Math is hard
Here’s our dear Karita Mattila (left), currently occupied playing Émilie du Châtelet in the eponymous new opera by Kaija Saariaho.
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la cieca, will you hate me forever if i post an OT????
been listening to clips on youtube of rossini’s serious operas. i love those, more than the comic ones. just wondering, what are people’s favorite rossini serious works? i love armida, ermione and maometto/assedio.
also, has antonacci ever sung in NY? is there a reason she doesn’t sing at the met?
Serious Rossini is hard for me to take seriously. It falls into that crack where no matter how human the predicament, action must be subjugated to musical form. So, despite a plot that lurches and creaks well past the point of believability, I adore La Donna del Lago. Then maybe Otello.
Not to stretch this OT thread to the breaking point, but I love [at least parts of] Mose and Tell–both, in particular have boffo endings.
N.B. But Donna del Lago is the one that most consistently holds my interest.
Well, I have fond memories of Otello with von Stade, and I wish someone would put it on stage in New York with Di DOnato. We certainly have enough tenors for it these days. I also love the Tancredi recording with Podles and Jo. I don’t know Scala di Seta at all.
As for the comic operas, I have the same problem with Rossini that I do with other composers. Their most famous works, the “masterpieces”, are not my favorites. I like, but don’t love, Barber; I prefer Cenerentola (especially with Valentini-Terrani) or L’Italiana. With Donizetti, I find Lucia the least interesting (to me… don’t flame me).
LP, I prefer the serious Rossini to the comic, except maybe for Comte Ory, and once in a while
L’Italiana. Cenerantola with that little ballad thingie that she sings 93 1/2 times drives me batty
and even the Barber I can only listen to once in a great while. Turco, yuck.
But I love Tancredi, La Donna del Lago, Siege/Maometto (Assedio di Corinto doesn’t really exist). I was floored by Ermione when I saw it at NYCO a number of years ago. William Tell is an amazing, if very long, piece.
Yeah, pace BAB, the plots are creaky, but that doesn’t really bother me. Actually the plots of the comedies seem equally unbelievable. But I think you and I are in the minority here, I think more people prefer the comedies.
As for Antonacci, she gave a concert at the Met Museum of Art in 1999. She sang with an early music group (they’ve made a CD or two) and did things like
Combatto di Tancredi e Clorinda and some other showy pieces. She sang Dido’s Lament as an encore in very good English.
As to Antonacci and the Met, they engaged her for Donna Elvira for 2008 or so. Some other singer wanted to sing those performances ( rumor has it that it was the lovely, ever reliable Angie) and the Met bought Antonacci out of her contract. They offered to switch the contract for something else, but she more or less told them to fuck themselves.
She described her side of this transaction in a British interview at the time she sang Carmen at the ROH. It doesn’t seem likely that she and the Met will ever come to terms.
That Met revival of Don Giovanni was cursed. Counting Antonacci and Gheorghiu, they went through about 5 or 6 announced Donna Elviras before someone actually sang the performances.
The “early music group” Antonacci sang with at that Met Museum concert was Accademia Bizantina, and they’ve recorded more like 30 CDs rather “a CD or two” and Antonacci has recorded much of the music from that concert not once but twice: on one of the volumes of a Naxos series called “Lamentations” and then on her later Naive recording of the first of her one-woman shows.
Frankly she doesn’t sing all that many mainstream roles (other than Carmn) so it’s a bit hard to imagine what she might sing at the MET anyway, although there is a revival of “Troyens” due and having seen her Cassandre in Paris she would be remarkable AND she sang the role with Levine at Tanglewood. She was mentioned as coming to Chicago for a Troyens at the Lyric in the future, but I haven’t heard anything about that production lately.
speaking of which, gergiev and marinsky are doing the troyens in NYC with both ekaterinas (gubanova & semenchuk).
and if the met had any good sense, they’d give some of the armidas to antonacci or pendatchanska.
