Save the date
La Cieca is proud to unveil what she hopes will become your second-favorite calendar: The New York Opera Calendar at Parterre. This handy resource includes an exhaustive list of opera and opera-related performances for the 2010-2011 season, the better to plan your busy social life. Opera companies and members of the cher public who have events they want to include in the calendar (or who can provide your doyenne with an introduction to one of the dieux du stade) are asked to email La Cieca with details.
I prefer this calendar
http://www.fritzliess.com/2008/08/sexy-priest-calendar-2009.html
Interesting point, Dawson – I got both a few years back, and the Calendario Romano’s men of the (firmly-buttoned-up) cloth generated way more interest than the rugby gods with (and without) their tan lines and ubiquitous body art. BTW I did not see the Calendario on sale within the Vatican precinct – I got mine on the Via Veneto – and am none the wiser today as to whether the models really are Catholic priests. I bet Zia Zeff would just love the Rev’d August as his confessor!
A friend of mine brought this from italy last year. For about 20 minutes I actually considered joining the priesthood, and since I am Catholic, I wouldn’t have to go through the learning curve some would have to go through.
If the Sacristan had looked like that Tosca would never have got past the baptistery!
La Cieca’s new NY Opera Calendar is a great bookmark on the Iphone and Ipad. Thanks so much for making it. It will be interesting to see how it grows. It would be nice if the dress rehearsal dates could be indicated (DR) as well.
Which reminds me, has anyone one considered creating a Parterre iPhone app? It would be so convenient, and one can imagine myriad possibilities for on-the-go opera reportage… (“I’m standing at the Revlon with a red poppy in my hair. The password is -farfalletta-”)
That’s a great tool, thanks dear Cieca.
Sept 25: Eva Lind. I had no idea she was still singing. Philips tried very hard to make a star out of her over two decades ago, without much success. At that time I bought her coloratura aria CD, hated it and gave to a friend right away.
My thoughts exactly. When I saw that date my first words were She is still singing?
My first thoughts were: who got her the gig and why?
she should have remained with such roles as Ida in Fledermaus. Lovely for her.
Eva Lind did a very succesful Rothenberger on her career -- and is, I must admit, a little weird. Her greatest ambition is to travel to the moon.
But she did study with Wilma Lipp, and, long ago, was a very good singer -- the youngest Queen of the Night at the Vienna Staatsoper ever -- she even got a contract there age 19, or so? She is also the greatest Sophie I ever heard. No other Sophie sang the part so easily, and with so much fun and energy as she did.
This Frederic the Great aria always cheers me up:
I feel as if I haven’t been here in ages!
I think this calendar is a great idea. I just saw two local companies in two very different and equally wonderful productions. Friday, I saw Bleeker Street Opera (one of the two Amato offshoots) in Madama Butterfly, which was very simply staged and beautifully sung by Kristin Sampson. And then Sunday, I saw Lucia di Lammermoor at the Dell’Arte Opera (in the lovely 80 St Mark’s Place Theater), with Sharon Eisert and Neil Darling (both of whom rocked the house).
This YouTube should be on every opera lover’s calendar:
It’s a remnant of the past when singers practiced mastering their technique and understood how those studies should be applied to the music they performed before they built an international career or accepted contracts for roles beyond their abilities
Oh well, “it’s always imperfection that makes beauty.” (Tennessee Williams)
Well, it would not have hurt had some of those singers could have taken the time and work on the music as music, learned to sculpt the musical phrases intead of treating them as a vehicle for trills, puntature and acuti, mastered an even, securly bound and sounded scale and treated the text as more than vague signposts for melismas.
Left as such, not much more than a circus act.
Nevertheless, in the Art of the Prima Donna the execution of the same aria is the real thing. This has nothing to do with the ageing of the voice, and tons to do with the onset of laziness after 1962, the concsious strengthening of the top while at the same time paying scant attention to singing trhough the text and mastering a musical phrase and projecting it. Still, there were suprises along the way and, of course, the classic phrase: “you had to be there and bathe in the golden sound”. One can still judge an artist’s ability to make music, based on a clip.
