smith in the Times for her debut Countess in Figaro.
I was a bit shocked by that too. She is still getting good reviews in Europe in major roles. She can probably give both Bullock and Voigt a run for their soprano money.
Wow, that Studer article is depressing. It says that she had vocal cord problems in the mid-90s. I hadn’t heard that. My impression was that she just sort of lost it, but that is not on any reliable authority. If I remember rightly, one leading soprano did however mention that Studer was “away with the fairies”.
Maybe she was referring to the opera that Studer performed that was called “The Fairies”?
If she did perform Die Feen, I guess that would have been early in her career …
There is a fine recording of Die Feen with Anderson and Studer in small roles. The lead is Linda Esther Gray.
I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Neves rarely, if ever, sang principal roles at the Met. She was singing the Overseer in Elektra even in the early 90s – Jones/Voigt/Rysanek production. I agree, though, that Neves has been underused.
Abigaille in Nabucco is a major role and she got a broadcast in which she sang–really sang–the entire role quite impressively.
So far, Susan Neves roles at the Net are:
Elektra: Overseer
Walkure: Helmwige
Rosenkavalier: Marianne
Gotterdammerung: Third Norn
Nabucco: Abigaille
The lastest performance listed for her at the met is April 23, 2004. No mention of it being her farewell or anything else coming up with her. Does anyone have any idea?
She has been singing in Europe with some success and there has been some telecasts with her that I have seen and while not overwhelming, they are not embarrassments either. I think her problem is that her high register is not truly connected with the rest of the voice. Anything above an A sounds unsupported and lacking body.
Rumor has it she had the same surgery Voigt had an the same result.
Just Saturday I listened to Neves’ Abigaille on Sirius and thought it was wondrous–she really SANG the role, the most bel canto-ish Abigaille I ever heard. Yet, she still had the power for the character’s furious moments. I would love to hear her again in a major role.
It is sad. For all that it became fashionable in some quarters to pile on Studer (and a rabid internet troll-devotee made it tempting to do so), this was a voice and an artist of real quality.
Things didn’t always work out well for her (and she had a hand in the vocal problems, but I dare say we all have our own pet theories about that). I myself eagerly went to a Philadelphia Lucia, pretty early on, that turned out to be one of my more distressing opera-house experiences.
But one need only hear the Kaiserin, the Chysothemis, the Eva, and I’m sure several more achievements in the German middleweight vein (I haven’t caught up with all the videos) to hear that when she was good, she was really good, and had a most unusual combination of qualities. Whatever has happened since, she deserved better than a minuscule turnout with absent promoters.
I saw Studer a number of times during her short peak years (late 80s/early 90s) and I always found her impressive, even though I didn’t find the basic colour of her voice that special; on CD it could sometimes sound rather flat (both literally and figuratively) around the middle. The roles were Elsa, Elettra, Kaiserin, Chrysothemis, Daphne and Elena, and there was also a concert at Covent Garden with Domingo, where she was fine in the Otello duet and the Rosalinde’s Czardas. Though not a great actress, she had a lot of presence and sincerity on stage, and she chewed the scenery well in Idomeneo. A good singer to have around, though the attendant hysteria of the A&R chiefs of EMI and DG (the real divas, perhaps) was exaggerated.
I’m curious when you’ve ever witnessed “hysteria of A&R chiefs”? They are usually back in some office or conference room or lunch table in an expensive restaurant. Do you mean the marketing people?
At the height of Studer’s fame those A&R chiefs were definitely die sternflammenden Koeniginnen of their respective companies. The marketing bosses were very low-key by comparison. The hysteria might not have been visible to the public or the press, but I can assure you it was going on.
I wasn’t speaking from the point of view of “the public or the press” but as a former executive in one of those companies. And you still give no examples of the phenomenon you cite. But you “can assure” me?
alto you are incredibly tedious. some people besides you are knowledgeable enough to be entitled to an opinion without suffering your cranky condescension.
So being there and happening to know the truth doesn’t count as much as random fantasizing? That’s what you call “tedious”?
Geez, I was at the Lucia in Philly, too. No, it wasn’t very good. A part of the problem was that she did the traditional interpolations and the Leibling
cadenza, which were her weakest points. If she had substituted a different cadenza and didn’t try for unreliable acuti, it might have worked.
