parterre box

92 comments

• Sanford says:

  Well, we all know how I feel about Verdi. This however, brings me back to “Penetrating Wagner’s Ring”, because this is just fucked up.

  on December 7, 2009 at 10:00 PM
• Quanto Painy Fakor says:

  on December 7, 2009 at 10:00 PM
• Lindoro Almaviva says:

  This woman sounds more like a bright voiced Musetta than anything else. maybe it’s the brightness of the voice what affords her to sing Turandot, but a lady Macbeth she ain’t.

  Do we get the cabaletta as well? Pretty please with a lot of sugar on top? Make that imported organic sugar cane sugar…

  on December 8, 2009 at 12:33 AM
• Krunoslav says:

  javier again believes what he wants to believe. Lots of us saw Sutherland live.

  Sorry, I saw Sutherland “act” Lucia, Marie, Anna Bolena and Elvira`Walton– she was capable of the odd convincing phrase (in LUCIA it was “Alfin son tua, alfin sei mia” ) but had only a few gestures and expressions and did not really act with the voice. Elettra was way outside her dramatic capacities onstage.

  She could be decently deployed, as in in that LUCREZIA. But an actress, even a ‘vocal actress”, she wasn’t.

  on December 8, 2009 at 2:27 AM
  • javier says:

    No! Damn you for being so old that you actually saw her in all those roles.

    on December 8, 2009 at 2:45 AM
    • Regina delle fate says:

      I am old enough to have seen her as Lucia, Esclarmonde – a dismally boring opera and production – Maria Stuarda, Leonora in Il trovatore – not her best – and Anna Bolena, but some posters here will have seen her in many more roles. She sang a much wider rep at the Met – including Donna Anna and Konstanze – than she did at Covent Garden in her glory years. Javier – she wasn’t a great actress, but when she sang Lucia at nearly 60 with Bergonzi even older, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was the third role I heard her sing and by a long way the best. The whole house went bananas at the end of the Mad Scene – partly in disbelief that she could still her cheval de bataille so well, more than 25 years after her debut in the part.

      on December 8, 2009 at 7:25 AM
      • manou says:

        Oh my God – I was there too (Lucia with Bergonzi – combined age over 120). It rained daffodils…….and I am OLD too!

        on December 8, 2009 at 7:39 AM
      • Krunoslav says:

        Dame Joan in fact refused to sing Konstanze at the Met because they wouldn’t also let her sing the ghastly bus-and-truck Gamley-orchestrated MERRY WIDOW she and Bonynge we’re dragging around ; also I believe she asked for transpositions. And that’s how Edda Moser, sadly past her wonderful peak, ended up doing two seasons of ENTFUEHRUNG at the Met.

        on December 8, 2009 at 8:33 AM
  • rommie says:

    i concur with javier. lol. peace yo. i wish i could go back in time and see this not-singing-actress.

    on December 8, 2009 at 3:20 AM
  • rapt says:

    Re Sutherland’s vocal as opposed to visual acting, though I’m not sure she could have encompassed Lady Macbeth, I think she does a persuasive job conveying anger in the way-way-past-her-prime recording of Athalia, esp. in the recitatives; a decent job in the prime Turandot, also.

    on December 8, 2009 at 9:29 AM
  • richard says:

    Krunoslav, my memory of the Sutherland/Met flap in the later 70s (based on heresay) was just a bit different.

    As I remember, Sutherland had agreed to a contract
    with new productions (for the Met, anyway) of Abduction, Widow, and Semiramide.

    She then decided that Abduction really no longer suited her, transpositions of not, and wanted to drop
    that opera but keep the Merry Widow as her next role at the Met.

    The Met wasn’t that happy with that and took the position no abduction/ no widow.

    And so Sutherland had a 5 year gap in her Met career, for me it was the dividing line. Being EVEN OLDER than some of the other commentors , I saw her quite a bit from 1970 on and found her 1980s work far less spontaneous and far more calculated than her performances from earlier times.

