Gallows humor
La Cieca hears that Susan Neves has joined the cast of Washington National Opera’s Un ballo in maschera to sing Amelia in two performances, and Tamara Wilson will sing two additional performances. The American sopranos take over dates held by Irène Theorin.
Did anyone read Michael Kaiser’s recent interview in San Francisco Classical Voice:
http://www.sfcv.org/events-calendar/artist-spotlight/michael-kaiser-the-art-of-administration
“One organization that isn’t following the rules you laid out in The Art of the Turnaround is Washington Opera, the company you started out with, in 1985. What happens when the boss gives the very distinct impression that he is not in charge, so that board members have to continually assert that he is in charge?”
“I wouldn’t comment specifically about Washington Opera. I make it a policy never to poke a finger at another organization. But I will say that it is very dangerous when arts organizations are not led by professional staff, and when the board starts to — what I call “poach” — that is, they begin to take part of that [staff] function. When I got to the Royal Opera House in 1998, the board met every week for five hours. So in a lot of organizations, when the board does not feel that the staff is performing adequately, they start to take over, out of fear. And this is well-intentioned, but it almost always ends up not in a great situation.”
DC is a mess, but I really don’t understand the Kaiser Love. What he did at ROH was truly remarkable, but he whilst he’s busy getting his own brand out there and selling books, his own house at the Kennedy Center is wildly dysfunctional.
To Hell with the poachers!
Are all those Turandots and Brunnhilde’s taking a tole on Theorin’s voice or was this a management issue?
Ask not for whom the belle toles…
well she did cancel one Elektra in Salzburg where Janice Baird sang for her. I don’t know if that was the last one but had to be at least one of the last ones. Perhaps she thinks she can no longer sing Amelia? Perhaps she is really sick. When does this open?
She didn’t sing the 8/16 performance of Elektra, but sang the last three.
Un Ballo in Maschera isn’t an opera that I’m too familiar with – is there a history of Brunnhildes and Turandots also singing Amelias?
I was sorry to hear that Theorin is no longer slated to sing. She’s a performer that I’ve come to really enjoy.
“Un Ballo in Maschera isn’t an opera that I’m too familiar with – is there a history of Brunnhildes and Turandots also singing Amelias? ”
Yes. Nilsson sang and recorded all three; Callas sang all three and recorded BALLO and TURANDOT: Leonie sang all three (granted, Bruennhilde not long and very young in a provincial theater).
Others who sang all three: Amy Shuard, Gwyneth Jones, Rita Hunter, Maria Nemeth, Johanna Meier, Klara Barlow, Gladys Kuchta, Ingrid Bjoner.
Thanks Nerva.
yes, Nerva, but look at the order in which sopranos usually take on the role. More lyric sopranos (Like Tomowa) take on the role latter on their careers. Future Brunhildes/Turandots/Isoldes start with that role and drop it when they get to Mount Everest. I can not think of one soprano (except for that freak Nilsson) who went back to Amelia after having sung Turandot and Brunhilde.
Also, most everyone, once they have started down the Brunnhilde/Turandot/Elektra path no longer are able to provide the sort of warmth of sound and legato required for Verdi.
Nilsson sang it later, rather a fish out of water kind of role for her, and not one in which she was considered particularly distinguished. her recording of it is not so great either. Like her Aida and her Tosca, excellent singing but not really the role, if you know what I mean.
“. I can not think of one soprano (except for that freak Nilsson) who went back to Amelia after having sung Turandot and Brunhilde.”
Callas and Rysanek also qualify.
Talking about freaks of nature, and you are right about Callas, I do not know much about the career of Rysanek.
Rysanek sang Bruennhilde very early on ( 1949 or 1950), sang Turandot around 1958 in only two engagements (MONTE CARLO AND SAN FRANCISCO) but kept Amelia, of which she did an NP at the Met in the early 60s, in her rep until about 1976- wasn’t it her last Verdi role to drop?
More pre-TURANDOT ladies: Lilli Lehmann sang Amelia at the Met in the 1889-90 season. She had been doing the WALKUERE Bruennhilde there since 1885 and did so up through 1898.
Here is part of the Met schedule of Melanie Kurt: in WALKUERE she was here Sieglinde but in the other two RING opera sang Bruennhilde and Isolde in TRISTAN:
Goetterdaemmerung {85}
Metropolitan Opera House; 12/18/1915
Un Ballo in Maschera {18}
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 12/21/1915
Tristan und Isolde {131}
Metropolitan Opera House; 12/24/1915
Die Walkuere {175}
Metropolitan Opera House; 12/29/1915
Un Ballo in Maschera {19}
Metropolitan Opera House; 01/1/1916
Un Ballo in Maschera {20}
Metropolitan Opera House; 01/14/1916
Siegfried {108}
Metropolitan Opera House; 01/15/1916
Tristan und Isolde {132}
New York, Brooklyn; 01/18/1916
One more : Johanna Gadski. She sang a NP of BALLO at the Met in 1903 with a pretty remarkable cast (below) and returned to the part on the Met tour of 1916. She sang the WALKUERE Bruennhilde over 40 times and SIEGFRIED over 20 times with the company between 1904 and 1917 and GOETTERDAEMMERUNG 14 times between 1904 and 1914.
So these parts are clearly commensurate, even though Verdian casting has gotten lighter over the decades ( c.f. Mireille Delunsch as Amelia, a ridiculous idea that only her fiercest partisans applauded).
………………….
