A river in Egypt
After six months of professional silence, Natalie Dessay will return to the stage on Monday in Giulio Cesare at the Palais Garnier. A hint of what the Handel may sound like will be found after the jump.
After six months of professional silence, Natalie Dessay will return to the stage on Monday in Giulio Cesare at the Palais Garnier. A hint of what the Handel may sound like will be found after the jump.
LC, sorry for hijacking this thread, but couldn’t resist posting this bit of camp:
And you think Bieto is offensive?????
QPF -- Some moments of this production of “Giulio Cesare” works -- others don’t. In this moment Tolomeo is in his harem with his beauties and on the verge of raping Cornelia … Slightly dif to a young boy being gang raped and murdered (project much Bieto?) … All the danger and horror of the scene is built into Verdi’s music -- I don’t need to see that kind of violence on stage. Sellars is camp and silly and gets the point across of Tolomeo’s misguided lust … Bieto just shows himself in that introduction to be infantile IMO.
I always thought that Dessay would make a marvelous Mélisande. Also not as taxing on the voice.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t she performing the role in a concert performance along with Simon Keenlyside in London sometime in April?
She has sung Mélisande both in concert (first in 2005) and on stage. There is a DVD with her in the Pelly/Vienna production, conducted by De Billy, from early 2009. I have not seen it.
Well thank you PA! I must find this DVD you speak of…
I thought Keenlyside had given up Pelleas — now that he’s a Rigoletto and a Macbeth (or so he would have us believe).
You’re quite right, Dessay and Keenlyside are doing Pelleas at the Barbican in April, with Louis Langree. I think the same team are doing it in Paris that month too.
Keenlyside has been on a pretty steady diet of Verdi for some time now, but he’s returning to the Count for Salzburg this summer, which is very much core rep for him.
Several years ago, I heard a rumour that he had Siegmund pencilled in, but thought better of it. Did anybody else hear that, or is anybody in a position to confirm or deny? It was back in 2005 or something.
You are right, CK. Dessay will be singing Mélisande in a pretty impressive Pelléas at Théâtre des Champs Elysées in April:
Louis Langrée direction
Natalie Dessay Mélisande
Simon Keenlyside Pelléas
Marie-Nicole Lemieux Geneviève
Laurent Naouri Golaud
Alain Vernhes Arkel
Khatouna Gadelia Yniold
Nahuel di Pierro Le Médecin
Orchestre de Paris
Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris
I have the vienna DVD. Dessay’s Melisnde not at all marvelous. Ruining for everyone else in fact. Her husband was a v good Golaud in fact.
I think that this role is perfect for a come back! I see that she is also going to do it at the MET. But also she is going to do Traviata first. Hmm Let’s see how she does. I’m sure very well.
I really liked this Dessay clip, and I’ve been pretty anti-Dessay in the past. Interesting that she no longer sees Handel as an opportunity for interpolated top fs and just goes for real engagement with the text.
Re the hand movements, it was covered well by ianw2 above, but I’d add that in Handel, or baroque in general, when you have to sing the same sentence over and over and over again, remaining emotionally committed to it is even harder than in later music where the text is less repetitive. Personally I found the acting gestures she was doing quite intensely expressive, less so the singery technical ones, but she’s in a recording session, it’s none of our business what she does with her hands.
My only criticism is that the ornaments in the reprise of the A section seem like exactly what they are -- scrupulously worked out and rehearsed with absolutely zero hint of spontaneity -- the melodic line has just been re-composed by either her or Haim. I know we’re out of the habit of improvising ornaments these days, and for practical purposes they need to be broadly decided upon in advance, but Dessay herself still managed to make them SEEM like they were spur of the moment things in the Christie Alcina mentioned by another poster above.
All that flailing of arms is really poor form. You think the great singers (thinking of Marilyn Horne for one) would behave that way generating sound on breath?
Not flailing but waving:
Buster -- thanks for posting this. I love this underrated opera and this aria is HECTIC, particularly at the pace that Minko takes it in his studio recording!
btw with Callas Moser must have been one of the few ladies in living memory for some who have sung both Lucia and Isolde!!!
OT: Not to everyone’s taste but rather hectic Salome:
PS: I think I should have refined and said sung Wagner as opposed to Isolde -- not sure if she has sung the role on stage.
“btw with Callas Moser must have been one of the few ladies in living memory for some who have sung both Lucia and Isolde!!!”
Caballe recorded Lucia and sang Isolde onstage.
No problem -- Jean-Claude Malgoire conducts this, right?
Moser is great on the Brockes Passion as well -- one of her earliest recordings.
Her Salome is not sexy enough for me, and I dislike all of her Wagner except her Wellgunde. She did not sing Isolde on stage, but she did try out Sieglinde, but only the first act, and in concert. There exists an incredibly dull recording of that concert -- she cracks on the first note.
An Edda Moser biography is announced, by the way:
http://www.amazon.de/Ersungenes-Gl%C3%BCck-Edda-Moser/dp/3894876719/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1295114481&sr=8-3-fkmr0
I don’t know if there’s video footage of Horne in a recording session, but I bet you she would have done some kind of movement for the reasons described by several above. I think if you’re a singer, these kind of movements make sense. Some may indulge in them to a greater or lesser extent and again, it’s not something you’d do in a public performance, but in the context of the recording studio they are probably necessary. I like Cocky’s point about baroque (and the same could be said for much bel canto) music -- the texts can be very repetitive and you need something to keep the breath/your expression/your body “alive”. Also, in a lot of this type of music, the lines are very long, with words stretched out over several bars and arm movements of some sort go a long way to help keep everything moving forward.
You’re absolutely right about the performance of ornaments. If they don’t sound spontaneous, to hell with them!
Didn’t renee fleming say in her book that dessay improvised her ornamentations?
In this videoclip, Dessay explains that here the ornementations were written by E. Haïm. Even saying (laughing) that it’s “Emmanuelle’s fault”.
In fact I think that there is poor taste in these ornementations.
Yes she did, but obviously not all of them -- things like the top F at the end of ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ obviously had to be agreed upon in advance with Christie. I strongly suspect that while a few may be improvised, a few were also decided upon in advance, or at least a range of possibilities were -- point is they all sounded fresh and spontaneous, and they all added to the expressivity of the singing and the performance in general. I don’t think they do on the Cleopatra aria we’re discussing.
I’ve heard Dessay’s Se Pieta and V’adoro pupille and she tends to over-ornament the da capo, making it seem somewhat un-improvised. In some cases, especially in the V’adoro, Dessay seems to be singing countermelodies instead of ornaments, but I think it’s quite stunning. Even Beverly Sills did that in Giulio Cesare, right?
A friend attended the dress rehearsal.
As it is a rehearsal, I won’t write what he said about the singing, but the performance seems uneven.
But THE thing is : Dessay appears quite naked !
NEWS!!!! Lyubov Petrova (a Met Lindemann Young Artist) will be singing Lucia in Opera Lyra Ottawa’s production this march, replacing Tracy Dhal.
she was the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute film by Branagh.
Here’s her Lucia mad scene. I’m impressed!!!
Any thoughts??
http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/opera_un_jules_cesar_sublime_et_leger-3653296.html#
I saw Petrova do Cleopatra at Glimmerglass a few years ago and she was wonderful, lovely, GREAT voice and wonderful actress. I don’t know why they don’t have her at the Met.
I have bought so many Dessay CD’s and I never get her. I have really tried. She is clever and funny and can act crazy, but her voice leaves me cold I get chills listening to her.
To me her voice has no warmth and charm.