In short , she dropped diction to maintain the top. After which, she sang everything in Sutherlandese.
More Patti–did Sutherland ever top *this* display?
Cerquetti/Farrell:
Your second sentence is perhaps accurate for Sutherland and Price, although 1962 is too early for the syndrome you describe. Look, it is not unheard of for great technicians to slip into mannerism or laziness – ever heard some of Horowitz’s recordings from the late 50s, 60s and 70s?
I would descibe the phenomenon as follows:
Virtuoso appears and is acclaimed. The early triumphs reveal great technical ability, musical sensitivity and a desire to use the great technique in the service of great art.
Flash forward a few years. Acclaim for the virtuoso is nearly unanimous. They are deemed benchmarks, but something bad is happening. It appears that the audiences and impressarios don’t really care about the musical sensitivity, they care about the stunning E flat in alt with trills, or the ravishing floated high C (night after bloody night), or the amazing runs and thunderous octaves.
Virtuoso grows bored with audiences and becomes increasingly either disinterested (several violin virtuosos who will remain nameless) or mannered. Occasionally, due to the circumstances or the colleague (or the conductor!!), virtuoso snaps out of his or her ennui and reminds the cognoscenti why they are prima inter pares.
Pretty common phenomenon. Fits La Stupenda and La Price pretty well if you ask me.
But remember Sutherland sang her first Lucia in 59. She still had the role in her rep (with a couple minor and discreet transpos) until the mid 80s. Price first sang Aida in ’57, she kept the role in her rep for almost 30 years.
I am not aware of any soprano singing Aida or Lucia over such a long period of time (certainly since the golden age) and at such a high level.
(Gruberova aside – her technique is sui generis and NOT to be emulated but by the weird. Perhaps Niel can enlighten us, but I swear that Gruberova has an extra adenoidal cavity or something. SHe makes sounds that are inhuman at times – ever hear her first recorded Bell Song? No other singer sounds as if she is singing while drawing IN the breath.)
Do their later performances show decline? Of course, they were after all human. But once warmed to their tasks, all that technique and muscle memory could be summoned and the beast slain. They did it all the time well into their golden years.
Did they sing with the sensitivity of La Margiono. OF COURSE NOT! But in 10 years when La Margiono is utterly forgotten by all but Cerquetti/Farrell (and Thomas Hampson – who bitterly complained about her hiring on those Harnoncourt recordings), their voices will be remembered as we remember Patti, Melba and Gadski.
Just my opinion.
Thanks for this luvtennis
We seem to have written much upon the same subject and at the same time !
ref my comment below
I know I might sound patronizing at times but we all have our passions and care deeply about what we love.
Thanks for admitting the sensitivity in Margiono’s singing. THIS is essentially what I’m looking for, above everything else.
Absolute rubbish if you are referring to Sutherland. She was greater musician than any of the singers touted in your posts.
As for the rest, I have listened intensively to just about every singer of note who left recordings, and I feel strongly justified in saying that Sutherland was the greatest vocal technician since Patti and that her only peer in that regard in modern times was Price.
Which Price? Leontine? Cause I have news for you about the last 20 or so years of Price’s career.
“Sutherland was the greatest vocal technician since Patti”
Um, Melba? Horne? Gedda? Lisitsian?
It also presupposes that there’s no place for diction in ‘vocal technique’.
Sutherland was the greatest vocal technician since Patti
Leontyne, yes.
And I don’t need any news from you, Lindoro, I have pirate recordings from every era, virtually every year of Price’s career from 57-onwards till the end. Her technique was sublime during that period even if you don’t like what she did with it.
You might want to check Melba’s and Patti’s recordings made during their late 50s and early 60s for reference point.
