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.
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.
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.
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.
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 think it was the Trovatore in Vienna. Thanks.
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.
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/
Not very investigative in their approach. Interviews with stars, for instance, often read like press releases!
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?
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.
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,
Andrea Rost?
Poor children. Petra Maria Schnitzer (ahum) and Peter Seiffert have two sons: Tristan and Florestan.
Kammersängerin!
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.
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.
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.