But a Donna Anna and Micaela I saw at the Met was much better. More suitable all around. And I would have loved to have heard her as the Kaiserin in the late 80s or early 90s.
It’s funny hows threads here can intertwine. I looked at Studer’s website. It showed mostly master classes
and an appearance at a gala in Prague in November.
Yes, the “Perfect Day” gala with Flemingova. I wonder if Studer actually appeared at that after all.
Richard, I agree. One operamaniac friend complained that “she didn’t do all the acuti,” and I wanted to respond “Yeah, and she shouldn’t have tried for the ones she did.”
It kind of went with her notion (yes, here’s my theory) that she had to “remake” her voice for Italian repertory, and (at least for her) that was a very bad idea. She tried for a different tonal focus that wasn’t right for her, and an ethereal pianissimo beyond what her technique allowed her. If she had been content to sing consistently with the full-bodied “jugendlisch-dramatisch” setup that served her so well in Strauss and lighter Wagner, she might indeed have managed a wider repertoire — but in a “German” way. Rethberg seemingly did her Aidas that way, and she was hugely popular in the role.
But it’s easy to have an opinion when you’re not the one putting yourself out there. And I may not even be right about it.
The funny part is that she always said that she trained as a Lyric coloratura. She tells the story of how she went on a Germany audition tour with Michaela, Gilda and roles like that and nobody would hire her. Then she started singing The Wagner roles and there was not enough space in her calendar.
After she was famous enough and she could sing whatever she wanted, she went back to what she thought was the rep she shoul’ve sung all along…
So true… Never saw her live but still remember a veteran coach at SFO raving about her debut as Micaela, rightly describing it as a true lyric soprano voice that happened to be huge. I’d have killed to see her Kaiserin. On CD, her Salome is fantastic – probably as true to Strauss’ dream voice as can be realized.
Question: Didn’t Studer record the Strauss
Salome in French, using the Wilde text?
Anyone know?
Don’t think so. The Sinopoli recording is in German
The French Salome went to Karen Huffstodt.
Is it just me or are we playing ‘Six Degrees of Lohengrin” here, recently. Studer is foremost in my memory as Elsa, and it’s been on here Lohengrin ever since that wonderful Jonas Kaufmann video.
Not that I’m complaining, or anything.
WHAT wonderful Jonas Kaufmann video? have I missed something?
pls let me know where I can find it…
I know a movie exhibitor who shows the Met bdcasts and he got an email this morning saying NOT to publish the cast they had given out. not apropos of this post but I wonder if anyone has heard anything…
Meant to say for “Hoffman”.
They all sound fine to me….
Netrebko was great at the Tucker gala too….her voice seems to have returned to normal after those awful lucias. Her passagework was very clean and her voice extremely well controlled. None of that unsteadiness on sustained notes that used to afflict her.
Calleja didn’t sing, but I’m guessing it was mostly to save his voice…Hoffmann is a huge risk for him, but he is managing quite well. Kim’s voice is just too small for the Met…another gelb “discovery”?
I heard Dasch’s debut on Monday night (she did sing on Monday unlike the Strudel). She is very pretty (resembles Scarlett Johannson a bit) and a very good spirited actress. The voice is an attractive but inflexible and technically limited healthy lyric soprano. Can’t really float a suspended piano and when she tried to sing forte the tone got hard and a bit flat. (This was exposed in “Dove Sono” in the repeat and allegro close) In the midrange dynamic level, the voice gets the job done in the lyric lines of Rosina. Okay trill and decent agility. Tone basically attractive when not stretched too far but not really totally distinctive. However, not a singer for the ages but an attractive singer who is just below the top level. Soile Isokoski and Harteros are actually much more impressive musically and technically in Mozart.
BTW: Marco Schmid has trashed Dasch on Opera-l – he was particularly critical of her Donna Anna at Salzburg (I think it was Salzburg but it was the one with Maltman as the Don, Schrott as Leporello and Roeschmann as Elvira). Some people have dismissed her as an overpromoted fraud, I wouldn’t go that far.
Was at the Dasch debut and she was nothing special…nor was Isabel Leonard (Cherubino) for that matter.
Richard: Studer’s Kaiserin is available on DVD (with Marton as the Faiberin). It’s very good!
