The Decider
So the drama continues. After the first act, the conductor summons the Decider to his dressing room to complain that the prima donna has made an unmusical mess of the opera thus far.
When the Decider finally arrives, the maestro announces that if the P.D. continues this performance, he’ll refuse to conduct the next one. Of course, this one is a bit of a puzzler for the Decider. He can’t really make a call on how messy or unmusical the first act was, or, for that matter, if the act was performed at all — because he was at a dinner party at the time.
Keep watching this space for more melodrama.
Totally off-topic heads-up for Parterriers in the DC-Maryland region: MPT is showing Der Rosenkavalier from earlier this season today at 2:30pm.
Thanks for the heads up. Will DVR it and then enjoy seeing it again sometime without the singers’ nostrils a foot across.
pernille, it’s not that the audience does not hear the artist, rather it is what
the artist has to do to be heard – perhaps this is subtle, but whether consciously
or not, a singer reaches more, stretches more, expends more, to be heard
in a house like the Met than in any smaller house. Keep in mind, most of the
European repertory we hear constantly was written for houses half the size
of the Met, Chi, Sfo, and that includes Wagner and Meyerbeer. Don’t tell
me it doesn’t make a difference, at many levels, to try to present such
operas in giant houses.
I hadn’t fully appreciated that it was out of concern for the well-being of singer’s voices that you warned against the Met. Point taken. I’ve experienced opera in very small houses in Europe and you’re absolutely right.Of course singers with small voices do very well at the arena in Verona, however that’s another acoustic. But then who should sing ( what) at the Met, in your opinion?
Any singer who wants to or can, pernille, should sing at the Met.
But many of them ultimately pay a price – and singer friends have
discussed this. The old saw at the Met is that Levine always says:
don’t push or over sing – just use your natural voice. Well, OK;
but there are psychoacoustical factors in play in this matter, and
I remember vividly hearing Dawn Upshaw sing at the Santa Fe
opera before she sang at the Met – and then a few years later,
after she sang there. I was sitting with a well-known singer
and said to her, you can tell that voice has been singing in
the Met. Ah, so you heard it to did you? Yes indeed, it’s not
hard to tell.
So – sing at the Met; so what? But many singers will do better
in smaller houses for a longer time, and practice better art.
With Nilsson, Demetrova, Corelli etc., the real loud mouths,
it probably does not matter. But di Donato is a subtle singer
without a terribly large voice. I hope she refines her art
elsewhere, not at the Met! Me – voice in wilderness on here,
I am sure. And I do appreciate your remarks; you are right!
“The old saw at the Met is that Levine always says:
don’t push or over sing – just use your natural voice.”
Too bad he doesn’t follow his own advice by allowing the orchestra to wildly play out of control most of the time.
Thanks, mrmyster. Your confident pronouncements finally explain why a singer like Von Stade has had such a short and unsuccessful career at the Met. And thanks, also, for explaining the notorious failure that is Upshaw.
I was sitting with a well-known singer
and said to her, you can tell that voice has been singing in the Met.
Yes, because performing at a large theater is the only factor that might account for a slight difference in the quality of a singer’s voice on two isolated occasions several years apart.
I’d be curious to know which singers didn’t sing at the Met and therefore did not suffer from these negative effects over time.
I think it’s tricky to pinpoint such specific causes for changes in vocal quality. All voices become less “fresh” with every year that passes, so how much is due to the average aging process, which is further complicated by hormonal changes in women.
Before we continue, could our esteemed mrmyster tell us when and in what he has heard JDD at the Met? (NOT what they say about her backstage in Santa Fe, not how old she is vs. claims to be, NOT what dear old Eleanor at her drunkest said about her before throwing up over Bing’s head and all that other fun stuff.)
I have heard JDD several times at the Met (also at NYCO, Houston, Santa Fe, the tremendous LOC and Geneva); her voice is in no way to small for it, unless you want to argue that von Stade’s and Battle’s were too. They seemed to do just fine there over long periods; focus and purity of tone count for something.