You may disagree with my opinion, but I have spent thousands of dollars on my obsession so please forgive me, if I am unmoved by your disagreement.
I will also point this out. Sutherland and Price preserved their art over the course of three decade INTERNATIONAL careers. Their singing was subject to a level of scrutiny nearly unheard of for previous generations due to the increasing ubiquity of recordings and television/radio during a time when Opera still mattered to the public at large.
Take a recording of theirs, score in hand, and compare it just about anyone else’s recording (even recordings of live performances, mind you) and you will see that I have at least some objective basis for my opinion.
La Cieca:
You be very silly sometimes.
Celebrity Death Match:
Patti vs. Patty
I give Adelina the advantage because she knew all about gypsy curses and how to ward off the evil eye.
Last one.
luvtennis :
Sutherland was a great vocal technician …especially early….but musician?….ouch! Hey! in Gliere’s Concert for Coloratura Soprano & Orchestra there are points where yes, she actually screams, not sings.
Diction is important to a singer and with Sutherland….my lovely perverse example is her turn in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera with Te Kanawa and Lansbury. The moment where she is supposed to be saying the word ‘ruined’ (in English no less). It comes out as ‘ruooooiuned’.I fall all over the floor every time I hear it
Go back and listen to some of her Handel recorded in the late 50′s. The shock of her later decline in diction becomes starkly clear..
In later years little Dickie Bonygne was adjusting her scores down madly , even to a tone & a half as well as the speed tempos to suit and allow her to negotiate the music. Her co-stars did not always get the same consideration. The key transposing started around the early 70′s. At the end all one heard was a fluttering shell of what once was.
Was this from Sydney? It’s certainly the same production they staged for her retirement, and I have a question about it. The set matches very closely the designs for the premiere in 1836, except that the original included a backdrop painting of the chateau at Chenonceaux, with the gardens in the foreground. The detail and accuracy of historical settings was particularly important (for the first time in the history of opera) to French audiences in the 1830s, so that drop was hardly an afterthought. So why did this production, which hews so closely to the original, replace that drop with this generic marbly-blue sky curtain?
Please do ot remind about that horrid swansong Les Hugenuts of Sutherland. If it was Sydney… probably to squeeze the thing on its narrow ‘back lane’ stage. Back stage ‘facilities’ are equally a tiny school hall scream.
Hey, I’m not the one who posted the video!
I checked the video again….yes it was her Sydney farewell performance. That silly ratty amateur-standard version of Les Hugenuts – crucifying it. With Sutherland performing like an old bird parked on her perch throne chirping away, while you listened and wished someone would wring her neck and put the discerning parts of the audience out of their misery. To think they videotaped that f…king thing!
Cheaper!
thats la Sutherland, isn’t she a pain though ?
I don’t get Eva Lind or Eva Mei. Or Anna Tomawa-Sintow, and I like everyone!! And, Cieca, where did you
find my old high-school yearbook photo (above, top)and what’s all that funny writing across my pecs. Shit.
BIGBob
As I understand it, Anna Tomawa-Sintow was a perfectly decent soprano who got taken up by Karajan because she more or less did as she was told by him which he of course liked, and hence she became a much better known singer than might otherwise have been the case. But I actually think she sustained the reputation she gained and developed her career beyond the opportunities he threw her way through a unique ability to communicate with an audience. So from slightly under-whelming vocal means, via a leg-up from Karajan, she became quite a cherished artist.
I’ve enjoyed Eva Mei in the past, although it did seem slightly wirey, especially in the middle, but I’d been wondering what had happened to her. I have never heard Eva Lind.
“I have never heard Eva Lind” – some people have all the luck!
I’ve heard her live- as Nanetta in a Glyndebourne Prom of Falstaff. She sang her aria prettily enough, I have to say. I think she was overpromoted rather than incompetent.