She’s probably even better on the Sawallisch CD recording, which I don’t think is in the catalogue at the moment. Probably the best recording she ever made.
Yes, and everyone is good in it too. I think the contrast between Studer and Vinzing is more interesting that that between Behrens and Varady on the Solti set. And Hanna Schwarz leaves Runkel in the docks.
And Sawallisch can really handle that huge and difficult score. I love that set. It’s uncut.
Yes, I have the EMI recording and have (or had) a copy of the DVD from a few years later. I agree with MN, she’s better on the EMI set. The live performance is very good but she’s fresher sounding a few years earlier.
But what a mess her career turned into. And her Met career was wrecked by a dispute over repertory and performance dates.
Neves sang Abigaille 4 times at the Met, including a broadcast. I think that qualifies as a lead! Surely she is now covering Voigt or Bullock, no?
As for Dasch, I was there too. An attractive and lively actress but an unmemorable voice with some problems in agility and in sustaining high notes. Without those looks The House of Gelb wouldn’t have given her the time of day. She wasn’t terrible, but vocally she does not belong at the Met: maybe Gutrune in Bonn, or Busoni’s Dutchess of Parma in Cagliari.
In sum: the second coming of Leonore Kirschstein.
I frankly doubt the veracity of the Studer report. In an opera mad city like Berlin, I find it hard to believe that only 20 would attempt to go here a name, particularly one whose career had been ended with a scandal. There are far more than 20 bitchy opera queens in Berlin. There’s also no attempt at reporting, an attempt to find out what happened. Perhaps Studer cancelled and the presenter was an amateur who decided to run and hide rather than deal with it. Perhaps there was no publicity, etc, etc. I remember all too well a PR person sent to NYC in the 80s to publicize an upcoming tour of a large organization, and he apparently spent the entire trip drunk in a hotel. People fuck up, and you can’t always blame the artist.
Studer became unhirable after the lawsuit against Munich, the Intendants of these theaters meet regularly during the year and discuss trends, including artists, and there is absolutely an enemies list. She had to go to Wiesbaden to get work after Munich, although even at her worst she was far better than your average house singer. She was at the end of her ability to sing at an international level (and she had been there, although I was never a fan, I find some of here more disliked recordings, such as Traviata are actually quite competent), and an attempt to revive her career at this point is ill-advised. I’d heard she’d picked up a small wanna-be American agent who was promising the world, and God knows that singer’s egos are easily seduced.
I hope this becomes the end of the discussion, so we move on to Nadja Michael and the upcoming crisis that is her future calendar……
I have never been terribly impressed by the reporting in German newspapers, though I am not a regular reader. There’s a tendency to swallow stories whole, I have found.
“swallow stories whole…” what does it mean?
Not very investigative in their approach. Interviews with stars, for instance, often read like press releases!
What a tragedy for Cheryl (possibly unprecedented in terms of audience lack of interest).
of course, the final and greatest insult in this story is the fact that the Tagesspiegel article has received a sum total of zero comments since it was authored in 22.07.2009!
Cheryl Studer was contracted to sing and recorded many, many roles well outside her scope of talent, and she did none of them well. She was a triumph of what was left of the late autumn of the dying recording industry model.
Once everyone including audiences and management of houses figured out she actually couldn’t sing, for example say Gilda -or for that matter any other role on a stage- her career ended.
I heard Neves as Abigaille in Paris some nine years ago and she was terrific. I sort of remember reading that she was doing Norma somewhere else around the same time. I would have liked to hear her as Lady Macbeth and other Verdi ladies.
Nasty typo in the Studer wikipedia entry:
“In addition, the soprano is said to be also preparing the role of Gerturd”
…you’re sure that’s a typo?
yes, since it is not really funny enough for the funny people on wikipedia. I had to remove “Played trumpet with Benjamin Franklin” from the Eva Lind article more than once. That was at least funny.
I attended the Interlochen Arts Academy in the early 1970’s when Studer was there as a senior. I still remember her Yum-Yum in the Mikado. Everyone knew she was going to have a major career. And she herself made sure we always knew in it the dining room, when she would vocalize while waiting in line with her tray.
Amongst all this nit picking about Studer, it has to be said there are a lot lot worse singers around today. Getting top billing yet never even up to Studer’s former standards that some delight in criticizing. The worse fatal mistake I think Studer made , was by mking hersely totally ubiquitous.