February 23, 1903
New production
UN BALLO IN MASCHERA {6}
Amelia………………Johanna Gadski
Riccardo…………….Emilio De Marchi
Renato………………Giuseppe Campanari
Ulrica………………Louise Homer
Oscar……………….Fritzi Scheff
Samuel………………Edouard de Reszke
Tom…………………Marcel Journet
Conductor……………Luigi Mancinelli
Based on this discussion (I haven’t heard a lot of Theorin), it’s sounding like tessitura – much of Amelia, like Sieglinde, lies quite low for a soprano role.
Amelia has a hell of a high C in her big scene. It also calls for long legato lines and piano singing. (Not that all Amelias have managed those.)
Caballe also sang Amelia as well as just about everything else.
And just for the sake of completeness, Milanov sang Turandot early in her career and then went on to become the Met’s Amelia for years.
But again, once they started singing one they dropped the other. Caballe did not sing Amelia after she went with Turandot, not that I can find, and Milanov dropped Turandot from her rep by the time she came to the met.
Caballe kept singing Amelia through the early 1980′s. In 1980 she sang Turandot and Ballo within a couple of months.
This is just a guess, but I’ll be surprised if Milanov did not sing Ballo while still in Yugoslavia and singing Turandot.
And how many Amelias can manage those gorgeous arching quiet phrases shortly after her entry in the Ulrica scene (the tune that’s quoted in the orchestra before her big aria)? A low-lying soprano certainly couldn’t.
Dimitrova sang them both.
Sorry, but I must disagree. If you listen to Lehmann or Gadski it quickly becomes clear that despite the size of their voices, they sang as lyric sopranos sing. The type of heavy metallic, hard-edged singing that you are referring to would have been quite foreign to them.
Remember, Lehmann sang Constanze. And both singers were accomplished Mozartians throughout their careers.
luvtennis, kindly don’t make up nonsense about my posts.
Violetta:
I wasn’t responding to your post. I was using the Reply button to stay in the same conversation. Thought that was clear from context.
Thanks for your courtesy and understanding.
Here is a bit of Theorin’s Elektra:
None of Elektra’s big scenes seem to be posted, but her lines following Klytemnastra’s monologue do culminate in about the biggest vocal climax in the score for her, and judging by what we get at the end of that clip, it sounds rather as if she’s made her bed now, rep-wise. Has a reason for her Ballo cancellation been given?
And a wobble …..is surely coming.
I’m just curious b/c I’m still (relatively) new to opera and not a vocal technician – how can one tell if a singer might develop a wobble? Does that have to do with technique?
A wobble is not desireable and hence usually down to some sort of technical deficiency, yes – lack of freedom in the breath flow, basically, possibly due to abdominal tension or tension somewhere further up, or a combination.
It can however be due to physiological damage or strain to the vocal mechanism as opposed to flawed technique, hence Callas’s wobble at the top from even the earliest days of her major career when she had remarkable vocal freedom and facility throughout her range, but a high c that just wouldn’t behave. I don’t maintain that she retained perfect technique throughout her career, but I think she started out with it, and basically tied herself up in knots trying to sort out her top over the next 15 years.
Same applies (to a far lesser extent) to Sills after a certain point, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of these ladies were precocious talents who got going very young.
Can a wobble develop with age no matter how good the technique? I’m thinking of Sam Ramey, who surely must have good technique.
Yes – the muscles that go into producing a voice fall victim to the ageing process like any others. That means they might not be strong enough after a certain point, or that the singer might not have the control over them that he or she requires.
I continue to be impressed by her and, based on what I just heard, think she very well still could sing Amelia. One of the nice things about her Turandot are the soft lyrical touches she brings to the music. I’m not sure exactly why she’s not singing Sieglinde instead of Big B, but there’s nothing un-Amelia about that singing.
I don’t care that Theo’s gone because Susan Neves ROCKS!
Chaka, I agreed that Susan Neves was quite impressive as Abigaille at the Met. But I was told that she underwent the same gastric bypass surgery that Voigt, Brueggergosman and Gruber had. I saw her at the Met as the Overseer in “Elektra” and she was half the size she used to be and the voice had no color or bloom. Just an empty, edgy sound which was strange because Debbie actually sounded restored as Chrysothemis with the golden shining richness mostly back.
Strange, I just heard her as Lady M in the Scottish Opera in Valladolid now must be 3 months ago and the voice was huge and so round that I thought how would she manage any of the 4 arias. She was truly magnificent. No edge to the voice whatsoever. Wonder if the Overseer really gives her time enough to shine. As well, has German rep really been her calling card?
What about Gadski? Did she sing Amelia? Certainly Bruennhilde and other Italian roles and of course Turandot was before her time.
An interesting question, which sent me to the Met Archives to see what she sang there. Apparently she sang 4 Amelias, but only on tour–both before and after concentrating on Wagner roles. Those tours (or those singers) must have been something–on the 1903 tour where she sang Amelia she also sang a Micaela!
Comment-submitter’s remorse: she actually didn’t sing ANYthing at the Archives themselves, despite my syntax.
What about Lise Lindstrom? She seemed to be a more lyrical Turandot and might be able to sing Amelia.
A good voice for Amelia (very strong middle, a useful C) might be Emily Magee. Maybe in some 3-5 years. And she has the personality for it. Come to think of it, Urmana has the voice for it, too. Much more suitable for her than Aida.
Urmana has done a fabulous Amelia – Florence I think.