Teneste la chat
The Traviata chat will begin at 12:45 beginning in preparation for the 1:00 start time of tonight’s performance.
Listeners should note that this afternoon’s broadcast will include the following intermission features: during the first interval, Loren Toolajian will interview Angela Gheorghiu, James Valenti and Thomas Hampson.
During the second intermission, quiz contestants will include Fred Plotkin, Robert Marx and Cage Ames. The moderator will be Keith Miller, in whose honor the panel will perform a trio version of a song from The Creation: “With spandex clad the bass appears.”
The real-time chat, as always, is at La Casa della Cieca.
Are you serious? Loren Toolajian?
“Fly,” the new song featuring Spitfire, produced by Loren Toolajian
Demented if you ask me! Most demented singing I’ve heard all season.
JV gave me goose bumps numerous, e.g. io son felice. I felt it!
So far best Trav I’ve heard since Villazon/Swenson/Hvrostovsky in SF 5 or 6 yrs ago.
Oh well, I just tuned in to hear Angela sing Act I and she
is still OK in the part; youthful spontaneity is no longer
there, but she knows her way around — so pretty good!
She’s still got some muscle tone.
Valenti? Ugh. Sings with much tension and a cloudy top;
not a finished talent at this time. Who knows where it
will go; who cares? Yves Abel is not a Verdi conductor, but
he’s a sub., and I have heard him do well in French rep.
So, back to the garden….much more rewarding. You
know, it occurred to me, Angela G. at this stage sounds
very much like Lucrezia Bori in the early 30s. Alas, Valenti
does not sound even like Edw. Johnson
I’m loving them both! Angela can still move me deeply, and, though Valenti may not be a fully developed talent (whoever said he was?), he is extremely promising in this role.
Thomas Hampson has interesting things to say in the interview, but is it me (I’m not a native English speaker) or does Hampson find some extra consonants in every English word he utters?
Kilian, Thooooomas cerrrtainly sounds a little ooovermodulated when he talks. He has lived in Europe for a long time, and his long-term partner (wife?) is an Austrian, so he has become somewhat mid-Atlantic. He was ALWAYS somewhat pompous, as far as I can tell.
last time valenti cracked trying to finish mio rimorso in act 2 on a high note. it was sad.
None of my business, but are Hampson’e teeth false? Sure as hell sounds that way.
I hate to say this, but I’m bored with Traviata. I know what a good (and important) opera it is in so many ways, but it just doesn’t grip me any more.
And is Hampson anyone’s idea of a real Verdi baritone?
Verdi baritones have disappeared.
Angela’s voice sounds tired and wan, and the less said about Valenti the better.