“Once everyone including audiences and management of houses figured out she actually couldn’t sing, for example say Gilda -or for that matter any other role on a stage- her career ended.”
This is unfair, at least as concerns the central part of Studer;s career. I have never been a fan and I always thought she was ill-advised, but the three times I heard her live, she was always quite good ( Eva, Violetta) or even excellent (Donna Anna).
Certainly a better voice than Annette Dasch. the DREADFUL Nadja Michael or (ahem) Petra-Maria Schnitzer.
Krunoslav is dead right. She was a wonderful singer at her best. I heard her first live singing Freia, a Walküre (can’t remember which one), Third Norn and Gutrune in Friedrich’s Berlin Ring and later as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, Elsa, Sieglinde, Countess Almaviva, Chrysothemis, Kaiserin and Aida. With the exception of the last, where he constant mixing of repertoire and silly choices of recording roles was evidently taking a toll, she was a lustrous and lovely singer, one of the most beautiful lyric sopranos since Gundula Janowitz. If she had stuck to Janowitz’s central rep – although Janowitz sang Aida, Elisabeth de Valois and Odabella in Attila – she might still be having a decent career. She was a less mannered singer than Fleming, although not as attractive on stage. And her Salome has that youthful silvery sound that Strauss obviously thought was ideal when he suggested reducing the orchestra for Elisabeth Schumann to sing the role. Studer’s voice was obviously bigger than Schumann’s. I think it’s a real pity she didn’t sing the Marschallin, Arabella and Ariadne in her prime, although I think she has sung them since her Aida debacle at Covent Garden.
Right on Krunoslav! And certainly Studer was, even in an off moment, a helluva lot better than that tatterdemaleon Janice Watson or whatever her name is — of course she’s English and you know how they are – all sound alike and that ain’t good! Oh, hi Rev. Wakefield!! Come va?
Funny that you all say well, there’s worse since Studer, be thankful when i see it as totally the opposite; Studer was the first in that awfully long line and all too prominent practice today of giving contracts to people who should not otherwise be allowed to sing outside of their showers (or their voice studios, for a long time).
Studer started the trend, why would you make any excuses for her? That is quite unsettling that pepole would still make up excuses for her poor singing and her lack of support and the lack of body in her voice and her insistence of singui9ng repertoire that was completely wrong.
I don’t think this is right. As others have said, Studer was really rather good in some roles and it isn’t as if she was the first singer to launch herself on a big career without first having worked out every single technical issue. To say she ’started the trend’ seems absurd when the history of opera is littered with people who burned out quickly owing to inappropriate repertoire choices and unstable underlying technique. Studer is just another example of this but one who nevertheless did some respectable work.
There were many flashes in the pan from Malibran on, but after Studer, Studio excects and people in recording labels have been a lot more aggressive with their casting and their insistence on producing the stars, rather than letting the audiences produce the stars. Thanks to Studer we have been inflicted names like Netrebko, Licitra, Bocelli, Paul Potts, Danielle Denise and the like.
Meanwhile true artists like Ekaterina Suirina, who can sing circles around the sopranos mentioned have no recordings and remain largely unknown to the general public.
How can you call Malibran a flash in the pan? She was at the height of her career when she died young, and we have no way of knowing what the rest of that career might have been if she had lived past the age of 30.
Suirina is sublime as Ilia in perhaps the finest DVD of Idomeneo. It’s available on Decca.
because i am an idiot. I meant Pasta. For some stupid reason i still get them confused.
Pasta makes less sense, Lindoro – for her time period she had a normal length career. Her voice was failing by the time she took on Norma at the age of 34 but she had been singing for a good 15 years before that. She was a supporting singer for Angelica Catalani when she was in her teens and was so mediocre she was hired by Catalani who didn’t want to be outshone. Pasta was the Cherubino to Catalani’s Susanna in London in 1817.
Also most women retired from performing at about or before the age of 40 in the early 19th century. In fact we have more singers continuing into their fifties and sixties today (Domingo may be over 70 and not owning up to it) than was normal 25 years ago.
I knew Studer quite well and I must say that her vocal decline was due to personal issues more than an idequate repertory or a vocal crisis per se.
