Turandon’t
La Cieca listened to Sirius for a while tonight, but then her ears began to bleed. When the best singing comes from Margaret Juntwait… but I gotta tell ya, folks. Is there any way that the Tony (“Tut-Tut”) Tommasini-reviewed earlier performance of this mess could have been any worse? (La Cieca is interested in any and all documentation of that dread Night of the Living Licitra; you know the email address.)
The “Nessun Dorma” fad must be waning. Used to be when Pavarotti was doing that aria on the “Three Tenors” concerts that audiences couldn’t get enough of it, no matter how badly sung. I heard Vladimir Popov, Lando Bartolini and Kristjian Johannsson get ovations for very mediocre renditions.
See there were bad tenors before Licitra!
@Monica:
I don’t know which is the most scandalous: the soprano, the tenor or the conductor. I would put them in this order:
1. Conductor – If the singers are struggling, why go so slow?
2. Soprano – Bad
3. Tenor – OMG. He has been resting for 5 minutes, yet he is choking when he starts singing? He finally gets the C, but what a white, ugly sound.
Wow, I just listened to it, and I couldn’t agree more. That wasn’t even the kind of filth one can enjoy…it was just painful (not to mention soooo slow that the pain seemed endless). I thought Guleghina was the punchline until the tenor came in…
/facepalm
The London Times has announced that the Met invited Andris Nelsons back to conduct Queen of Spades next year. I am sure the orchestra and music staff are overjoyed.
The choice of conductors there goes from bad to worse. TT should be ashamed of himself for helping this one’s status rise.
I stopped listening to Turandot after the riddle scene. I am not a Ghoula fan (never have been), but got a kick out of her In questa reggia. I didn’t expect much- so enjoyed it in a campy mode. The noive!
The tenor’s performance was just awful.
I thought the Liu was okay.
BTW, I attended the dress rehearsal for second cast for Tosca at LOC yesterday. The new cast is: Urmana, Berti and Gallo. Urmana sang well, but was totally boring as Tosca. No acting at all. Terrible direction. I would have preferred Milanov trying to act up a storm to that big nothing.
Berti sang very well–a big voice especially at the top, but, again, little stage presence.
Baritone was yuch.
I learned Turandot in the 50′s from the “London” recording with Borkh, Del Monaco and Tebaldi and was there on opening night for the Nilsson, Corelli perfpormance at the Met.
But, like a few others, I don’t like the opera–too many choruses; too much crap; not enough real drama.
I do, however, like the arias.
Loved the soprano arias as sung by Callas on her old Puccini album.
The big tell tale when singers are in difficulty and a Turandot conductor really KNOWS IT: is usually in the progression of the Riddle scene. As the questions and answers continue, that brooding, foreboding ‘stroking expectancy in the strings’ starts to get very much slower and slower, like the orchestra was just put on fast acting heavy tranquilizers or instantly asked to wade through 12 foot of water. A threatening case of ‘ Oh! shit, what’s the next sound -the Turandot or the Calaf are going to start coming out with, next????’ Wait for it…………..arrrrh!
IT was reputed that Callas did something like 18 takes of “In questra Reggia’ for the EMI complete recording.
Then again, ditto…Sutherland with some of the stuff, attempted on her ‘Sutherland sings Wagner’ recording.
If one listens to Sutherland’s complete Turandot, just immediately after the Calaf has successfully solves the second Riddle, her vocal re-entrance…..(documented on that recording)…Sutherland came within a whisker of doing real physical permanent damage to her voice.
I can only imagine the expression on her face at the microphones, being momentarily cross-eyed and dumbstruck.
Is it co-incidence , a time when her voice darkened and vocal stepping down a semi -tone here, an further lower adjustment there….all started? Try the Maria Sturda recording from around the same period, for evidence of that. Until we got to those complete travesties…. those career final farewell performances in ‘Les Huge-nuts’.
Have you heard an example of the extended final scene done by Puccini’s orchestrator Alfano? I find it tends to help pull all the rest of the opera finally together. The Berio completion on the other hand jars – a foreign sound as if Puccini went mad all of a sudden, and went directly to full ‘Berg Lulu’ country.
The Berio version is “interesting” but it’s far too much about Berio and not enough about Puccini. The Canadian Opera Company was going to do the Berio ending a few years ago and then, Richard Bradshaw changed his mind, almost certainly because he heard how the Berio ending sounded.
Puccini’s swan-song ‘opera joke’:
His opera Turandot has people having their heads chopped off.Puccini went one step better. Cruelly, chopping off and killing its singers’ voices instead.
I was in the Family Circle last and I thought I was going deaf. I could see Calaf, but I could not hear him.
Anyone else notice that he whiffed his first swing at the gong?
I too thought I was going deaf or the orchestra had decided for some strange reason to play really really loudly.
And somehow the miss of the gong seemed fitting…
BBC Radio 3 is currently playing the young Emma Kirkby piping her way meaninglessly through a Handel cantata. No reflection on Handel, but I think I would rather listen to Guleghina shrieking and gasping through Turandot. At least she is not completely predictable.
The Vicar is going to get you for that (and I so completely agree with you).
I suspect she is not to the Vicar’s taste either, but thank you for your support!
This is for Harry. Seems like I’ve unwittingly unleashed a storm against me. Well, by using the plural in ‘travesties’ I believe I quite clearly stated that I was hinting at the other Decca recordings from 1958 onwards vs that Erede Turandot, which was made in 1955 before Culshaw recorded any studio operas, and still sounds perfectly natural and enjoyable.