JDD is not setting out to sing Amneris, Fricka or Dalila, after all.
Kruno – see above; I am not going to argue with you. I presented
my remarks as personal opinion. I hardly need mention your
paragraph #1 dripping with condescension does not promote
good discourse. May I introduce you to Dick Cheney?
Hey, you read the tone all wrong. I enjoy all that other stuff, Eleanor tell-alls above all!
Ummm, is no one going to comment that Battle’s voice WAS way too small for the Met (for any house, actually, unless she was miked). That’s why she sounds lovely on recordings, where she WAS miked. Tiniest voice on earth….leading to the use of mikes at the Met.
“Tiniest voice on earth….leading to the use of mikes at the Met.”
Sigh.
This is an urban myth that is completely untrue.
I pretty much agree with Krunoslav here, small voices (in appropriate rep of course!) can do well at the Met IF they are well focused and pure.
And figaroindy, in her earlier days, Battle had just that kind of quality to her voice. It was very pure with very good focus and carried well.
Her voice underwent a bit of a sea change in the mid/late 80s though, and lost, particularly in the middle range, but also at the top, a lot of this focus. After that her voice carried much less well.
But in that late 70s/early 80s, her voice carried well.
Focus is a really important factor on how voices carry. I was really reminded of this when I saw Hansel and Gretel with LArmore and Upshaw. In the house, Upshaw’s rather small voice covered LArmore’s in their duets. Larmore, with a not particularly small voice, is actually the kind of singer that needs a mike, her somewhat unfocused sound doesn’t carry all that well.
Expectations also come into play, if you go to a live performance and expect to hear the voices in the same kind of balance you hear in a recording or video, you are likely to be disappointed. Even the biggest voices are not going to be ALWAYS dominating the balance of sound you hear in the house.
I wonder if another difference in the carrying power of lighter voices might not be changes in set design and staging. The rise of the three-dimensional set, with levels and steps and rock formations and such, led to directors’ positioning singers farther upstage, within the set instead of (as formerly) having singers mostly downstage and singing directly out into the auditorium, while the flat set loomed in the background.
Occasional experiments at the Met with pushing the playing area farther outward and over the orchestra pit have generally resulted in an extremely favorable acoustic for voices: for example, the passarelle in Barbiere seems to give all voices a huge boost. Florez, for example, still doesn’t sound like a big voice, but the sound has a lot more presence on the passarelle that it does farther upstage.
That’s very true, Cieca, and as a matter of fact in the current Armida, Fleming is better heard (others would say ONLY heard) when she sings in front of the show curtain.
Not to get too pedantic here, but the design of the 18th/19th century opera house (where most of our standard repertory of today was premiered) usually included an “apron” area extending beyond the proscenium. This section of the stage would be part of the acoustic of the auditorium (rather than the less resonant area upstage of the proscenium where the scenery resides), and therefore a sweeter spot for singing. As a number of scholars have also noted, the apron part of the stage would extend several feet over the pit, so that the loudest intruments, brass and percussion, would be slighly muffled by the overhang.
Really, then, any Italian and most German operas up until (on the one hand) Aida and (on the other hand) Tristan und Isolde would be more authentically performed on a stage that extended a meter or two into the auditorium proper.
Very interesting discussion. Thanks. Can anyone here share the initial reaction to the design of the “new” Met? Was it derided as being harder on voices than the “old” Met?
. . . which of course led to park-and-bark. Can’t we find a compromise? It would seem that an effective blocking technique would be part of any director’s arsenal. Even with my limited experience I know that even the most chaotic stage situation can be arranged so that key characters with key lines can be maneuvered into key spots at key times. It’s just a matter of knowing that is is vital to do so.
@CruzSF, 3:33 p.m., the major compaint about the New Met was its comparative sterility, compared to the previous house. Acoustically, it was and is vastly superior to the other two large auditoria at Lincoln Center. As to whether it was more or less difficult to sing at the New Met vs. the Old Met (which is a good question!), a singer who performed at both theatres could best answer this. Or maybe someone who is in close touch with a singer who sang at both houses could post.
