Vicar’s delight
“To Kettles Yard in Cambridge for the premiere of a new song cycle by Richard Baker, performed by baritone Christopher Purves and pianist Andrew West. Having started off in Harvey and the Wallbangers, Purves is now a rising British operatic star: he will sing Beckmesser at Welsh National Opera alongside Bryn Terfel in Die Meistersinger this summer and, he told me, will make his La Scala debut in Peter Grimes in a couple of years. One day this man will make a wonderful Wotan.” [The Guardian]
A diary item. And?
….a diary item by a general arts journalists who knows bugger all about opera, but cheerleads like a fan for her favourites. Purves is too intelligent to take her dumb advice re Wotan.
Well, Peter Hoffmann started as a singer in a rock band; Rene Kollo began as a drummer in jazz clubs and a pop recording artist. Kollo had the longer career with a better technique.
I wish Mr. Purves well. It’s a very long road from being a Wallbanger to singing Wotan.
PAINFUK but great dress:
I meant to type painful!! But the typo isactually better.
Is anyone ever going to teach this girl to NOT SING IN THE THROAT? I mean it’s been 10 years. Love the voice but come on technically it is so pinched and throaty.
This as well should be tagged GAY GAY GAY!
I love Mika with all my heart. He carries on in the great tradition of Freddy Mercury, but this is the most random thing I’ve ever heard. Gimme Montsy cooing “Barcelona” any day.
Was Dani on playback there? Horrible top C. But she does look good.
From the recorded evidence, this young Briton will carry on the traditions of Thomas Helmsley and Derek Hammond-Stroud. None better!
Isn’t that Meatloaf from ‘Bat Out of Hell’ pop fame up in the balcony with Villazon and Katherine Jenkins.
Trust the British anyway…..the masters of pulling everything down to the lowest common ‘pie & chips’ level, imaginable. Is it ny wonder when the latest surveys show the Brits spend a full day’s time out of every week watching the TV…. (1/7 of their animate life form). The TV stations have to somehow amuse their couch monkeys with ‘Kulture’ while they stuff their faces with grease. And to think the creatures have to pay a Government Licence fee (!!!!) of some #300 (eqiv.) a year to watch such shit.
di Neese with her solo turn, it appears – was just putting her name down ‘doing the same stuff as Kiri did’ on another occasion. A reminder, perhaps: for when they want a wedding singer at the next Royal’s wedding. Marry Glynbourne…..get a Dame hood for some royal singin’ ….”Darling, your futures’ made!”
Nothing, like British crassness.
…unless it’s yours, Harry.
Where do you dig up this tripe – the Murdoch press???
Come, come Often Amonished , tell us what is not fact from the comments, I made.
Anyway: if I am forced to have to watch some British film or TV Show from time to time….usually I have to turn on the sub-titles to understand all their ‘colorful’ English regional dialects. Perhaps it is, as people say: it is the way Brits ‘size up standards’ and judge other Brits….
I’d love to tell you which part of your post isn’t purely factual, Harry, but sadly I’m too busy stuffing my face with grease. Plus, telly’s on.
Harry dear, crassness is not confined to the Brits, but yes, Pop Star to Opera Star is a crock, not even a funny one. We pay a licence fee to receive a signal and most of the fee goes towards the BBC, not ITV which is mainly funded by advertising and sponsorship. And I quite like pie and chips now and again, usually after buckets of cheap Australian lager…
You are most welcome to the British environment, its ‘cuisine’ and its Kultural pursuits.
It is all so so ‘very cheap tabloid’ making, anyway. We will not be surprised to see future headlines
Copy screaming :
“Pop star to opera star- from rags to riches and back to rags : found drunk and disorderly, slumming outside seedy nightspot in the gutter. In tow, with his latest ….some rich TV soap -opera tart (recently separated from her latest hubby and their 3 kids’) She , of course has her own battles to contend with…drug and dieting problems. But she looked delicious in her loud bulging leopard skin dress. The fallen opera star, as a comeback, hopes to get a place in the next TV Big Brother House or on some outdoors Survivor show. The benefit being : he could put on performances for his fellow contestants ‘to gain some contestant points’ in those shows, if he gains entry.
The other candidates of those shows would, of course make ideal and fresh judges of his Verdi and Puccini arias”.
The Brits always know how to be doubly brainless when faced with silly situations.
Are you by some chance from West Virginia, Harry?
Gosh – I’ve been outed! “found drunk and disorderly, slumming outside seedy nightspot in the gutter.” Harry, did you live in North East England in the 70′s and 80′s?
Poor Harry always protests about the Brits a bit too much I think – a bitter divorce from a haughty blue-stocking I wonder, or botched plastic surgery on Harley Street?
