Sworded lives
La Cieca hears that the continuation of the Ring cycle at the Met next season will go on without the participation of Ben Heppner. We’ll have more details next week when the Met makes their season announcement, but La Cieca’s impression is that the two Siegfrieds are at the moment some combination of Gary Lehman and TBA.
What is interesting is why doesn’t Voigt get the benefit of the doubt that beloved divas like Gwyneth Jones, Rysanek, Behrens, Scotto, Tebaldi, Freni, L. Price, Sutherland, et al. did as their voices began to age? And I think it has everything to do with Voigt’s lack of on stage personality, or at least a perception of a lack of onstage personality, that dooms her in comparison to those former divas. Can anyone say any of them turned in a boring on stage performance, even if they had to resort to high camp to do it? And that’s the issue isn’t it. Part of the problem is she just came along in the wrong era. My very own copy of Mordden’s Demented arrived this week and I don’t think there’s nearly as much tolerance for the demented camp craziness of former generations, the modern stage director (with the exception of Zimmerman maybe) are not excited about it. I mean would a stage director let Leonie Rysanek let out that scream of ecstacy in Act I of Walkure. Would a contemporary stage director let Leontyne Price orchestrate those mid performance bows ala her final O Patria Mia. Is Debbie Voigt ever gonna ride out on an actual steed as Minnie? Part of the comparison with Voigt to Matos is that the latter has that old style, camp sensibility. That throw caution to the wind style, it resonates. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Voigt throw caution to the wind, even at her most brilliant moments. Take those mid 90s Elektras at the met, whether alongside Jones or Behrens Voigts voice may fill the arena, but she seems emotionally washed out. Which isn’t to say she can’t give a great performance, but it takes something extra for opera fans (queens) to turn the other cheek when it comes to a vocal flaw. That’s the issue, not her voice.
Well.
ON – a couple of things.
1.) I agree that ‘camp’ in performance is much frowned upon in this day of digital perfection and extreme close-ups. A shame, to an extent.
2.) But ‘camp’ is quite beside the point. True, Voigt has a fairly placid stage personality. However she gave her all and acted quite well (IMO) as Minnie, and I have seen her do so in the past in a wide variety of roles.
3.) The problem is VOICE. Even at the zenith of her vocal powers (a good 15 years ago, IMO), Voigt could NEVER have been spoken of in the same breath as the list of divas you mentioned. Those ladies were accorded a measure of tolerance as they aged because THEY MORE THAN EARNED IT by being among the greatest voices ever to grace the stage. Voigt is hardly in their class, estimable singer though she was.
4.) Voigt DID ride in on “an actual steed”. It was hard to see, but she did indeed.
First off, it’s nice to see you again.
I never thought Voigt to be a terribly interesting singer or performer (though I never doubt her sincerity as a performer) but I do think that in terms of sheer VOICE, she had it. IMO, it was a glorious instrument by any measure.
Jones, Rysanek, Scotto, all great divas with less than perfect voices. Sure Voigt is no L. Price or Sutherland, but she had a more secure technique than those ladies in her best days, just none of that certain something. I see her in the vein of Martina Arroyo in that way. The bar is always higher when you’re stimm in an era where grandezza is seen as self indulgent not fierce.
Clarification, when I said “those ladies” I meant Scotto, Jones, Rysanek. I’d never suggest Voigt had a more secure technique than Price or Sutherland.
Point #3: That is the point
If Rysanek let out that scream now, there would be hundreds of posts about how she has to resort to ‘cheap theatrical tricks to cover the technical faults in her singing’.
“It’s not the singers who changed, it’s the fans who got less demented.”
Prozac Nation?
I don’t personally find myself able to indulge late Sutherland or Price, but I can understand it with the rest of those on your list. The first 4 at least always majored on the Kunst aspect even when at the height of their vocal powers, and there is an extent to which Tebaldi falls into that category in that she always had huge conviction in what she did with a gutsy chest voice that was, as you say, camp. Freni if anything just seemed to get more and more voice throughout her career, either by fair means or foul depending on your point of view, but the size and weight of the instrument by the time she did her last Fedoras etc was very much greater than that which she had at her disposal when she first made a big impact in Mozart and Bel canto (although I’m sure it always carried brilliantly from the start).
Voigt was always Stimm and really nothing but (and I’d say that the only thing she lacked in purely vocal terms compared to those on your list is a truly individual timbre – in terms of actual fundamental quality I’d say it was up there). No real Kunst, no Tebaldi style camp appeal and no Freniesque growth or development in a positive sense. Emotionally washed-out is probably hitting the nail on the head actually – I used the word conviction in relation to Tebaldi, but actually it applies to all the greats you mentioned to a huge degree, and it isn’t a word that has ever sprung to mind when listening to Voigt.
Exactly! End of discussion.
Opinionated Neophyte, I hope you saw the picture of our adored Justin Bieber and his daddy I posted just for you? (It’s somewhere in the Nixon in China Beach thread).