The New Met was designed to accomodate the big voices of an earlier era, and also of course to produce revenue. To me, it’s now vastly oversized. I’m in total agreement with those who find it so cavernous.
Just to mention another of the “levels” to which you refer: acting. Aside from having to work harder to be heard (and aside from whether the singing itself suffers), a gigantic house renders most efforts at physical subtlety useless. I often enjoy opera in smaller houses (Snape is, of course, a favorite) because they have the intimacy of a theatre, rather than, as at the Met, of Madison Square Garden.
mrmyster, have you ever heard JDD at the Met?
Then it is a case of what sort of stage set: whether any paneling used is deadly absorbent or advantageously reflective.Then the drapery & curtaining being used … where it is…. and the singer positioned…..
OT again – sorry (and I am NOT obsessed by Villazon). Here are the links to two articles from today’s Sunday Times (of London):
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article7120588.ece
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article7117356.ece
The first one is a profile of RV and the second one is a review from Hugh Canning of the Handel concert I have mentioned before.
Please ignore if not interested!!
Wow. Canning knows his vocal stuff and his Handel, so that’s probably a well-reasoned review. As I’ve alwyas said, even when he was at his brief peak, Villazon’s voice never sounded healthy to me. Always pressured and throaty, and lots of Kermit the Frog mixed in with the hints of Domingo.
This is really, really sad.
Wow, what a depressing couple of articles…but keep ‘em coming Manou. Obviously, I wasn’t at this concert so I can’t argue with anything the reviewers have said about how RV performed that night. I can only go by the CD/mini DVD that came out last year. RV certainly could have had a bad night. I would think a singer not normally associated with fioratura would have to be extremely focused during those passages, and if he truly did get lost during “Ombra Mai Fu”, which is not even a coloratura aria, he obviously was not. But a lot of the criticism seems to be of the “how dare he!” variety. Some folks think that any deviation from “the past 50 (?) years of scholarship and performing practice” of baroque music is a crime. But personally, I don’t buy into that.
I think along the pathway that stretches from the valley of bad taste to the high plains of sterile authenticity there is more than one approach that can legitimately be applied to performing a Handel aria.
On the CD, I thought the Tamerlano arias and the
Pastorello….” were very effective. Not all the transpositions were a good fit, but I liked the “Scherza Infida”. He probably should have avoided the “Ombra”. After all, it’s been done by everybody.
Or a case of having too many Handel comparisons to judge his bad technique with. W.T.F is a yappying Groucho Marx manically crossed with a Mr Bean ‘jack in the box’ doing attempting every school of Opera with an already completely fucked up technique. Continual vocal operations for ‘nodes’ in a singer in their 30′s still…..is the screaming litmus test for someone’s own cultural ‘Arthur or Martha’ knowledge about production of their own voice. Not lifting the voice out of the throat for a start. It is the age of various personality ‘concept C.Ds’ .. where people are expected to buy: more just to hear further evidence of their declining ‘background baggage story’ and their struggles to stay noticed. Shit, what has the World come to?
Dear Harry, like the sign says, I’m no expert in evaluating vocal technique. Sometimes a performance seems right to me and sometimes it doesn’t. Believe me I’ve got lots of Handel sitting at home that leaves me cold, but I’m not willing to say RVs cd is junk. The clip of the live performance posted elsewhere, however, clearly shows he’s still got vocal problems which will ruin whatever he’s attempting if they can’t be cured.
He got lost in the other aria from Xerxes he sang: Crude furie which is a coloratura aria. Fritz Wunderlich used to sing Handel arias transposed an octave down – from Serse and Giulio Cesare – but he didn’t distort them with the Italianate gulping and slides that Villazon resorts to now. The record was okay, but things have slipped alarmingly since he made it. However you like your Handel, I think most Parterristas would have been shocked by the state of his voice.
The vicar will have his tedious problems with this, but I think it’s pretty damned good.