Often Admonished.Grimgerdez and David……..sorry to say, all three are wildly off the mark.
Sorry to direct the thread back to the actual post; I’m new here so cannot follow all the xenophobic arabesque other posters are indulging in with such virtuosity. Anyhoo: Purves is a fine singer, but is definitely a baritone who would surely never assign himself the ‘bass’ prefix. This just shows depressing ignorance on the part of the journalist. It would be interesting to know if anyone *has* made the Beckmesser to Wotan progression, though; I doubt it’s one that Wagner would have approved of.
Welcome Fox. Well Bernd Weikl for one was a good Beckmesser, then switched to Sachs and was widely considered The Sachs of his generation, which is around 1985-2000 or so. His Bayreuth recording is especially thrilling as he seems to BE Sachs, you have the uncanny feeling that the historic Sachs has jumped out of history books and landed on the stage of Bayreuth. And he sings it pretty well too.
Only thing is, CF, Fox has asked about a Beckmesser-to-Wotan and you gave him Beckmesser-to-Sachs. For the life of me, I can’t think of a single B2W. A parallel pops up: Roswaenge sang Tamino and Walther; Melchior sang Walther and Siegfried, but I don’t even want to contemplate either a Melchior Tamino or a Roswaenge Siegfried.
You’re right, must be the time of night
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))0
So ashamed now!
Ah, CF, but when you smile like that — and with that many chins — you make the room glow
Did Walter Berry perhaps sing Beckmesser in his early career, before doing Wotan in 1966/7?
It took some looking in the (wonderful, as always) online Met database, but I found one. David Bispham made his 1896 Met debut as Beckmesser, which he did with the company 20 times. (So much for the idea of a “singing” Beckmesser being a recent one!) His regular Ring role was Alberich, but in Walküre (which has no Alberich) he sang 5 Hundings and then 6 Wotans.
Actually, it was standard in the early 20th century to cast Tamino (and Pamina) at jugendlich-dramatisch weight, at least at the Met and probably elsewhere too. Early Met Taminos include Karl Jörn, Leo Slezak, and Jacques Urlus, all known for their heavy German roles as well. Jörn seems not to have done Siegfried, and Slezak “only occasionally,” but Urlus was known for the role. And the Bach Evangelist, and Mahler when it was new repertoire.
Windgassen also sang Tamino until very near the end of his career in his home house Stuttgart. He often said he kept it in his repertory to maintain vocal flexibility.Siegfried Jerusalem recorded Tamino after his successes as Lohengrin and Stolzing.
Berry sang Kothner, Nachtwaechter and Konrad Nachtigall in Meistersinger at various stages of his Career but to my knowledge, never Beckmesser.
Here’s someone who’s done both Beckmesser & Wotan (exception that proves the rule?)
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Lukas-Ralf.htm
“Xenophobic arabesque.” Hmmmmm! Something tells me I could grow to like this small fur-covered creature.
“xenophobic arabesque…” I like it
I like it! More please! It wont take you
long to catch up, Fox. It’s pretty black-
and-white here among the nationals.
A “baritone” who sings the very low bass roles of Lucifero and Polifemo in Handel’s La resurezzione and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo? I doubt he will sing Wotan, but I can imagine him transferring to Sachs perhaps.
Thank you all for your kind, welcoming comments, and Orlando for your detective work. It’s probably fair to say, then, that Becks-2-Wotan is no classic trajectory. And Cerquetti: any chance to enjoy a bit of the Weikl is always welcome, such a luxury voice.
It’s also good to know about Purves extending into the lower Handelian realms – a fact that had passed me by – but I really can’t hear any bass-baritone heft in the voice. That said, I do remember him having a bit of a hard time with Tonio’s high tessitura in the Pagliacci prologue in London a couple of years ago, so he might be heading more basswards after all…
Yes Tonio was too high for him. Frankly, I don’t think he will sing Wotan and Sachs would be push. Very few Beckmessers morph into Sachs but some, like Otto Wiener, sound as if they have. Oddly Berry doesn’t seem to have sung Beckmesser – he probably regarded himself as a bass rather than a baritone – and his Wotan never progressed beyond Rheingold. As for his Sachs, well he pulled out after the dress rehearsal in Bayreuth 1968. Never sang it at a public performance.
And Purves isn’t young – he’s already mid-40s having begun his classical career as a session singer specialising in early and baroque music.
Seriously, though, Purves is a very good singer, with lots of stage presence.
I wasn’t that impressed about his Glyndebourne Falstaff. But then, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with any aspect of that production. And Jurowski was distinctly shallow in this, my favourite opera. Bah.
Well, CF, it was a Richard Jones production. ‘Carry On Opera’. He seems to be stuck in a groove with his obsession with a certain kind of post-War British naffness.
