The Spanish Panic
The votes are in, and the cher public have chosen wisely, La Cieca thinks. Our listening/chatting experience at 1:00 this afternoon will be Verdi’s Don Carlos (or, as it should be called in this context, Don Carlo) in a performance recorded earlier this year at Covent Garden.
To hear the performance, tune in online to Polskie Radio about 1:00 pm EST; according to Operacast the performance proper will begin at 1:05.
Don Carlos: Jonas Kaufmann; Elisabeth de Valois: Marina Poplovskaya; Rodrigo: Simon Keenlyside; Philip II: Ferruccio Furlanetto; Princess Eboli: Marianne Cornetti; Grand Inquisitor: John Tomlinson; Tebaldo: Pumeza Matshikiza; Carlos V: Robert Lloyd; Count of Lerma: Robert Anthony Gardiner; Voice from Heaven: Eri Nakamura. Conductor: Semyon Bychkov
- The vocal score
- The libretto: Italian; English.
I have to agree with Lindoro (I did not catch the broadcast, but heard the youtube excerpts) in all accounts. I also heard his Alfredo and thought he was at times stretching his limits, though in his defense it doesn’t seem that he gives a damn if the orchestra is covering him for 90% of the opera(seems the audience also don’t seem to mind, as long as he is there looking beautifull. For that I have porn, thank you).
His voice is overdarkened, overcovered and sounds unsupported and unfocused in this Don Carlo. His piano singing is a sort of “pop-music like” falsetto crooning, and his forte is a bellowed out scream with lots of cover to hide it up. Also he doesnt seem to sing more than mezzo forte anywhere lower than an G, therefore it seems like he undersings most of the time, then screams the high notes.
Try Armiliato if you want a good sounding Don Carlo today. He is drop-dead-ugly, but he delivers much more.
I disagree though that the main problem is not in “what” he is singing, but “how” he is singing. He may well be a bigger voice than the Mozart voice from 10 years ago (he sounded extremely tight and with vowels way too open back then and had intonation problems, particularly chronic flatness) – but two wrongs do not a right make. He seems to have tried going in the oposite direction: unfocusing the voice and pushing air through extremely covered vowels.
Compare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXEjZqYhgQQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUms5I_bYtY
His vocal approach is fundamentally changed – even when he sings the same rep.
Clear as a bell…
I’ve seen “crooning” used several times on this site. Could someone explain what this means in terms of opera? When I think of crooning, I still think of the early Bing Crosby. Thank you.
conoscisti???
Narrowed the vowel to avoid cracking on the low note.
Same reason Regina Resnik sang “You must investigeet Baghdad!”
Or La Cieca stills sings “Autumn in New York / Is often mingled with peen.”
Didn’t hear a note of the Don Carlo broadcast, but this seems pretty convincing/damning evidence — it sure doesn’t SOUND like natural maturing of the voice. Anyway, I just hope we don’t get another collateral damage casualty out of all this, I like the guy and would like to see him do well.
Please don’t get me wrong, I adored Dame Gwyneth, on pitch or off, loved her Desdemona, saw her Rosenkavalier in Munich with Popp and Fassbaender.
But…why not just go into chest voice for this? Tebaldi sure as hell did.
Biserka Cvejic (love that name)was interviewed on a sirius intermission around the time of the premier of the new Macbeth. Zeljko Lucic was her prize student back in Serbia.
It’s from a recital of Verdi and Puccini arias in the 1980s. She’s holding yellow dahlias on the cover.
Take it from one who has had to put up with her Covent Garden residency ever since she was a young artist in whom they trusted way too much – it doesn’t get any better. I don’t think La Cieca’s assessment of admirable intentions is quite right, I think La Cieca had it right simply where she said the girl has yet to find her natural voice. And of course, she never will, because she gets by in this fashion and is now probably booked solid and won’t have the time or inclination to go back to first principles and allow her instrument to blossom as it should.