Dear Regina thanks for clarifying that. I was thinking if he could get lost in “Ombra” he must have been stoned. After viewing the clip of the concert, I think you are right. His voice has not healed. If you can’t sing the music, it doesn’t matter what stylistic choices you attempt. Wunderlich! What a great suggestion.
Armer – thanks that for wonderful reminder of the ENO Xerxes. Susan Graham and David Daniels are currently doing this production in Houston – wish I could be there…..
Regina- the ENO Xerxes was one of the most exciting theatrical experiences of my teens- and for a Handel opera seria, that’s quite an achievement.
Here’s Jean Rigby as Amastre- so intense, and such a gorgeous voice. I’ve always suspected that my adoration of Rosalind Elias is the result of being exposed to Rigby at an early age.
Well, No Expert, the scholarship has been going on for more than 50 years. Winton Dean’s Handel researches which argued for Handel’s castrato roles and male roles written for women to be performed at pitch rather in downward octave transpositions predates the so-called “authentic performance” movement by at least 20 years or more.
Why dont you just start a new topic for your ramblings. Just sayin…
Rigby had the advantage of an attractive tone, which Murray only commanded at low volume – no pressure things like “Cara speme” in the Harnoncourt CESARE excerpts, in which she is quite lovely. Armer, how can you stand the breaks and angular ugliness here, especially at the bottom? That said, she gets her voice around the florid music better than Rigby.
I agree with Krunoslav here. Murray’s basic timbre is neither special nor very attractive, but her performance AS AN ENTIRETY in Xerxes was phenomenal and singers with finer voices who succeeded her in the Hytner production, Louise Winter and Sarah Connolly, have made less of a theatrical impact. Opera is not just about lovely voices and whatever else, Murray has always known how to deliver in the theatre. She is an example of a singer whose career has made the maximum use of a fairly ordinary voice.
You really want people to stay on topic, Dame? At Parterre? HA!!!!!
For the lovers of digression, for the lovers of Handel, for the lovers of Villazon and for the lovers of Opera Britannia :
http://www.opera-britannia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=292:rolando-villazon-the-royal-festival-hall-3rd-may-2010&catid=10&Itemid=16
well, let’s add this one too (it’s not about RV but about the price of classical music):
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article7050238.ece
Book Dessi to go on as a quick cover in Lulu, should do the ‘trick’! Scream it out and make it up as she goes along…in Italian if she likes. I am sure even the conductor by the end of it would be willing to recast himself as Jack the Ripper to do Lulu ‘in’. To those that are unfamiliar with Lulu, would not the review comments here be interesting to all those MET Bel Canto birdy twitter-er lovers. Like “Well I was seated up in…!”
Thank you ever so much, manou, for the links re: RV. Not all of us are as widely read and knowledgeable as you, and your attempts to keep us informed on developments are one of the many, many reasons I return to this site again and again.
Like many, I had so hoped Rolando would be better than ever after his surgery and period of rest. He is SO engaging. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to have a major career.
In the meantime, my drug of choice is Juan Diego…a real beauty, who respects his limitations. (And Jummy Jonas, who seems to have a really great future ahead of him — touch wood.)
…apropos Juan Diego :
http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/05/juan-diego-florez-barbican.html#comments
Oh great! Yesterday it was Richard Chamberlain; today it’s Juan Diego. My eyes are getting fat from all this candy.
Yes, thanks, Manou. Intermezzo is an interesting site. but Operacake carried the best item of the day.
After watching this one can really appreciate why opera is having such a hard time in Italy – particularly comic opera – all the buffoons are in parliament!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TjO-v1siA
Someone out there, please set this to music.
Well I was at the RFH and it was nowhere near as bad as the critics portrayed, but in places it wasn’t great! They decided that following his appearance on popstar to opera star and his defence in the press of his position he was not ever going to regain his voice.
make up your own minds!!
A friend of mine, a HUGE R.V. fan, came back from the concert almost in tears, telling me that “her” beloved tenor voice had gone.
Now I hear she was right and why Cannings and many other reivews, were right. This is bad, very bad. Not happy about it, just sad.