That was a great night, anyway- Desderi was the Falstaff and I think we all know how I feel about him by now. And I’ve never heard a more raucous audience response than at the end of the finale- not even at a football match.
Armer – I’d forgotten that. Yes, you are probably right – an overpromoted, soubrette – but the voice became thinner and more wirey the more prominent she became. It was a small-house voice, but she was very pretty, of course. I gather Placido admired her a lot….
Anna Tomova-Sintow had a thriving career behind the iron curtain before Karajan took her up – she was the Deutsche Staatsoper’s – then in East Berlin – answer to Pilar Lorengar at the Deutsche Oper in the West and sang more or less the entire lyric and lirico-spinto from the Mozart’s which she carried on singing in Salzburg, to Tatyana, Arabella, Capriccio Countess, Marschallin, Ariadne, Butterfly, Tosca, Aida, Elsa, Elisabeth. She was the favourite soprano of the East Berlin public and continued to sing “guest” performances long after Karajan discovered her (I saw her sing Aida there after the wall came down around 1990). Maybe it wasn’t an absolutely first-class voice, but she was a true artist and stage animal and her technique was pretty solid. She became a much-loved singer at Covent Garden in roles such as Jaroslavna in Prince Igor, Amelia in Ballo, Marschallin and I think she did her only Kaiserinnen there – perhaps the most moving ever at Covent Garden (although I can’t claim to have heard Hildegard Hillebrecht).
I always found Anna T-S more exciting in Verdi than in her core rep of Mozart and Strauss.
Let’s not forget Celestina Casapietra.
“Casapietra war von 1965 bis 1993 erster Sopran der Berliner Staatsoper.”
( Not to mention her hunky son Bjoern…)
http://www.casapietra.de/main/
I **think** ATS did some Kaiserinnen in Berlin too, after Covent Garden.
She even went on to do Salome (in concert) and Turandot. Karajan used to like the fact she could produce a good top C at 10 o’clock in the morning, apparently.
Anna T-S sang an incredibly moving Violetta at the Met in 1987 and her performance of Ernani involami at the Met’s Centennial gala was astounding.
My very first opera at the Met was a Rosenkavalier with Anna T-S. I can’t honestly remember the voice, but it got the job done.
Listen, Tomowa-Sintow didn’t suck! What is a problem for me in some of her recordings is that she adopts a “tubular” German voice production (the paradigm here is Gundula Janowitz) that squeezes some of the natural Slavic warmth and richness out of her tone.
I heard her at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 1980′s as Violetta, Trovatore Leonora and the Marschallin. They were all really fine. BTW: she was a superb Leonora in “Trovatore” – all the richness and agility and line one could want. (I never heard Leontyne Price or Zinka or Caballé). In the early nineties she did a Tosca at the Met and she was past it.
I really loved the voice when she let is pour out freely. She was a Chicago favorite who also sang Tatyana and Butterfly there.
Wasn’t that ATS Kaiserin the one with Gwyneth as the Dyer’s Wife, where Solti asked the Dame to keep it down a little in the final quartet so that ATS might also be heard, whereupon Gwyneth replied along the lines of ‘I’m terribly sorry dear, I thought you were marking’?
ATS sang a very beautiful Elsa at the Met to domingo’s Lohengrin.
I worship the groud ATS walks in. For me she is a great example of how to realize what your core rep is and sticking to is while also expansing it to other areas.
Her Donna Anna to me is at par with Sutherland’s early recording. Her Aida to me is as goos as anyone’s. If I find her a little wanting on Strauss is because I find the voice has too much color (and that is really not a complaint).
I own her studio recordings of Tosca (yes, she made one with Vixel and Gedda), Traviata and Butterfly among others. Her Butterfly shines along with Price’s, even if Price is in better company in her recording.