Couldn’t agree more, CF – but we are in a minority. The critics raved with almost one voice!
‘xenophobic arabesque’? I don’t think I would credit Harry’s unmedicated ramblings with that degree of elegance!
So what you browser, is then suggesting : one needs medication to write florid chinzy Salon terminology in this operacosmos since you state I am unmedicated…I have never touched the shit prescibed or otherwise. Now don’t spill the snuff on the brocade chaise lounge, as you observe on that sidelines, those stuffed voice glamourised popopera puppets. While watching these cretins go about performing their operatic variations on culture’s new genre, the vocal free-wheeling fuckatango. Where its egotistically minded participants manufacture ‘filth’ by the manure cart load. They gargle, weave, duck, slide and suck up , allude, swan and con, trying to convince it is the real deal.
Just who are the world’s leading exponents……….the Jenkins’, the Potts, the Brightmann’s and all their other Europeon phoney ilk billed as head-line acts.
They are doing the equivalent standard of tacky little ‘supper’ shows suitable for run -down dinner show restaurants. The places where the artists’ main aim firstly, is expected to be : divert diners’ attention away fom the rotten food. Once they would have got a rain of rotten tomatoes in a good opera house. I even know of one well known opera singer, where people brought along lemons and sucked them loudly in the front rows during her performance.
Xenophobic? Not in the slightest. I am just achknowledging what miniscule talent they happen to have.It is also more than ironic, where they mostly come from, though.
In which opera houses are Jenkins, Brightman, Potts singing where we might have the opportunity to throw tomatoes and/or suck lemons at them?
Regina delle fate, I realize the nature of your tongue in cheek comment but add:
It is not a case of what opera houses pop-opera artists hope to sing in, or whether they ever will’. Instead look at the big false and pushed intimation: that pop-opera type creatures are capable and ready for….’That being if the offer came along but at the moment…. just that, they are SO much in demand elsewhere , making SO much money, they don’t have any time at all, to take such offers’.
The great bull shit fraud continues: By them, being temperorily (hint- hint, wink-wink!)indisposed elsewhere – for this, and every other moment you care to name’
Opera? Here’s a scenario: Pull the fucking electric switch: the amps go dead , all the balance boosters go as well as their microphone at their ‘live’ venue apearances. They become instant unadmired no-bodies of anything, whether opera aspirants or not. What a cynic would call a rather unfortunate ‘big accessory manfunction’.
A fully trained opera singer does not face the same sort of microphonal hazards.
Defin: A person who is trained to correctly and evenly pitch a wide range of musical notes vocally at abnormal force into a very large space. UNAIDED!
The potential ‘gonna-gonna -do -it one day in an opera house’ factor, is always in play and hinted at, by the promotional pop-opera bandwagons. That potential walk on the sound tight-rope without microphones is the given ‘promise’ -with no sonic support safety net. Otherwise, without that hinted – spiel attraction for that unspoken ‘false – hopeful promised magic’ where would the promoters be? In the absence of working on such a ‘voice’ basis, what other material would a promoter have, to market that type of supposedly ‘exceptionally high class’ product? Theya are more interested selling visions of what they think are opera’s ‘artistic whores and pretty toy boys’.
People that may be slighly interested in opera and what it really represents: are being tricked and side tracked by promtional charlatans, busy making a buck in the meantime. By the likes of everyone from TV shows or record companies to arena show promoters. Pushing the implied propaganda , those sorts of performers are ‘the real operatic deal’. Going about, insidiously infesting the Arts -producing what are singing maggots ,- then capitalizing by feeding off all the fame: simply believing in the size and worth of the financial dung heap, so produced from the exercise.
It is fixed. manipulated, and corrupt in its endevours as any seen in in other fields, such as Sport or anything you care to mention.
I lay the blame fair and square firstly and fundmentally at the major record companies. Business starting waning on the classical front after the big flush of sales. They introduced ‘cross-over albums’ with real bona fide opera singers as a desperate measure. Most of these releases sound stylistically stiff : like ‘ducks out of their normal water habitat’ in any case .Then came all the amalgamations of companies, then folded into still other already joined companies. Classical managers at the top were sacked or made redundant as excess staff……in came the ‘hot shots’ to the same, but now bigger made control positions. Who were so many of them? Successful ‘hot rock & pop shotters’ from other parts of the big conglomerate.
I like the witty comment from one observer….”Yeh! sitting around at the broad room tables making decisions about the classical sphere of the businees with noses full of coke! Bringing with them, their particular brand of cool ideas, selling product – by means of a myriad of pop/ rock type concert and concession ‘tie in deals’ “.
Now we see the blossoming, the sheer spread of it and the results into all facets of what they call ‘clasical music’ business.