Tenorfach
“Coming soon – - to an evangelical tabernacle in your area.” Don’t worry, the boy’s still got a future.
But I’ve got a question. Does anybody in the world hold their hand in that position except tenors? Index finger straight, middle finger slightly curved, third finger and pinkie curled just slightly more. I’ve tried to duplicate it with my own hand to get a key to his personality but can’t do so without great discomfort, yet it seems so natural to RV and a couple of others, including JK. Is this something they learn in Tenor School?
Ever watch a tenor masturbate? Same finger action. Must go with the voice type.
Why is it that the best posts on this site always start out with either “Spekaing of blow jobs” or “Ever Watched a tenor masturbate?”
I’m a tenor. That’s, however, as much information as I am prepared to share in this discussion.
In Tenor School, those are called Jizz Hands.
What a fucking mess. Compared to this, Nebby’s rendition of Micaela’s aria is positively the work f a vocal genius.
I thought this was pretty awful. He aspirates his way through Ombra Mai Fu, which is pretty hard to accept but it seems like all the movement in his voice is pretty compromised. This came off worse than the clip of Doppo Notte which was also aspirated but didn’t dwell so much on the low parts of his voice which seem to just not be there.
This sounds better than it did in London, but it’s still full of pop-singer mannerisms. By the time he got to these encores, his voice sounded tired and frayed even though he hadn’t sung very much on the scheduled programme.
Not good
Tim
The only roles that I’ve noticed that Villazon is scheduled to sing next season are new ones and both by Mozart: Don Ottavio in concert performances of Don Giovanni in Baden Baden with Damrau as Donna Anna (ugh) and Garanca in her first (I think) Elviras; and Alessandro in a new production of Il Re Pastore in Zurich.
I happened to be in London a few years ago and attended the ENO’s latest revival of Serse and the protagonist was both dramatically compelling and vocally fully in command: Katarina Karneus, a Swede and apparently not an “unnecessary import”, nor was American counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo who was a great Arsamene.
#17, I touch wood almost every time I see Jummy Jonas..
“I happened to be in London a few years ago and attended the ENO’s latest revival of Serse and the protagonist was both dramatically compelling and vocally fully in command: Katarina Karneus, a Swede and apparently not an “unnecessary import”, nor was American counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo who was a great Arsamene.”
Shameful! Where was Jonathan Peter Kenny?
I think you have a good idea where he was, Vic m’dear!
Lawrence Zazzo is married to a Brit, so he’s almost one of us and, in any case, a much better singer than Jonathan Peter Kenny, who is married to a Canadian, I think.
“The Decider” is not as alone as he makes himself out to be, abetted by La Cieca, I think. He/she could and certainly should seek corroborating evidence from the Stage Manager and The Prompter who would be in a position to know and who are less likely than almost anyone else to put up with egotistical bullshit.
How on earth does BABs manage to be both hilarious AND profound?? Is it due to some new medication? If so, I want some!
Hmm. I’ve always thought they were one and the same.
il faut parterre is BABs fluffer in the wings
“I’ll have what she’s having?”
When the new Met opened I think there was close to unanimous agreement among reviewers that the acoustics were superior to those at the old Met, which was knows for some dead spots. I remember singers commenting that although the new Met was larger than the old one, it “felt” smaller when they were onstage.
I claim, based on my recollections, that the performances today are significantly louder than they were thirty or forty years ago. The orchestras play louder and so do the singers. We’ve all gotten used to amplified sound and I suspect that voices like Nilsson’s, Corelli’s, Del Monaco’s, et al would not be considered as impressively large as they appeared in their times. Similarly, the likes of Valleti, Peters, Munsel, Sayao, and even Albanese would be critized today as having voices too small. I wonder if even someone like Bergonzi would as accepted today in the big dramatic Verdi roles (Radames, Manrico, Ernani, Alvaro) in which he excelled as he was in his time.