Ganassi was great as Eboli when the production was new. Whilst it did seem as if the role was the biggest she could possibly tackle, with no suggestion that she could move into Amneris or Azucena territory, it nevertheless didn’t seem too big for her. You’ll get an accurate veil song which will leave no room for the moaning above regarding this current performance, and she’ll be compelling and exciting in the rest of the role. Voices do develop, and Ganassi’s certainly has more size, line, lustre and even technical facility than it had when she first appeared at the Royal Opera as Angelina etc.
Lindoro, Kaufmann has explained in some considerable detail how he has changed fach from Mozart/Rossini to heavier roles. He maintains that he was singing in an unhealthy way when he was younger, and that improved technique and production led to the shift in balance and increased tonal richness of his voice.
I find it strange that you don’t take La Cieca’s point about your voice and his voice being entirely different things. To say that all voices develop roughly evenly over the same period is patently nonsense. Apart from all your own physical and environmental factors, it depends how much you use it too. And on top of all that is the fact that many singers manage a respectable career without ever getting the full potential out of their voices – not everybody gets the help they need to really release it fully.
BTW Lindoro: What happened to your Turandot review?
He sounds like two different tenors. The voice is clear in the early excerpt and it’s husky in the recent one. This is what happens when a voice is forced beyond its natural limits.
Cocky, I have never said anything about out voices, just that we are the same age.
Then, I am going to refer you to the post where does a comparison.
VERY lightweight!
Enzo, it’s not just the “forcing beyond natural limits,” the JK problem, that I hear, is similar to G. Filianote — the position of the voice is too far back. Such compromises the top and makes adequate support less likely. One of F’s teachers told me that is his main problem and he wont work on it. I have to wonder the same about K. Germans, as vocalists, do not so much go for beauty of sound — not as much as Italians, Americans or sometimes even French. I do not know K’s pedagogic background but I’d like to. Anyone know who taught him his technique?
He’s a talented artist – but clearly there are problems, some alas that remind me of Peter Hoffmann. On “croon” – it’s a near-falsetto, and the great problem is it tires the cords because it is not entirely supported and is a ‘held’ tone – in the throat. You can’t last that way. A supported pp. or even p. in the tenor voice is very hard, but when you hear it, it can be wunderbar!
I take issue with the word “natural” particularly when it is applied to the tenor voice, which is in most cases not natural at all, but instead a construct. Some tenors seem to have an easier time of it doing the construction work, but that shouldn’t fool us into thinking that every potential tenor, if he makes the same set of adjustments, is going to produce this ideal of a “tenor sound.”
The clips suggests Kaufmann singing one way back then and another way now, but I don’t think we necessarily can draw the conclusion that “then” was right and “now” is wrong. It may be he is going to settle into an untraditional technique and sing for as long as it will work for him. Or he may continue to make adjustments as necessary, or, worst case scenario, he may “crash and burn,” as Lindoro puts it, with only 10 or 15 years of interesting, vital performances on the world’s most important opera stages to show for it.
I think excessive vocal technique talk is destructive to art; the only point of technique, after all, is to serve as a vehicle for expression. A lot of these singers that some around here are so quick to criticize as “lazy” or “unwilling to study” are in fact busy actually singing.
Thanks for the croon explanation. Seems like an easy way to tire out before the end of a show. Why would a singer do this? Is it just easier in the short term?
Tut, Cieca tut!! “excessive vocal technique talk?” Is there such a thing? As Madame Harshaw used to say: “Technique becomes the art.” And she meant all the ambiguity in that comment; worth thought. I am not sure the tenor voice is a ” construct.” The biology/physiology is surely natural, and if it can be taught and enhanced using the rules of physiological health, then surely it is natural. Neither Fil. nor Kauf.sounds “natural” to me; both are effortful, edgy, tonally often ‘dry,’ and sound very manufactured, but not so as to provide ease. Tucker was a manufactured voice, but were you ever uncomfortable he would not make it? No! When “constructed” works it’s because the manufacture is well done and based in nature. End of lesson for today. Now, hymn 123, all verses.
I’d rather listen to Calleja and Beczala than Kaufmann, but Calleja has a pronounced vibrato and Beczala tends to force. They all have problems! Singing must be terribly difficult.
As Madame Harshaw used to say: “Technique becomes the art.”
And in Madame Harshaw’s case, we’re still waiting for that to happen.