ATS will always have a place of honor in my house, along with Callas, and Popp…
Cocky, the ROH FroSch with ATS and Gwyneth was conducted by Haitink, but that anecdote wouldn’t surprise me. I saw Gwyneth’s Faerberin in Paris, London (in two different productions) and Munich, and it was VERY loud every time.
I agree that ATS early Donna Anna for Bohm is exceptional. The best since the Leontyne and Joan, but right after that I felt that the vibrato started to turn into a judder and pitch was obsucred. Contrast that Anna with Marschallin from a decade later to see what I mean.
Even the Ernani aria from the Met which is very well sung has some of those problems. To me it sounds as if she is slightly sharp almost all the time.
Listening to those clips reminds me that I saw Tomova-Sintow in Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, Puccini, Giordano, Borodin and Wagner roles at Covent Garden and it is hard to think of another recent soprano who has successfully such a wide range of roles. That early Ariadne clip from Harry is glorious – she sounds like a more youthful-sounding Leonie with greater control. She was certainly a more placid temperament on stage and she continued singing the diva roles too long – I have a live Turandot from Barcelona, and she even did Norma somewhere. But I think she was a very great singer in her prime. At the Staatsoper before she was famous she shared all the lyric and lirico-spinto roles with Casapietra and took over the more youthful roles as Casapietra aged. The Italian soprano was married to Herbert Kegel, a big East-German musical cheese, which is why she was regarded as the company’s “erster Sopran” but ATS was certainly the greater singer and the public’s favourite.
Lemme add a couple more clips of Tomowa that I just discovered, both from trovatore, the duet with di Luna and the D’amor…
Strange that I completely agree about Lind and Mei, but must admit my complete disagreement in regards to Tomowa-Sintow. I really feel that she is tremendously underrated. Some examples:
and
and
Also, I haven’t watched the entire performance in a few years, but I remember her Marschallin under von Karajan on DVD being utterly moving and real.
These clips of ATS are all great. I’d really only heard her in Mozart before and been pretty underwhelmed, and hence believed everything I’d read about her career really being a product of Karajan’s making. I see now that it’s not true, and wish I hadn’t repeated it in my post above. Whoever said she was a bit like Rysanek is quite right, except that ATS’s intonation is rather better! Extraordinarily versatile artist – that Giordano is fabulous. I also think that from that Strauss clip, it sounds like she had a bit of an influence on Fleming.
I agree, ATS has been greatly underrated. Thanks for these clips – they are wonderful.
bigbob 56….try and listen to Tomowa-Sintow as Strauss’ Ariadne under Levine on the DG label. I believe it is some of her best work. I have about 6 or 7 versions…and for some reason I keep coming back to it, more than others.
And check out this performance of the aria from ATS’s “Iron Curtain” days.
OT. Watching the Renaay/Hvor concert. Renaay narrates that she and Hvor
sang the last duet in Trovatore. I guess she has never seen the last scene.
Figures.
Somewhat like a baritone friend of mine who sent out an e-mail trying to get up a group to go to the HD Onegin. He mentioned what a great opera Onegin was and then said “no one dies in this opera.” I guess a tenor getting shot and killed didn’t matter to a baritone.
Shows that the baritone does not begin to understand the character of Onegin, pursued for six years across Europe by the image of his friend, dead at his hand, in the snow.
On the opera quiz about 12 years ago the panelists were asked to name an opera in which no one died and some dumb bunny responded,’MANON”. Maybe she had never stuck around for Act Five?
I love the story of Set Svanholm who, late in his career, revealed that he had never seen Act 3 of Walkure and didn’t know what happened. There is an apocryphal story that Flagstad had never heard Rheingold before she recorded Fricka. My mother, a coloratura soprano, was only vaguely aware that Lucia had a scene after the Mad Scene.(But I think (hope) she was joking.) I think my baritone friend probably thought the death of a tenor was a good thing! I do wonder where they get the Opera Quiz panelists these days. I yell at the radio a lot.