Of course, Gilda, Lucia, Semiramide etc were not her best aces but throughout her career she was remarkable in many other roles.
I assume, as it often happens, that the recital was poorly announced and no press were made to publicise the event. I am not saying that I would have been a sold-out concert but I am sure that more than 20 would have bought tickets!
21 Do the words “Elena Suliotis” mean anything to you, Lindoro? Or, maybe a better parallel, “Francisco Araiza”? The latter was flawless and superb when I heard him in your namesake role and as Fenton in 1980 in Vienna, deeply compromised by the time of a mid-80s San Fran MANON, and totally destroyed by tackling Canio, Chenier and Lohengrin. That does not mean he didn’t know how to sing in 1980.
Did you ever hear Studer live? There were no support or vocal body problems in the Anna she sang at the Met. You may not like her recordings and of course it it’s true she should have stayed away from Lucia and Gilda but that does not justify your saying she could never sing, especially against the testimony of people that indeed actually did hear her “while it lasted”.
I have heard of all those people, unfortunately not all of them live.
Studer was a technical mess from the start. The quality of the voice and the artistry are a matter of personal taste. Her voice never had much body because she never learned how to properly support it. She might have satisfied a lot of people, I am not disputing that. I am expressing the fact that her technique was a mess, and there is plenty of evidence to support that.
Studer herself said that her technique was a mess in the early part of her career (in an Opera News interview from, I think, 2000). But she said she went out and found a proper coach after Solti gave her some frank advice.
A coach is not the same as a voice teacher. A coach will teach you the proper way to sing Mimi, or the difference between Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini ornamentation. Not eery coach will teach you how to trill, breath properly, sing on the breath and with proper resonance etc.
What can be left for Studer? Is there any way for her to go back to the drawing board? I read recently the story of Carol Neblett, whose voice was undone by alcoholism (by her own reports). She went back and rebuilt her voice well enough to be a voice teacher at a So Cal college. But the opera house offers dried up for good.
Studer is before my time, but the 20-ticket-recital is just sooo sad, I feel for her.
@Lindoro Almaviva : That’s your definition of coaching, based on the sometimes correct assumption of the coaches lack of knowledge of vocal technique. However, I could name at least 6 coaches who are better teachers than some well known pedagogues. Don’t forget that all human beings have vocal chords and can understand how they work, not just the blessed few.
I’m pretty much with the Krunoslav/CK/Regina crowd on Studer. I heard her Met debut as Micaela, I had heard a little about her but not too much. And she really was lovely. The Donna Anna at the Met was one of the best I’ve heard. At the time I didn’t have the impression at all that “this was too good to last”, she seemed to really know what she was doing and (for a time) was singing rep that seemed very suited to her.
I really still like some of her early recordings, the Salome, the Frau. And in the Muti Requiem, she does a wonderful swell on the High C in the Libera Me; it’s really an impressive moment.
Where I started to get concerned (yes, concerned, because I was quite a fan and thought she was one of the big hopes to lead the soprano ranks in the 90s) was when I heard her coloratura disc for EMI and then
the terrible Lucia in Philly. those were my hints that she was really on a bad track.
But for a while, she was pretty wonderful.
I gave my host for Thanksgiving dinner her SUSANNAH. An American opera for an American feast. Figured it couldn’t be all that bad. Hope I wasn’t wrong.
The Susannah IMO is bad. I’m sorry that was your gift to a host. Unless they are a major Studer fan, it’s not anything any collector would want.
Studer’s career was very short lived. By the time her hype was peaking, she was all ready having serious problems. I recall one particularly ghastly live performance recording from Vienna or Munich or some house on the other side of the pond (does anyone know where I’m referring to, I can’t recall the exact place – the recording is somewhat notorious) in which Studer finished a particularly ghastly attempt at an aria, and the audience begins to actually fight each other. It’s amazing to listen to. A small cabal starts shouting, “Bravo,” followed by infuriated and loud catcalls and boos. When the boos begin to die down, the bravos begin again. This goes on in such a manner for at least five minutes. It’s terrible and amazing to hear. She clearly had fans present, but her voice was in such obviously bad shape that the audience that actually had an ability to hear refused to allow the fans to greet such dreadful singing with praise.