    I was really disappointed that the proposed Sutherland/Horne Semiramide was a victim of this contract dispute , one of my favorite of all recordings is Sutherland’s early Bel Raggio.

    Alas, when I finally heard her perform the aria at the MEt Centennial , she growled her way through it, I’m guessing she lowered it to be able to sing
    a high D or Eflat at the end, but her voice was very fixed and stringy sounding.

    on December 8, 2009 at 9:53 AM
    • Krunoslav says:

      Yes, that sounds like a more likely sequence.

      She trotted the WIDOW out in San Francisco and San Diego (with some former “Rinso White” ad singer as Adele) to the delight of some.

      Just think, a Bonynge-helomed Met SEMIRAMIDE in the 70s might have brought New Yorkers closer acquaintance with John Serge, Anson Austin and/or Henri Wilden!

      on December 8, 2009 at 9:59 AM
      • CarlottaBorromeo says:

        The Bonynge/Gamley WIDOW was a bit of a mess but I don’t remember that they actually imported any characters from FLEDERMAUS or COMTE ORY into it!

        on December 8, 2009 at 10:16 AM
    • kashania says:

      Indeed, her Met Centennial performance was marred by having the whole aria transposed to a key that sat rather low in her voice just so she could interpolate a high note at the end.

      on December 8, 2009 at 12:46 PM
• Camille says:

  RE Sutherland as actress –

  One of the most disillusioning and visceral jolts I have ever received in theatre was my first experience of Sutherland live, as Amina, in finest vocal estate.

  The woman could NOT act.
  What did it matter, she could sing like one in a million.

  From then on, I just bought recordings. Then I went on to Callas and then I heard LEONIE! Leonie, with one phrase “Ein fremder Mann” walks on and you know you are in the presence of a hurricane.

  I saw Sutherland 20 years later in Anna Bolena. Still couldn’t act but this time she had a number of cape-flinging gestures and haughty postures that passed as stage presence, etc.

  What did it matter? She had a Trill to KILL!

  on December 8, 2009 at 3:24 AM
  • Regina delle fate says:

    Haha Camille – brilliantly put. And oh, so true. She was a legend and her audio recordings, especially those up to the mid 1970s, will preserve the best of her. I always feel the videos are a disappointment. Most are filmed with third-rate Aussies – now I’m beginning to sound like a Brit version of the Vicar of JW – in the supporting casts at the Sydney Opera House. Who is that Pollione in Quanto’s Norma clip? Did Joan sing Elettra at the Met? I’m sure Pauline Tinsley’s Elettra must have been better than Sutherland’s and, unlike, the Vicar, I mean that. It was Tinsley who encouraged Sutherland to do the recording of Turandot when they were singing in Amsterdam – Tinsley as Aida, Sutherland as Rodelinda – in the early 1970s. Joan asked Tinsley, who had sung Turandot, if she thought she, Joan, could sing the role and Tinsley said something to the effect of “You have a big voice and a good top C, so sure you can!”. I still think it’s one of Joan’s best characterisations on disc and she sounds younger than Montsy’s rather matronly Liu.

    on December 8, 2009 at 7:36 AM
    • manou says:

      Seems that the Pollione is Ronald Stevens (who he?). If you double click on the YouTube clips embedded here, you are re-directed to YouTube with more info.

      on December 8, 2009 at 7:43 AM
    • javier says:

      No, Sutherland sang Elettra in Australia, and not with third rate Aussies, they were all very good. Gosh, Sutherland herself is Australian. Who the heck of Pauline Tinsley?

      on December 8, 2009 at 9:39 AM
      • Lindoro Almaviva says:

        The Ilia on that performance was Leona Mitchell, so the whole 3rd rate Australians comments does not apply here.

        on December 8, 2009 at 1:33 PM
    • richard says:

      RDF, I’m not nuts over most of Sutherland’s staged opera video’s , most are later than I would like and she devotes a lot of attention to keeping her voice steady in sustained passages, as I noted, it sounds very “fixed” and a bit stringy. And there isn’t much spontenaity .