Reminds me of the incident I had with a soprano I once represented . She was scheduled to play a minor role in one opera and wanted me to give the recorded music to familiarize herself. I was taken aback when she exclaimed “Don’t worry, just give me the bits I am, in.!” I tried to tell her to familiarize herself with the whole of any opera she was asked to perform in. Had she not realized the possibility if the company got in a jam,and needed a singer to take over some part quickly, that bigger doors could open, as a result? It was all to no avail….the lazy thing!
It is surprising if you quiz and delve, just how ignorant some singers really are about the full repertoire-the in’s & out’s of opera. I bet many enthusiasts here, know a great deal more.
Oh Harry, you have no idea. I remember being at IU and people who i went to classes with had never heard Caballe’s or Callas’ or Lucia Popp’s voices; Could not tell anything about their careers or what rep they sang. Furthermore, there are still teachers (and singers) out there who take great pride in saying that they never listen to any singer do rep they do.
And we are not going to talk about singers who had never gone to see an opera, and they were in one of the premiere schools for opera.
In that school, i was the freak who could talk not only tenor rep, but soprano and mezzo rep.
I really liked the programme, but the gowns.
To which Anna TS replied to Gwyneth “Oh was that you singing, I thought they were slaughtering a moose on the premises.”
Re les Hugenuts above – I’m almost certain that scene is taken from the final Sydney production.
Nerva – funny you mention la Casapietre – I’ve got the DVD of Andrea Chenier with her and Corelli the Great- good production (film) – shame about the woeful lip sync’ing. I heard a story many years ago that she only got the gig cos la Tebaldi cancelled and she was the wife of some record company CEO or something like that- hence she got the role. Always thought she turns in a very solid if not thrilling or inspiring performance and have always wondered if others remember her much for anything else at all?
Never heard it, but mention of Casapietra always reminds me of reading a review of a recording of Cosi in an old copy of GRAMOPHONE. It says that she’s ok, but that it’s a bit of a shame that ‘Per Pieta, Ben Mio, Perdona’ is cut.
Autres temps, autres moeurs.
That set had Schreier, Burmeister, Leib, Geszty and Adam under Suitner– the whole Stasi team!
When Sutherland was a mere lass of 60.
Where was Cerquetti at that age? Not singing for nearly 30 years.
And so what? Artists make their choices. Where was Rossini at 60? Fat and being worshiped in Paris, yes, no new opera in decades.
I find the implied insult to Cerquetti offensive, specially when we do not know for sure what prompted her early retirement. For all we know, it could have been health issues, and that is one of the rumors flying around. She, to the best of my knowledge, has not cleared the air on the issue either.
She explains in some later (rare) interviews that it was due to :
1. a facial ‘tick’ she developed during 1958 or so
2. her being pregnant with her first child
3. health problems of her father
4. general fatigue
I guess she was tired by late 1960 and just didn’t want to go on.
Cerquetti was incredibly uneven during her PRIME, Lindoro. Breath support issues left her with a rapid oscillating vibrato and a top that could be shrill beyond belief. These problems were intermittent in the 4 or 5 years of her prime, but they were symptomatic of serious technical issues.
Yes, I am aware that there were rumors of her health or family being an issue. I don’t know. What I do know is that she was an exciting singer with an inadequate technique whose career lasted a hot minute and was gone.
There will always be exiting singers with inadequate techniques. Just since 199 we have had
Daniele de Nisse, Rolando Villazon, Anna Netrebko and God knows how many more.
Criticize for for what she did or didn’t do. Do not criticize her by default; cause if we go by default, well there was Callas and the rest were just back-up singers, and that doesn’t sound too nice does it?
luvtennis said :
“I have listened intensively to just about every singer of note who left recordings, and I feel strongly justified in saying that Sutherland was the greatest vocal technician since Patti and that her only peer in that regard in modern times was Price.”
I will try and elaborate in my ifuriatingly broken English.
