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.
My goodness, but that Cornetti is such an… ordinary artist.
I was just not impressed. Except for the Cb.
Kaufmann’s voice is SO dark it sounds like he’s singing Posa and Keenlyside is singing Don Carlo. And those falsetto high notes. I know he’s gorgeous but is that all that explains the attention he gets? I just don’t get it.
Jonas or Simon?
As far as Jonas is concerned, I only have to say this: Your voice just doesn’t develop from Rossini and Mozart to Lohengrin and Walter in 10 years. We are the same age and trust me, the voice does not mature like that.
There is a difference here between “your” voice, “his” voice and “the” voice. Making pronouncements about how “the voice” does nor doesn’t do whatever is pretty much useless. Kaufmann is 40 and he’s been singing professionally for 15 years now.
Sometimes La Cieca wonders how anybody sings anything, so many people are lying in wait to second-guess them. A young singer tries a big role, and everyone shouts, “Too soon!” But if a young singer tries a lighter, more accessible part, then 10 years down the road someone’s going to be waiting with, “If you ever sang Mozart, you’ll never sing anything else.”
Can we maybe — just for five minutes, even — set aside the note-by-note pedagological analysis and try to hear what the singer is trying to express?
I’d give Kaufman 5 minutes to express himself to me. If only he’d come to San Francisco… As for today, my connection to Polish Radio keeps cutting out, except when the baritones are singing. And I caught a snippet of a lady- maybe Cornetti?
Sure Cieca, give him 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 years, you call it.
While we wait those 5 let us remember that we also wanted to give 5 minutes to Villazon to hear what he wanted to do, same thing with Carreras, Alvarez, Licitra, Cura, Susan Dunn, and many more.
let me know when the 5 are up.
While we also wait, let us also remember that “the voice” comes from 2 folds that are body parts and that unless something drastic happens to your body, they are not going to drastically change in a decade or less. My voice, your voice, anyone’s voice is what it is and the only way for it to change is to either let it mature naturally or change your vocal chords all together.
Now I have not heard about vocal chord transplant, so I will presume that what we hear from Jonas’ voice is the sound from his own vocal chords, the same ones that 10-12 years ago made him a Rossini and Mozart tenor of the first order, you know, the kind we’ve wanted to have since 9/17/66.
Now, given the fact that we have established that short of a complete body change (and Jonas has had the same hot-assed body since he was 25) 10 years are not a long time for the vocal chords to mature the way they seem to have; I will have to guess that there is some kind of manipulation going on to make the sound darker, richer and appear to be bigger. Where have we heard that before? I could swear that we have had that before… And what was the result?
Given the state of knowledge (or the lack thereof) in modern audiences, I think we should be a little more picky in who we choose to put in a pedestal. Given the amount of manipulation that we are subjected to by the corporations that have a stake of these artist’s recordings and appearances to sell out and sell well, I think we also have a responsibility not to appear uninformed (not my intention to call anyone dumb, or insult anyone, please do not be insulted, please) so at one point or another, these same corporations realize that we are a little more discerning that what they give us credit for and actually use their money in putting out talent worth adoring.
Are my 5 minutes up?
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.
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.
Can someone explain me what do they see in this woman?
which one?
Poplavskaya. I just didn’t this she was that good in the aria. As I was saying in the chat room, doesn’t people listen to Lorengar anymore?
Lorengar is dead.
And while she was alive, the queens never stopped bitching about her “annoying” fast vibrato.
And yet, she was so much better than many of the singers we so idolize these days.
Lorengar recorded a wonderful Traviata with Giacamo Aragall.
This is painful. Jonas is sounding pushed and Popy just plain overparted.
What is Lindoro’s issue??? As for his argument, one tenor friend of mine sang Rossini/Mozart/light Puccini. He heard bigger stuff – Bacchus, Verdi – in his voice – but management held him back. He had a respectable career but, in his 40s, followed his own gut. Now he’s singing A+houses – Manrico, Radames, Calaf – to major acclaim. Yes, Lindoro, it happens, especially singers (like Kaufmann) who don’t rush their careers. A decade ago, Kaufmann was singing Alfredo. Unlike Villazon, he hasn’t exactly rushed his career.
You said it, his voice was made for bigger things and he was held back…
About a decade ago, I heard Kaufman as Alfredo and his voice seemed to be at the limit. How do you explain the Walters and the Lohengrins.
As you said, one’s voice was made for the rep, the other…
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’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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
As Madame Harshaw used to say: “Technique becomes the art.”
And in Madame Harshaw’s case, we’re still waiting for that to happen.
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.
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!
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?
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.