You mean if the MET had any good sense they would give up sure sold out houses with Renee to engage 2 second-tier singers? How does that make sense in the current economic climate when a sold out house is a rarity?? There are only 2 singers who consistently sell out the MET—Renee and Netrebko. Some of the comments here are beyond silly.
Hippolyte, when I used “they”, I was referring
to the combination of Antonacci AND The Accademia. As far as I can they THEY (together)
have NOT recorded “more like 30 CDs” together . At the time I bought the discs I have, THEY had recorded one or two. I know I have two discs
with the AB but I’m not sure if Antonacci sings on both.
I agree Antonacci is an unlikely candidate for an ongoing Met career but I was just addressing
LP’s question.
There are no recordings with both Antonacci and Accademia Bizantina.
well, excuse me, sterlingkay, for considering ART over COMMERCE.
i’d love to hear armida with renee, and with another artist. i don’t think renee needs to sing the entire runs both years they are scheduling the work.
who knows, she might be indisposed and her cover will go on.
and i doubt renee sold out all of her thais.
Antonacci doesn’t have a huge voice, although that doesn’t seem to have held her back in Paris (where she rarely sings at the Bastille, but more often at the Garnier, Champs-Elysees, Comique and Chatelet. Her UK oepra appearances have been confined to Rodelinda and Ermione at Glyndebourne and one of the lead roles in Mosè in Egitto and Carmen at Covent Garden. Her RO Carmen was thought to be underpowered by some, so it surely wouldn’t register at the Met. She’s a canny lady and chooses her parts and theatres very carefully. She is also a single mother with a young son and she is probably reluctant to spend months away rehearsing and performing in the US. She’s not young any more, either. I’d guess around 50. I’ve seen her as Poppea and Nerone (she could also probably sing Ottavia) and as Agrippina in Munich, Paris and Brussels, and of course that Troyens Cassandre at the Chatelet which was wonderful. Richard’s story about Antonacci and the Met Elviras rings true. She’s not a flouncy diva, but she has a well-developed sense of her own worth and wouldn’t take kindly to being messed about with contracts. She has a big career in some of the highest paying European theatres and in Paris – where she lives – she is an (adopted) national superstar.
Thank you for recalling the precise year — knew it was late nineties.
La Cieca was there to see her, as was my spouse and me. I remember Antonacci sang a very interesting rarity (cannot remember title now) that was purported to be the first actual ‘Scena di Pazzia’( mad scene ), in Italian song literature. Maybe I left early, as I do not recall Dido’s Lament.
She had fantastic upper arms and armpits, great histrionic ability, a great gown an coiffure and, ahime, not a lot of voice of any kind at all.
I love his Otello. I wore out an old LP of it with Jose Carreras back in the day… (insert big sigh)… if only Jose had stuck to these roles, we would remember him as the perfect Rossini interpreter.
Exactly. Carrreras’ contribution in Donezetti’s Le Elisiir d’Amore was also a mighty fine rendition. When we remember all the very heavy roles he took on…..you shake your head. It was rumoured he, at one time have designs on doing Verdi’s Otello.
I love Otello too. Heard it live only once though, with the wonderful Lella Cuberli.
The Mattila clip does sound like Salome gone wrong, as m. croche hints at below.
Later this month it will travel to the Netherlands Opera, where Mattila was supposed to share the role with Edith Haller. Haller is out now, unfortunately, and Karen Vourc’h is in. I doubt I will check it out after hearing this. Too kitschy.
Rumor has it that one of our beloved diDonato’s upcoming La Donna del Lagos [Lagae? Lagi?] might eventually hit DVD
Thank god. I hope this comes true.
Why stop at that? Why in the WORLD aren’t they doing “Joyce’s” La donna del Lago at the Met??? Or in this country, for crying out loud?
When I saw DiDonato at a recital late last year (as she signed my CDs, NOT over coffee and muffins), she mentioned that La Donna del lago was in line for the Met in the new few years.