You are indeed strongly justified in saying that Sutherland is perhaps the greatest technician among singers of the 20th century. I absolutely subscribe to this view. The case regarding L. Price is less certain, but let’s say the voice remained gorgeous from the middle up to a top C way until 1985 or so.
A great technician. So what. This is a talk widely popular among vocal students in their 20s. I’ve been through a lot of this vocal technique talk. Yet I was never sorely, deeply interested or immersed in the issue and personally I think this has very little to do with my love / appreciation of the art of singing.
Granted, a stellar technique will enable you to imbue the music you perform with all the myriad details required in order to honor the composer and present a thorough, ‘complete’ musical interpretation to the public. Some roles require delving at a deeper level into the various technical / vocal and interpretative issues inherent in the role, others require a solid vocal equipment and a battery of vocal “effects” such as mentioned above, and are less pressing in matters of sensitivity and high musicianship.
As for myself, I’m interested in the more “technical” roles (i.e. Marguerite in Huguenots) up to a point. It’s really lovely and oh so rare to find somebody who can sing the proper roulades in the Marguerite / Raoul duet and have the big instrument required + stamina for the whole aria + amazing acuti. But frankly either you have it or you don’t, and it ceases to interest me after a while. Some roles manage to combine both challenges, like Lucia. And I’ve known to have liked singers in the role without the prerequisite dazzling technique and high notes, because they had something interesting and gripping to say about the role.
As for musicianship and defining it, it is much more subjective yet instrumental musicians are usually put through a grinding period of apprenticeship and studies and are expected to develop solid rules of what should be done. Music is akin to language in that a phrase has got to have a beginning, development, climax and recede towards the end. I feel that some “great voices” (meaning a combination of unique sound, volume and technique) are given leeway in this. MOst times I’m afraid that, judged by purely criteria of musicianship, most singing that I’ve heard coming from Sutherland or L. Price is unacceptable. I can’t debate the fact that 1. both had vocal longevity 2. both produced a sound that probably live was mesmerizing. Yet on record I’m simply not thrilled, or captivated, or moved, at all.
Had Sutherland continued along the lines of the “salce” scena captured on the Art of the Prima Donna album, it would have been different for me, as an (active) listener. Now that aria has it all – line, beauty of tone, clarity of enunciation, involvement, beautiful shaping of lines, variety of colour, fidelity to whatever it is Verdi wants – even the very difficult “con una voce lontana” which practcially noone but Callas managed to do. No, this is surely the gem in a superb vocal-demonstration album that is deeply satisfactory to these ears. After that album, most of what I hear is lumpy, loose, uninteresting. I don’t care whether Sutherland or Madame Y will be remembered for the stupendous technique they had. I, for myself, know what I want to hear, what I’m looking for – distinction, intelligence, style, verbal acuity. And I really don’t care whether I find it in some obscure singer from the 40s which practically nobody knows and most people have forgotten.
Ms Fleming is widely considered America’s golden voice and most people are familiar with her as Opera’s chief representative for the masses. Who cares? I know I couldn’t care less. She will probably be remembered long after I’m gone. Definitely not a clinching factor over here.
Bravo, Cerquetti!
I cannot quibble with one thing you say. When you lay out your criteria as you have, and your english is superb by the way, you have shielded yourself from anything but silly personal attacks.
I try to avoid those. Also, you should know that for me the sine qua non of a great vocal technique can be summed up with three words: breath support/legato. Everything else is like the frosting. By MY accounting, Price and Sutherland are light beyond most of their contemporaries.
So we have very different perspectives. C’est la vie!
But I assure you that I also appreciate many of the artists that you love. I feel compelled to defend those artists, like Sutherland and Price who are primarily great technical singers, vocal virtuosa, because I believe that there qualities have been undervalued in the post-Callas era, especially by European critics.