Culshaw and Legge were perhaps the most influential studio producers of the 1950s. Culshaw of course recorded with decca into the late 60s. I have no qualms about re-enacting stage movements in audio terms. For example, the Olof Otello in Stereo from 1954 (!) makes no sense in the handkerchief trio becsue Otello and Cassio are on one side, the Iago on another. It should be, of course, Iago and Cassio grouped together against Otello. So Culshaw had inserted ‘theatre sense’ into studio recordings. The problem I have with Culshaw is quite different. I have read his ‘Ring Resounding’ a few times and lately with growing exasperation and even hostility. His approach to opera is evidently very different from mine, an approach which of course produced huge commercial successes for Decca because it fired the imagination of many people. He treats the whole Ring cycle as some kind of Lord of the Rings soundtrack, celebrating the tone painting and the orchestral effects but disregarding the larger flow and the human message. HE treated the main characters as pawns on a huge checkerboard and the leading singers were encouraged either to ‘melt’ in the background or exaggerate their portrayal to the point of eccentricity. Stolze still pisses me off as Solti’s Mime, and is wonderfully articulate and pointed on the Karajan Ring. Culshaw just picked the best voices and the most notable interpreters of the respective roles that he could find, but really tried to erase their personalities. I have to find the proper quote but he says in the book that he had meant to produce atmosphere and scenery for the home audience. Well, I think that that is only part of Wagners purport and style. When you disregard the human interrelationship between the characters and the individuality of the performers, you lose the essential Wagner element.
I don’t mind singers moving across the stereo spectrum, but I miss the focus on the singers, and honestly, some of the button tweaks were overdone. The Karajan 1960 Aida is a very good example. Culshaw deliberately changed the reverbration in the “Ritorna vincitor” section to create a feeling of suffocation and loneliness inside a deserted hall. Well, he forgot one important thing: that Verdi himself took care to provide that atmosphere by changing the orchestral fabric. So the scene works perfectly well withought messing around with the acoustic. It is overdone and SOUNDS overdone, and that’s exactly the point about my disliking the Culshaw aesthetic. The Karajan Otello (from 1959) sounds absolutely vulgar, the orchestral bass recorded in such a way as to be disqualified as musical sounds. Yes, the beginning IS a storm but Toscanini, Serafin, Levine and Chung and their respective producers managed to create true dramatic / scenic frisson AND retain the beauty and quality of the playing.
And as for the Karajan Turandot, well I really don’t like AND don’t listen to the opera after the Mandarin scene, roughly mid-term, so I really don’t mind about Ricciarelli. Of course she’s bad, who cares, the music is not that great either.
Mme C/F: Your knowledge of and exacting standards for opera make for wonderful reading. I always learn something from your posts. Thank you.
Thank YOU! Beliebte Kashania. Gruessen aus Tel Aviv
)
I agree that the Decca Von
Karajan Aida went a bit ‘hot on the recording throttle’ in places. The best Mime on record is certainly not Gerhard Stolze anyway….its Peter Schreier on the Janowski Ring. As for the Decca V/K Otello, the Act 1 sword fight before Otello breaks it up : is masterly in its sonic lay out. As for its orchestral bass sounds, perhaps it depends on how well one’s equipment can reproduce it. Mine easily fully reproduces down to the very lowest bass limits ( 25 to 30hz) without any distress or signs of sound attenuation.
If you want horrid over-kill with orchestral bass, try V.K’s EMI Lohengrin.(from V.K’s own attempts trying to be a Culshaw – the engineer ). Von/K conducting ‘ with his finishing touches ‘from the recording console. Like he did, with so many of his later recordings, processing them on a large release schedule – factory conveyor belt.
Personally I do not see any real individual human relationships as such, in the Ring . They are mythical figures coupled to musical themes and motifs : used to convey and express certain ideas. While people bemoan the shortages of Brunnhildes’ today, it is good to remember the Solti Gotterdammerung in its cast roster had actually 4 in the cast!
Agree about Schreier, also his Loge (albeit VERY lyrical) is magisterial. Anyway the Janowski Ring is my studio Ring of choice, yes Altmeyer taken into account. I love the orchestral approach and the chamber textures (much more so than the Karajan, albeit advertised as such!)
Agree about the terrible Karajan studio sonics. Such a pity they let him get away with it.
For me the most interesting aspect of the RIng is the human / humane angle – even the Rheinmaidens – Alberich scene has its basic human implications. Wagner explores the plethora of human relationships, brotherhood (Fasolt / Fafner, SIegmund / Sieglinde, Gutrune / Gunther), fatherhood, matrimony. That’s my own preferred focus, and there are many. Solti is infinitely more attracted to the brutality and tonal painting, so be it. I just don’t feel compelled to listen to it anymore.
BTW I have to say that the newest 24 bit remastering did wonders for most of SOlti’s Ring, which sounded rather crude on its earliest CD format (I also have the original LPs). The Siegfried 1st act, of which I had a totally distorted mental picture, sounded glowing and balanced on this newest incarnation. Still, the Walkuere engineering is pretty bad IMHO.
And what a great Mozart and Lieder singer Schreier was.
Poor Mr. Webb was so relieved to finish Act I that he proudly swung at that gong blindly…and MISSED. It was a sad end to a sad act.
Well, whether or not they’re going to be any good, and I believe they will be, I’ll be at both ROSENKAVALIER and TURANDOT tomorrow. If anyone else is going and gets bored durring the second intermission, come and find me at the giftshop. Look for the heavyset guy with glasses in a suit. Or is there some usual water cooler that all you locals gather around at intermission I don’t know about?
Baritenor, I envy your schedule tomorrow. Have a great time!