I simply can’t recall a recording that I’ve listened to where she sounded competent. When she seemed to be the queen of the Met recordings, she was in terrible form. Its amazing they allowed her near a microphone. The Gilda in particular is just flat out embarrassing. She actually screams in several places throughout the recording. It’s astonishing to me that a producer would allow that to continue, and that not one single person, including anyone at the label or the conductor, stepped in to either stop her or replace her. She wasn’t that powerful or popular at the time, and she hadn’t sustained such a major career to warrant such treatment. How she even got to the point where she was asked to record one thing after another is a mystery to me.
I think the fact that she can’t get arrested in the business now and has completely disappeared from the vocal scene is testament to the fact that a lot of good will was spent on her in the recording studio and hiring her, and when she turned in performance after performance that was terrible, the business turned its back.
Comparisons to singers like Janice Watson and Suliotis aren’t really relevant because they were never as heavily promoted by major recording companies and houses as a huge star who was one of the most important singers of her generation. Most evidence I’ve heard of Studer points quite to the contrary.
you perhaps are revering to either the Aida from the Garden or the Trovatore Leonora from Wienerstaatsoper.
I think it was the Trovatore in Vienna. Thanks.
Studer’s Elisabeth and Elsa in London in the late 80s were rather fine. What happened afterwards was very sad and, as Theseus said, I believe it had quite a lot to do with her personal life.
Btw, anyone remember Mechthild Gessendorf? Not a world star but a serious artist…
This Gundryggia post (No. 54) on Mechthild Gessendorf (who was for a while married to Werner Hollweg) is interesting, to say the least:
http://parterre.com/2008/12/12/dante-missed-this-one/
Kammersängerin!
susan neves season:
http://susanneves.com/season.asp
she’s singing major roles elsewhere. at the met, she’s covering lina but will take over odabella later (from urmana, if i recall correctly, who’s in the A cast).
it reminds me of willard white, singing wotan elsewhere, but only ferrando at the met some time ago.
BTW: Mechthild Gessendorf was hardly a kid when she was singing very fine Marschallins, Elisabeths, Sieglindes et al. at the Met. She is one of the grisettes in the Karajan “Die Lustige Witwe” with Elizabeth Harwood and Teresa Stratas. That was reoorded in the mid-70’s or earlier. Gessendorf must be over sixty by now.
My question is what happened to the career of the very hyped and successful Alexandra von der Weth? She had a triumph in Henze’s “Boulevard Solitude” at the ROH, Covent Garden and debuted as Musetta at the Met for four performances in 2001. In 2003 sang a successful Violetta in Chicago. Looked her up on Operabase and she is the house soprano in Duisberg with occasional trips to Dusseldorf as Cleopatra, a Blumenmadchen and Giuletta in “Hoffmann”. Was ist das?
It’s very sad about the talented German coloratura. She suffered mental illness and after her first big American engagements – Chicago, Santa Fe – she was institutionalized for several years in Germany. Over the past two or three years I heard she had been released and was trying for a vocal come-back, but nothing has been heard since. She was a very odd personality, that much I saw off stage at SFE, jumped fully clothed into the swimming pool, fellow German Mme Schwanewilms tried to be of comfort to her over that summer, but van de Weth was pretty unstable. She had quite a voice – I heard her Lucia that summer several times, but she seemed uneasy on stage and was very awkward at bows. I’d love to know what others may have heard about her.
She was a few vouchers short of a pop-up toaster from the start as far as I have heard. I remember a Cosi at Glyndebourne where the rest of the cast looked as if they didn’t know what she was going to do next. She is a strange-looking woman, too, cross-eyed and a bit spooky. She sang a divine Daphne in concert at Covent Garden and she was mesmerising in Boulevard Solitude – Nikolaus Lehnhoff was a big fan and directed her in Lulu in her home house Düsseldorf. But with the big dates she seemed to get loopier and succumbed to acute Studeritis singing all different kinds of roles: Cleopatra, Donna Anna, Manon, Countess in Capriccio, Lucia and even Norma. It seems the latter was the killer and she lost confidence and started cancelling elsewhere: she was to have been the Anna in the first revival of Zambello’s Don Giovanni at Covent Garden and was replaced at the last minute by Nebs hot foot from her Salzburg triumph in the role. And she also pulled out of Christof Loy’s Lucia to be replaced by that Hungarian lady, much promoted by Muti and Peter Gelb at Sony, whose name I have momentarily forgotten – Andrea something, I think. Can anyone help my failing grey cells?
