parterre box

62 comments

• SilvestriWoman says:

  I will never forget Fassbaender’s transcendent Verdi Requiem in San Francisco in 1985. As I sat behind her in the chorus, her Luceat eis in the Lux aeterna was balm to my soul.

  Thanks, La Cieca, for the Rosenkavalier clip. That production remains my favorite. (There have been many glorious Sophies, but none have inhabited her like Popp.) I’ll bookend the clip above:

  on July 3, 2010 at 7:15 PM
  • Krunoslav says:

    I heard one of those REQUIEM performances and though I enjoyed BF’s work for what it was, I though she had huge register breaks and was not really idiomatic in the music. Odd assemblage: Susan Dunn, Bach tenor Daniel Harper (subbing for James King) and James Morris under Edo de Waart.

    on July 4, 2010 at 8:53 PM
• Bluessweet says:

  Sanford,

  My condolences on the loss of your mother.

  on July 3, 2010 at 7:58 PM
• Buster says:

  Happy birthday Brigitte Fassbaender!

  The recital pictured above has her definitive version of Milhaud’s Chansons de Négresse, and the Book of the Hanging Gardens -- if you need an introduction to her Lieder singing, that is where to start. I am also very fond of the live Salzburg all Schumann recital.

  on July 4, 2010 at 3:32 AM
  • Sanford says:

    You know, this isn’t the rep she’s known for (at least by me) but she’s terrific. And when I did the contest of Mon Coeur last year, she was a pleasant surprise, including a rockin’ high note at the end.

    Thanks to everyone for the condolences

    on July 4, 2010 at 10:46 AM
• NYCOQ says:

  Sanford, my condolences to you on your loss.

  on July 4, 2010 at 10:33 AM
• Clita del Toro says:

  I also attended the Kleiber Boheme at the Met. It was like hearing the work anew–amazing–things in the orchestra I had never heard before.

  I, however, was never a big Freni or Pav fan and found their singing unmoving.

  on July 4, 2010 at 1:10 PM
• CerquettiFarrell says:

  Well, well, I guess I’m in the minority again. While certainly admiring Kleiber fils’ magical way with the Rosenkavalier score, I still think Kleiber pere is unbeatable in this, and on the whole, a far more exciting and profound musician.

  on July 4, 2010 at 8:18 PM
• Cocky Kurwenal says:

  I do love Fassbaender, partly, and oddly, because it never seemed like she really cared much about how what came out of her mouth sounded. And if it sounded odd, or messy, or nasty, it didn’t seem to matter because all her energy was going towards the text, the musicianship and the dramatic portrayal.

  I shouldn’t overstate this though, because she was perfectly capable of some absolutely sublime, hugely technically accomplished singing, and I think the voice itself had a lot of intrinsic beauty and complexity. This Octavian is wonderful, and I love her Brangane on Kleiber’s Tristan – one of the few interpretations I’ve heard where the character doesn’t sound weak and annoying, she is a major asset to the recording. I like her in Verdi and French rep but it is true that it is pretty far removed from what most people expect in those roles. I’d like to hear more of her Mozart because I bet it was wonderful, in its way.

  I feel that because of her sincerity as a performer and the ease with which she lays her soul bare when she sings, there is a way in which you feel let in, as if you really know her somehow. And if that happens in one piece and you decide you like her, you’ll like her in anything. I’ll stop now because I’m beginning to sound like a nutter and I haven’t even had a drink yet today.

  on July 5, 2010 at 8:57 AM
  • kashania says:

    Fassbaender is a singer I know by name only (though I enjoyed the “O don fatale” that was posted earlier) so I really appreciate this thoughtful write-up. Thanks, CK.

    on July 5, 2010 at 3:38 PM
    • Cocky Kurwenal says:

      An absolute pleasure, Kashania. I should clarify that I really only know her on record, having encountered her live only as an audience member at one of her masterclasses. She was one of the first few divas to enter my orbit though, partly because she has a chapter in Helena Matheopoulos’s book Diva which I read as soon as I first got the opera bug, and partly because Dame Gwyneth was and remains one of my biggest obsessions, and the only really widely available Gwyneth performance available to buy at the time was the VHS of the Rosenkavalier from which clips have been posted on this thread.

      on July 6, 2010 at 7:22 AM
• hab mirs gelobt says:

  i shall back you on that kurwenal (not the drink but the fassbaender … albeit i haven’t had a drink today either) – with fassbaender one feels that she really cares for WHAT she has to sing rather than HOW she has to sing it. i for one really relish her as an interpreter, plus she has a very unique voice which is recognisable from only a phrase being sung.

  the only time i heard her in the flesh was after she retired from singing when she did schoenberg’s pierrot lunaire at wigmore hall. pretty it wasn’t but utterly fascinating!

  luckily due to the german ‘record’ company orfeo we have vivid mementos of her singing outside the german repertoire, a completely spellbinding charlotte in werther and also a commanding amneris (both from munich and both with domingo). of course she sometimes appears fearless with her use of chestvoice, but why not flaunt it if you got it. it is exciting!

  on July 5, 2010 at 10:12 AM
  • Leitbreite says:

    I’m very much in agreement, Kurwenal and Hab mir’s! Fassbaender was one of my very first operatic loves. Certainly, her voice isn’t to all tastes (I think I heard it best when someone described her as having a “hectoring” quality to her voice) and I don’t think that she was ideally suited to some of the roles she performed, but there has always been a fearlessness and élan in her performances.

    And while operetta might seem an unusual choice, I think that this clip is a perfect example of that quality:

    In yet another Kleiber-Fassbaender collaboration, both singer and conductor simply rip through this aria with such incredible enthusiasm and the utmost panache. Almost every other version I have heard in its wake just feels so listless.

    on July 5, 2010 at 1:39 PM
    • Leitbreite says:

      And of course, I botched up the embedding:

      on July 5, 2010 at 1:48 PM
    • MontyNostry says:

      I was lucky enough to see Fassbaender in FroSch and Elektra, admittedly towards the end of her career, but it is her work in lieder that I find most striking. I saw her a couple of times at Wigmore Hall and her 1980s DG recordings of Strauss and Schumann are thrilling. The voice itself is innately dramatic — the small instabilities and inequalities in the tone see to that — but most striking of all is the way she sounds as though she is speaking the words to a melody rather than doing an art-song.

      on July 5, 2010 at 2:05 PM
• Alto says:

  I worship Fassbaender. I heard what I believe was her last New York recital (with the very compatible Thibaudet), and I wish I could see/hear it once a year for the rest of my days.

  (But then, I must be wrong to think her a goddes of the lyric art since, thank god, we have jatm2063 above to set us straight about her, since he/she clearly knows so much more about singing than a mere Brigitte Fassbaender. Yes, dear jatm2063, she probably is, as you say, an “acquired taste” — like almost everything really fine.)

  on July 5, 2010 at 7:47 PM
  • Lindoro Almaviva says:

    But honey, every singer is an acquired taste. Even singers as universally praised as Fassbender, Ludwig, Popp, Gruberoba and Sutherland have people who can not get them.

    on July 5, 2010 at 7:52 PM
• CerquettiFarrell says:

  I heard Fassbaender twice, somewhere around 1990 in a Winterreise that was utterly unforgettable, an experience of a lifetime, and a few years later in Das Lied von der Erde, which was slightly less focussed, yet impressive. I absolutely love most of what she has done on record, and think her Azucena oen of the greatest vocal incarnations on disc. Of course, she didn’t have the italian ‘punch’ nor the style, but she delivered an honest, riveting, psychologically penetrating interpretation. Her voce bianca in “la vision ferale”, once heard, will never be forgotten. She has a way of making you *see* the flames, and experience the old gypsy’s sense of bewilderment and trauma.

  on July 5, 2010 at 8:23 PM