Tenore, I could hear Nilsson warm up for a recital whilst I was out on the street, in front of huge Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The building was still locked but Nilsson’s huge voice penetrated into the street, even though the auditorium is completely surrounded by a foyer. Corelli, I’m not so sure about, although he sounded impressive with Nilsson in “Turandot”.
So, definitely, the size of Nilsson’s voice would still amaze and I think the power of Sutherland’s and Horne’s voices, as they were in the 1960s into the mid-1970s, would also still knock our socks off.
ITDG, I agree, I believe orchestras play a bit louder
than when I started going to opera performances in the late 60s. I think superstar orchestra conductors have realized that audiences find very loud orchestral programs exciting and that increase in volume has been carried over to operatic performances.
Back in the late 60s or early 70s many conductors that concentrated on mostly opera work played the scores more as an accompaniment to the singers. As Bohm, Bernstein, Karajan, and Solti sought more brilliance (read “loudness”) of sound in their operawork to get the same kind of audience response
to their concerts, other , less starry conductors also followed suit.
And I also think that many people approach a live opera performance expecting to hear the kind of voice/orchestra balance they hear on audio or video recordings they hear at home. I believe a lot of the “so and so was INAUDIBLE” comes from this kind of expectation.
Lennie conducted a slow-tempo “Cavalleria” that died long before Santuzza cursed Turridu’s easter basket. But that’s the only time I heard him conduct opera at The Met or anywhere else, so I can’t lay today’s louder opera orchestras even partly at Bernstein’s doorstep.
In terms of comparing “then and now” Levine may be the best yardstick since he starting conducting at The Met 39 years ago.
Solti was the worst of the overly loud conductors, orchestrally and in opera performances. When Bohm led “Frau”, “Elektra”, and “Salome” the orchestra was often very loud (but with a brilliant sheen) and I’d agree this visceral punch is at least partly responsible for today’s opera orchestra sound. (When Erich Leinsdorf conducted “Frau” at the Met in 1981, unsurprisingly, the orchestra was much more subdued than when Bohm led the work.)
Karajan was rightly lauded for his translucent, chamber-music approach to The Met’s “Walkure” and “Rheingold” and I never found him particularly loud, in the U.S. or in Austria.
Certainly, Fausto Cleva, Franceso Molinari-Pradeli, Leinsdorf, Carlos Kleiber, and Claudio Abbado were conductors who balanced voice and orchestra and didn’t ramp up the orchestral volume, the way that even very talented conductors such as E-PS sometimes now do.
Jay, I didn’t see the Bernstein Cav, I had a ticket but got stuck on a subway car breakdown.
I guess I went to the viewing room when I finally got to Lincoln Center…don’t really remember…but the monitor’s quality was pretty bad back then.
I did see Lenny’s Carmen. It was very showy and fussy sounding. And he certainly was NOT accompanying the singers.
You mention Karajan. I never heard him conduct opera, the closest thing to it was the Verdi Requiem. And yes, the orchestra wasn’t terribly loud per se but in the Verdi, the textures were thick. And from the 70s on, once he was away from the Met where Bing insisted he use large voiced singers, Von Karajan used a lot of lighter voices than people usually expected in his Salzburg performances. Even though the orchestra playing wasn’;t particularly loud, the slighter sounds of the singers didn’t really stand out all that much.
The singers tending to be more textures in the whole pallet of sound and not stand out quite as much as they would have in earlier years under more “accompanying” type conductors.
Bergonzi had a soft-grained and dark-grained lyric tenor which he gradually eased into what we would call spinto roles – his Manrico at Covent Garden was certainly audible in the amphitheatre, as was the Leonora of Arroyo who certainly didn’t have a huge voice either. Those singers seemed to know about projection into a big space, as did singers such as Reri Grist and Lucia Popp who had small voices, yet you could hear them because they were so focussed and their sound cut through the orchestra. Kaufmann has a relatively small voiced which he can convincingly project in big roles, but he, too, has taken his time to get where he is now and sung his way through most of the lyric roles before tackling the biggies. And mostly out of the limelight and at his own pace. Has he sung his Don José at the Met yet? What was the verdict on that?