parterre box

137 comments

• warmke says:

  2010′s answer to Gloria Davy, not Leontyne Price.

  on July 23, 2010 at 9:35 PM
• neiln007 says:

  If Angela Meade was able to sing in this brutal heat, I think Kizart could have made the effort as well

  on July 23, 2010 at 9:39 PM
  • brooklynpunk says:

    neil:

    Do you “know” –FOR A FACT– that is the reason Ms.Kizart cancelled…??

    …COULD IT BE that ..she is REALLY not feeling well?…or not well enough to perform?

    …just asking……

    on July 23, 2010 at 10:01 PM
  • taminophile says:

    Angela’s biggest problem on the 10th was that god-awful dress she was wearing, not the heat or anything else!

    on July 23, 2010 at 10:46 PM
• NYCOQ says:

  I actually just read the article. She sounds self-possessed and CONFIDENT rather than full of herself. The musical legacy in her family alone makes me think that she comes from a long line of performers who know, gleaned or earned their worth. My interpretation of her CEO statement is that she knows that she will succeed at whatever she puts her mind and focus to (which is the way it works, right?). She sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders – avoiding roles waaaay too big for her right now AND she is a smart girl to not want to get trapped in the Aida ghetto. Look at Angela Brown who should be doing more than Aida’s but only seems to be offered that role. I wish her luck, but the more I watch her youtube clips and look at what she has sang in the past I wondering if she could have pulled off Maria di Rohan? I hope she sticks to her artistic guns and not chase the money like Denyce Graves did singing Carmen after Carmen after Carmen until she blew the voice out. I can’t wait to hear her Liu at the Met and I hope that the hype doesn’t get to her. Oh and being gorgeous certainly doesn’t hurt her. I don’t like comparing black singers to one another, but isn’t about time that we had a true DIVA of the Price, Bumbry & Verrett mold trodding the stages again?

  on July 23, 2010 at 10:49 PM
  • Arianna a Nasso says:

    Price, Bumbry, and Verrett all were great singers before they became divas. Not sure Ms. Kizart has the technical foundation that those ladies (and Grist, Battle, Hendricks, Norman, Quivar) did.

    Singing lots of Carmens in itself didn’t blow out Graves’s voice. Singing them without having secured a rock solid technique did.

    on July 23, 2010 at 10:54 PM
    • NYCOQ says:

      Arianna…that was kind of my point regarding Graves.

      on July 24, 2010 at 12:24 AM
  • callasorphan says:

    This myth that any singer of color and that has a little vocal heft MUST be singing Aida drives me to drink (not that I need any excuse) I thought Lee did away with that stupid idea. It’s a wonder they did not try and get Battle on the Nile.

    on July 24, 2010 at 1:46 PM
    • MontyNostry says:

      I actually sometimes wonder whether the young Leontyne really had an Aida voice. If you compare her sound to, say, Tebaldi’s and Stella’s, it was much softer-grained. If one heard a voice like that ‘cold’ today, one would say Mozart and lighter Strauss, not Aida.

      on July 25, 2010 at 11:09 AM
      • luvtennis says:

        Depends on what you mean by “Aida” voice.

        I can think of no reason why Aida needs to be sung by a dramatic voice – Amneris is the dramatic soprano role in the opera – Aida is entirely lyrical in both her music and her persona. The role is killer because the tessitura is very high and the exposed moments are extremely exposed.

        Juicy lyric is about right for Aida, Leonora, etc.

        Verismo and its after-effects continue to corrode the musical landscape. Far too many folks think a large, metallic cutting sound should be the norm in Verdi. I would contest that few if any non-verismo sopranos made that sort of sound in the 19th century. If I am not mistaken Verdi’s first Aida was also a distinguished Mozartian, by all accounts.

        My review of the historical suggests that pre-verismo most sopranos cultivated pure head-tone based upper registers. Only when Verismo started required long stretches of upper register declamation (forte, of course) was the more chest-based voice cultivated, especially in Italy (see Burzio and her progeny). Even singers like Destinn and Gadski had very pure flutey upper registers, and they sang Wagner, as well as Verdi and Mozart.

        on July 26, 2010 at 3:47 PM
• mrmyster says:

  Miss Kizart was very wise to withdraw from Caramoor. It ain’t
  the heat, folks, is the flawed vocal technique and problems with
  pitch and musicianship. I just watched the Pace and two other
  YouTubes and this lady ain’t ready for anything outside the
  studio yet. How old is she, anyone know? Late twenties?
  In “Velia” alone she demonstrated all her flaws, sharp and flat,
  poor poor phrasing, lack of understanding of text … you don’t
  need to hear more. Clearly, she’s got great potential but she
  is not yet ready for her close up, Mr Gelb, and send her back
  to work before she ruins that gift!

  on July 23, 2010 at 11:01 PM
• brooklynpunk says:

  The Cliff-Notes version, for those, (such as myself) who need to cram, before tonight’s performance…!

  on July 24, 2010 at 6:40 AM
  • Ercole Farnese says:

    Thank you for posting this video starring Giusy Devinu, a singer who died three years ago at the age of 47. A truly great soprano, with a rich creamy voice encompassing almost three octaves. In roles like Lucia, Giulietta and Gilda, for me she was second only to Mariella Devia. And her Violetta was exceptional. I was there when she won the Spoleto competition that launched her career and allowed her to sing her first Violetta on that stage. Wherever you are, I miss you.

    on July 24, 2010 at 8:31 AM
• Bluessweet says:

  Considering the flood of talent emerging from The AVA, if I were a young singer, I’d crawl on my hands and knees from 30th Street Station to the 1900 block of Spruce, if necessary, and beg at the door for admission. DiDonato, Costello, Guiterrez, Valenti, Fabiano, Meade, Perez, Morris, Indra Thomas, Ledsma, Latona Moore and this year’s graduate, for whom you might keep an eye out, Christopher Bolduc, just to name a few. There are others in the wings as well.

  on July 24, 2010 at 8:50 AM
  • Corky Coasters says:

    No offense to Bluessweet, but I’m not sure I believe in the stuff they’re sprinkling in the water at AVA that’s turning it into such an assembly line for ready-made careers. Joyce is a beautiful example of a singer who sings so naturally and free…someone who sounds much like she speaks, singing into the text and not pushing up against it, if that makes sense. She always has, and from what I can tell, always will. While the recent output at the school is more than impressive – and maybe it’s an opinion of one – I’m hearing singing that sounds more like very well-crafted impersonations of opera singers, and less of what should be younger, easier, and more natural production. I could be totally wrong, and really, only time will tell, but I’ll be curious to see these voices lasting for 15-20 years based on the way they sing now. When you’re in your 20s and early 30s, and you have an exceptional, natural gift, you have a great deal of capital upon which to draw. But all singers who last in this business long enough will hit a rough patch eventually, a time when something doesn’t quite work right anymore, and contracts and obligations get in the way of fixing it correctly, and then the wheels completely fall off, fast. So the real question I have is whether they’re building these voices at AVA to truly last, or just for right now?

    on July 24, 2010 at 1:41 PM
• Sanford says:

  Since when does saying you’re multitalented make you obnoxious? Or deluded. George M Cohan said it for years, and was right. Or Lin-Manuel Miranda, who, like Cohan, wrote the lyrics and music for, and starred in, In The Heights. Since it’s really easy to misread written statements because we’re missing personality, presentation and inflection, shouldn’t we give her the benefit of the doubt?

  I might also point out that I had told her via Facebook that I was coming up tonight, and then later recanted because the seats available were too expensive, she not only expressed regret (which a diva might do, as in “What? You’re not coming to see ME, ME, ME!), she took it upon herself to surf the Caramoor website to see if she could find less expensive tickets, which I thought was very nice.

  on July 24, 2010 at 2:38 PM
• Sanford says:

  I’ve decided that when I grow up, I want to be a black American Verdi or Puccini soprano. How come Hollywood and Opera still preface everything with “black” (Halle Berry – 1st Black Best Actress Winner!) when sports moved on so long ago. Even politics was integrated not just last century, but the century before (Hiram Revels [1851-1877] – 1st Black Senator!). Takesha will either be a great singer or she won’t…and that’s not dependent on her color, it’s dependent on talent and training. What made Leontyne, Shirley, Battle, Hendricks, et al, great wasn’t the color of their skin, it was the instrument they were born with and how they used it. And to say otherwise is like saying that African-Americans are better athletes because they’re black. It reduces people to one characteristic that should be, but obviously isn’t, completely irrelevant by 2010.

  on July 24, 2010 at 6:34 PM
  • DonCarloFanatic says:

    I know this is supposed to be the colorblind, postracial, nonsexist era, and I am all for it. But the bad old days weren’t really all that long ago. That did shape careers, willy-nilly. Presumably, it won’t in the future.

    What we keep noting today are singers who don’t take care of their voices. With all the training available, I wonder why that is? Is it lack of intelligence, or lack of athletic ability? Or going for the gold when they need to work to achieve the bronze or the silver first? What’s happening?

    on July 24, 2010 at 10:27 PM
• Bluessweet says:

  OT and Performance Alert:

  Opera Manhattan
  is doing Eugene Onegin August 28 & 29
  At Shetler Studios
  244 West 54th Street
  12th Floor, Penthouse 1
  New York, NY 10019

  On the 29th it’s a 4:30 Matinee

  Eric Sampson will be singing Lensky for that performance.

  He’s a young guy fresh off a three week seminar (The coOPERAtive at Westminster Choir College.) I think he has a good voice for the role. If you Manhattan types want to check him or it out, that’s the time to do it.

  on July 25, 2010 at 8:13 AM
• callasorphan says:

  That’s a wonderful clip and it does reflect how I really feel on this subject. By the way, I simply adore Cleese and the two Ronnies!

  on July 25, 2010 at 9:12 AM