I must confess that I don’t listen to Sutherland and Price recordings nearly as much as I listen to some of less technically gifted singers that you mention. I don’t go Victoria Falls all that often either, but there are times when enamoured with another singer (who I am certain is MUCH better) that I will return to a recording of theirs for comparison – SCORE IN HAND. It is almost always very illuminating.
They are very special ladies.
I agree 100% with your definition of a great technique as breath support/legato. If the breath really is properly sorted out, the whole voice will be properly free and the whole range will work perfectly all of the time.
I disagree however that Sutherland managed to retain this technique for her whole career. If she had, her Mozart album from the ’70s wouldn’t be the intollerable ordeal which it surely is. I also think a smarter singer would have developed their repertoire in new and interesting directions, rather than insist on trotting out the same roles and arias with transpositions which were neither minor nor discreet. The ‘bel raggio’ from a Met gala which she does in G-flat, down a minor third from the original key of A major, is a perfect example, motivated, one assumes, by the fact that top d-flat was the highest note she was prepared to sing in public by that point, and she was hell bent on sticking with her ornamentation worked out for her by Bonynge a couple of decades earlier which went up to top E.
I agree with Cocky Kurenwal that Bonygne acted as a Svengali with Sutherland’s ornamentation. I believe it lead to her interpretative capabilities being locked in a strait jacketlike she was coloratura opera’s Baby Jane. And that special magic she once had, those spontaneous surprising flashes of unassailable brilliance dimmed with the passing years. One glimmer of what she was capable of, was strangely in the Turandot recording not under Bonygne’s control for once… but under Zubin Metha. She was rightfully dangerous and scornful in the right way and it was visceral edge of the chair stuff.
I didn’t use the word Svengali, and I don’t necessarily blame Bonynge – it could have been sheer sloth on Sutherland’s part who seemed to enjoy having been set up early on as a great C19th style prima donna, and didn’t see why she should adapt and develop her repertoire in the face of her changing vocal means.
I get your point, Cocky, but I think you are being harsh.
First, Sutherland was a virtuoso. No way would she ever considered changing rep. For me transposition is a non issue in bel canto roles. It is an historically accepted practice – far more appropriate than come scritto approach in fact!
Second, before you ask this question of Sutherland, it must be posed of Callas and Tebaldi. In fact, whatever you think of transpositions, Sutherland remained a soprano til the end of her career. By 1965 (1957 in Maria’s case to be honest) neither singer had a truly reliable b flat. Oh they could still manage the note, but not with the control of a few years earlier and not to the standards that we might reasonable expect given their exalted position at the time.
WHat of them?
We’re talking about Sutherland, which should be possible without having to resort to an analysis of the technical issues of Tebaldi and Callas. Even if I were to take your point about those two, there are a great many other singers we could name who had an intact top b-flat in their mid 40s besides Sutherland, so I don’t think that particular avenue of debate is going to add much.
Quite what being a virtuoso has to do with not changing repertoire is a bit mysterious to me – what do you mean? There is other virtuosic repertoire, afterall. You can’t tell me for instance that your beloved Price was not a virtuoso, or Nilsson in her way. There are more ways for a singer to impress than with cadential notes higher than a top C, or a few semi-quavers. To perform the Forza Leonora, or Isolde as well as those two ladies respectively did takes virtuosity, in my opinion. I’m also not sure how virtuosic Sutherland starts to seem when her utterly unique top E becomes a D-flat instead – you can’t deny that the impact is lessened considerably when it has dropped down a minor third. And then it really does just look like she’s attempting to rest on past glories. I don’t dispute the fact that transposition is acceptable, desireable and indeed usual in bel canto – afterall, she did the Lucia mad scene in the traditional E-flat rather than the original F for most of her career, but she had a large enough voice with enough colour and breadth of line to have been able to convince in all sorts of other things in her later years, rather than stand up and sing almost in homage to what she had been 20 years previously. It just frustrates me that she didn’t show a bit more of an intrepid spirit.