      But there are plenty of clips of arias from her earlier in her palmy days, I seem to have 2 or 3 DVDs worth, mostly from television shows (Ed Sullivan in the US, some stuff that appears to be from the UK, etc.) And she mostly sounds wonderful in these, her voice much richer and fuller than it sounded later. Great stuff! All kinds of arias, Lakme, Verdi arias, bel canto stuff.

      on December 8, 2009 at 11:17 AM
    • Camille says:

      Oh, that Turandot of Sutherland’s is SPLENDID! It’s he proper high-lying voice, not a dramatic soprano struggling and tugging her way to the top. What a shame she didn’t take it on the road! She admits she was tempted to, in her autobio; perhaps she sang so well because it was Mehta conducting her?

      Does anyone know how Dame Joan is doing after that dreadful fall breaking both gams, last year. A very serious thing at her age!

      As well, did anyone witness the very recent Bonynge conducted Norma in Vancouver (with Papian)??

      on December 8, 2009 at 12:01 PM
• Krunoslav says:

  Does Miss Leona Mitchell (no Aussie she) “put the acting in” as Ilia?

  on December 8, 2009 at 9:54 AM
• Krunoslav says:

  Anyway, javier, Guleghina, though not undervoiced for the part like this deluded Volpe “discovery”, was largely inadequate as Lady Macbeth, both techinically and dramatically. Maybe as you age your taste will improve! :}

  on December 8, 2009 at 10:16 AM
• Krunoslav says:

  (Oops…)

  You mean someone could tell the DIFFERENCE between the Sutherland/Bonynge FLEDERMAUS and the Sutherland/Bonynge WIDOW???

  Well, as javier has sagely observed all of this took place in the Pleistocene so how can one recall the exact details?

  on December 8, 2009 at 10:23 AM
• Harry says:

  I was trying to put my finger on exactly ‘what’ represented acting: according to Joan Sutherland. I had the exact vision in my head but Camille quickly referred to ‘her cape swinging and haughty gestures’. That in a nut-shell : rates as ‘ A perfect assessment!

  Plus , can I add : that tossed back head jerk, with the big jaw protruding like a threatening missile of anger. Like: one was always almost waiting and expecting for her, to aim a good spit at some character! Sorry, but I cannot describe it any other way.

  All those old videos done with the Australian Opera were ‘Joan vehicle – fests’ as she and her conductor hubbie, progressively transposed down and down the key signatures with the years. The support cast was considered immaterial to the anticipated success of such productions….since Joan was topping the cast list..It was the Joan & Richard show, folks. In reflection it helped to send the Australian Opera backwards in the long run, in terms of ‘repertoire distortion’……bel canto opera was then ‘considered everything’.

  I look back remembering those productions -just cringing – thinking about so many embarrassing and indelible moments one can recall, that those productions contained. Joan doing a lousy impression in Lakme, Il Trovatore, Les Hugenots, Ardriana Lecouverer etc. Those operas, having head costuming with plumes etc for her: added that ‘stiff head back Nefertiti self caricature’ to her head profile gestures, were a scream . When one thinks of that rat shit standard of singing, then go back to the early days, when she dazzled with those then amazing vocal acrobatics, one finds there is no comparison. Diction progressively went out the door,and the voice started irritating , having lost its fullness – as she tried to keep being that same once sensational coloratura soprano of old. No doubt at Bonygne’s insistence since she was his meal ticket and claim to fame, by association.

  on December 8, 2009 at 12:16 PM
• Harry says:

  It was said to me by an insider that Bonygne kicked ‘a fuss’ during the Turandot taping by Decca. Apparently Bonygne was worried that Metha was going to get a real ‘a balls and all’ performance out of her….asking of Sutherland, a type of presentation that Bonygne personally disapproved of.
  Luckily Metha did so.
  The story went – that, as for Bonygne, though he had considerable clout with Decca- he was politely told ….”Don’t interfere or come back here, till this recording project is completed”.

  Since Sutherland stopped recording, Bonygne

  on December 8, 2009 at 12:41 PM