Andrea Rost?
Gualtier – the Duisburg and Düsseldorf opera companies are the constituents of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, a unique pooling of resources in Germany, I think. They basically have the same repertoire and same ensemble of singers and the two theatres mean they have to double-cast almost everything, so there is usually a decent substitute when someone is off sick. In the 1970s, they had some fantastic singers there: I saw the pre-Karajan Behrens as Marie, Rusalka, Nella in Gianni Schicchi, Helmwige and Katya Kabanova, Karl Ridderbusch in all his Ring parts, the pre-Chereau Peter Hofmann as Siegmund, Ursula Schroeder-Feinen was on the books – the loudest Sieglinde I have ever heard – and I saw Martha Mödl twice, as Herodias and the Cleaning Lady in Vec Makropoulos. They were the first German company in modern times to do all of the great Janacek operas and they had a lovely Rossini comedies cycle staged by Jean-Pierre Ponelle – I saw Ugo Benelli in Cenerentola, Comte Ory and Italiana in one or other of the theatres. Alberto Erede had been the music director in the 1960s and he was still revered there in the Italian rep.
it amazes me that anyone who’s taken the time to actually listen to the clip our hostess has placed at the top of the post can fail to admit that it’s some mighty fine singing. The voice is completely under control, the pitches are perfectly on center, and there’s obvious intelligence behind it. She’s singing words, not just notes.
I have to agree. If the marketing staff at DG (abetted by a greedy husband) hadn’t convinced her she was the second coming of Lilli Lehmann, we could have had ten or fifteen years of Elsa, Elisabeth and middle weight Strauss of that caliber. It was not a run of the mill voice, and she may have the distinction of being the one star that flamed out early because she tackled too many roles that were too light for her voice.
Not only DG – all the recording companies were after her. Remember that scary Queen of the Night on Phillips with Marriner and the Konstanze for Sony? I think she dumped the greedy husband a while back. She has two daughters named Elsa and Senta! They must be thanking their lucky stars their mother never sang Kundry,
Poor children. Petra Maria Schnitzer (ahum) and Peter Seiffert have two sons: Tristan and Florestan.
Speaking of washed-up sopranos, can we *believe* that the NY TIMES allowed Tony T. to gush all over Heidi Grunt Murphy, whose desssicated vocalism is like a lead weight in the otherwise strong current Met SUOR ANGELICA and who was terrible — TERRIBLE– vocally and unbearable dramatically in ORFEO. She hasn’t sung well in years.
Her Paris performances, to which TT airily alludes, were booed and excoriated in the French musical press.
It is depressing that the senior music critic of the leading American paper cannot begin to judge voices. And if that outer borough soi-disant”punk” poster here nurses any further doubts that the TIMES will go to any lengths to bolster the ticket selling needs of Mr. Gelb’s Met, this utterly pointless “Power Couple” article should put them to rest.
Ms. Grant Murphy sang prettily for a few years. Her subsequent career at the Met continues the nepotistic legacy of such immortals as Nina Morgana and Mary Ellen Pracht.
In addition to which, Kruno, HGM looks like a New Jersey housewife gone to seed, otherwise known as a Pig With Lipstick. She is not stageworthy.
Why oh why doesn’t the NYT replace Tony T. with a decent and reliable; he is shockingly misleading.
This is so true. It’s something like almost two decades that she’s been having problems. I have refused to listen since being forced to sit through her cracking every high note written for Sophie at least sixteen years ago.
Regina delle fate: the scariest voiced Queen of night committed to disc on a ‘premier release’ would have to be Luciana Serra’s attempt on the Colin Davis version, one also from Philips. It is a true classic sore thumb miscast.
As a slight sidetrack, who has noted Netrebko’s CD release called Souvenirs…..With Strauss she appears to ‘just make it’ but at the same time a listener could quite easily imagine her stressed and cross-eyed in the attempt. She does not appear to be a Strauss person.
Oh yes – I forgot Serra – she sounds like a tin-whistle on that. She was a terrific Olympia at Covent Garden, however, and a light Pagliughi-like Sonnambula a bit later. Better coloratura than Cotrubas at the time, but considerably less warmth.