I really don’t like to name-drop, but as Birgit said to me once, “Watch where you’re sticking that umbrella, lady.”
I don’t intend to name-drop, but as David Daniels said to me once, “Next!”
I’d heard that the Joyce Donna del Lago was a co-production with both Houston (with Lawrence Brownlee) and the Met. It’s definitely coming to Covent Garden and going to Barcelona. I’ll be going to the Paris premiere
I like the part where she asks for the severed head of Voltaire.
I have enjoyed MAOMETTO II in several productions. I find DONNA DEL LAGO a biut dull,. though the triop is fun and of course Joyce will sing the hell out of it.
The greatest is TELL, in French. Just spectacular, thought it does take its time. Surely the most borrowed-from opera in the history of the genre. BALLO, AIDA, HUGUENOTS, the big Musorgskys, RHEINGOLD, GOETTERDAEMMERRUNG — it all comes out of GUILLAUME TELL.
I enjoyed the clip of Mattila.
I don’t have a favorite Rossini opera besides Armida at the moment.
I certainly agree about how staggeringly great Ermione is. Until I saw it at NYCO, I’d never heard a note of it. How did such a brilliant opera just fall between the cracks? It also contains one of my favorite lines of any libretto. The basic situation is that Ermione loves Pirro, but he’s dumping her. Oreste loves Ermione, but she’s not interested in him. So early in Act One, she turns to the audience and announces, “I hate Pirro, I hate Oreste, I hate myself.” How did Callas ever miss out on this one?
The NYCO Ermione production was very good. Funny enough it was his serious operas that made me a fan of his music. By the time I was 16 I was “over” Rossini’s comic operas and just figured that all of his operas ended the first act in a “jumble” with everyone complaining about a headache or something of that nature. It took Tancredi and Siege to make a fan out of me, not Barber, L’Italiana or Cenerentola.
I hope you have the Gasdia recording, Javier
What happened to Gasdia? She was 21 when she subbed for Caballé at La Scala, and that was 1982, which would make her only 49 now. But I’ve not heard anything of her for years and years.
Well, Anna Netrebko is not pregnant but from the looks of this video, Karita is. Is something wrong with this picture???
At 49? I doubt it. Perhaps you should check out the synopsis.
If you thought my eyes looked as wide as the trio in the last thread—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Bs1pXxAZsr0/Sq8sUHU7i8I/AAAAAAAAJXk/SBzvnLhfSqY/s400/Jayne_Mansfield_et_Sophia_Loren_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://deedoolife.blogspot.com/2009/09/jayne-mansfield-contre-sophia-loren.html&h=316&w=400&sz=41&tbnid=1TME9eQJN-EDLM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dloren%2Bmansfield%2Bpic&usg=__BQan28nYQdOiFuEXV3vDbCYwtLs=&ei=FoORS8ehGpn08QbCwcSoBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CAoQ9QEwAg
httpw://drx.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/29/loren_mansfield.jpg
Sofia may not have blinked but…
learn how to use tiny url
like this
http://tiny.cc/boobs881
take the w out of the second. Wish I knew how to upload teh pictures.
thanks for the replies. yes, i also saw ermione for the first time at NYCO a few years back. pendatchanska was fantastic, kunde very good, and banks… eh… both penda and banks were back at NYCO for donna del lago. that was however a very boring evening. it didn’t help that the production was so cheap and ugly. poor penda is out there on stage singing her big aria, and there’s snow falling all around her. except the snow would make tons of noise when it hit the floor, splat! awful staging…
i don’t know otello, but i love both maometto and siege. verrett’s neocle is legendary — on youtube, podles also has a great rendition of the neocle bravura aria. revisiting rossini’s serious works got me to revisit some singers i had not thought of in a while: antonacci (ermione), gasdia (armida, pamina), merritt, ford, kasarova, etc.
I confess to being a fan of both K’s (Karita and Kaija), so I thank you, cara Cieca, for the klip…er…clip. I had meant to look up the reviews of this, and totally forgot.