Otherwise, you seem to be tiptoeing around Voigt. Not EVERYONE was so indulgent of those ladies you listed ANYTIME in their careers. They all had detractors. I remember the hatred of the Zinka girls for Lee Price for having a ‘tiny’ voice and bad Italian (But while Lee was very definitely from a far Southern Italy her words were better than the gobbledygook spouted by Zinka) and while Zinka made a bigger noise it was not consistently in tune or pleasant even in the late 50′s (in fact, while they both tended to go sharp, Zinka lost a firm pitch sense rather early).
Plenty of people disliked “pigoletta” as Scotto was called in her early days, and detested her later, though of course she was great — and whatever one thought of her tone, not uniformly dulcet even at her best (though there were wonderful nights vocally as at the priceless Sonnambula in Philly, which she also directed on stage by pushing people to where she thought they should be standing, well behind her with, when possible, their backs to the audience. No one who was there has ever forgotten the way she would tenderly take Pierre Duval by the hand and turn him ’round and ’round ’til he was singing his solo lines upstage — I knew hundreds who would imitate her, there was also her renowned and hilarious carrying on in dwarf shoes during Le Prophete).
But Voigt even at her best was a good singer with an easy and shining upper octave, not a magnificent interpreter as Scotto was, nor was she authoritative as Scotto was in her fach — Scotto was a great stylist, Voigt sang the notes well and accurately, also often dully until people started telling her to run around more, even before she lost weight.
Leonie was often booed and often terrible. In a way, one bought her or not (I did but understood and wept when all went to hell, which it could from one second to another)but no one was under the illusion she sang well, and in tune (though at her best, through the 60′s, she had a really glorious voice, she just didn’t know how to get it to work consistently and couldn’t move securely through the range, there really is no comparison with the very good sounding but hardly thrilling young Voigt and I don’t mean merely because Leonie was nuts).
Big Renata (Tebaldi) was always being attacked by the Zinka idiots and the Callas freaks, so was Sutherland (by the Callas freaks, and the lies — that she didn’t enunciate or interpret or feel were believed by people who were like the dunce posting a lot in this thread — know nothings who would insist on their detractions from ignorance, arrogance and inexperience.
Later on, Big Renata was thought to be a ruin (in some sense one could understand it but there was much to enjoy on the good nights, and she even had great nights, among those where things went poorly and one had to grant those who yelled that she sang flat all the time, though they’d been yelling it in the 50′s where it wasn’t true, were onto something by the 60′s where by the Minnie and late performances say of Desdemona she couldn’t really tune her voice reliably).
Jones often gave really bad performances, but then would astound even the nasty skeptics like me with sheer glory and it was a great, great if troubled and unreliable voice (how does Voigt’s good endowment even compare, or how does Voigt compare to Tebaldi, Price, Sutherland, or Zinka for that matter simply in terms of an amazing endowment, well or badly handled?) Jones was also gorgeous, charismatic and a gifted operatic actress with very eloquent words. Voigt looks nice now but she was/is none of those things.
Freni also had a glorious voice and enough personality so long as she stuck with big house lyric roles (Mimi or the horribly pronounced but gorgeously sung Juliette and Micaela) but she too had detractors. At her best she was again more remarkably endowed than Voigt and never had so pronounced a decline, even if Fedora was a bit beyond her personality.
Behrens seems to me to be the only one you’ve mentioned who began with an instrument inferior to Voigt’s and who was hugely indulged without IMO being very good. But while Voigt certainly sang far more beautifully (though they had few roles in common in Voigt’s prime and Behrens was I will grant a better Salome)those who adored Behrens found her interesting, and there’s no doubt she gave 150% in a damn the notes and pitches and phrases and my tone style that was too much for me but sent others into orbit.
Voigt has always been safe and unenterprising as a performer, though she is undoubtedly the equal of all those ladies as a musician and probably in IQ (but interpretive insight and emotional abandon are qualities beyond IQ, even dummies can have them).
Whilst (you see what “Richard’s” influence is like?) composing my run on response to you, ON, others have made similar, the same and even better points. I sob. But I am departing soon for Chad again so I can put it all out of my damaged mind. This time I am doing Abigaille in the translation based on Mallarme, “Oh my soul! Hear the songs of the sailors” will be the start of my aria in act two, I’ve been hearing the songs of sailors for a century now, yum.
MrsJC/Emma/Enid, what are hell you talking about? You keep ranting on about a “richard” or “Richard”. I am the only Richard that posts on this site as richard. I do not use words like “whilst”, I do not write in anything that could be considered a “British” style. I have no fucking clue who Steven Jay Taylor even is much less play gerbil exchanging games with him.
Are you possibly ranting about someone else?
You were last scene baiting a different “richard” on opera-l some months ago, but no, that’s not me.
It’s really a shame, you have so much knowledge and, I’ll admit, I would kill for your dry sense of humor, it’s unique.
Unfortunately you seem to have serious difficulties inhabiting a world with other people in it, don’t you?
Mrs. JC is referring to one who posts on Opera-L and rec.music.opera as REG, and on Opera Britannia (where Stephen Jay-Taylor holds forth) as Richard Garmise.
Yes, that’s what I thought also, and in fact I recall the exchange on opera-l, I was referring to that little picnic, but she could make her swooping attacks here a bit clearer , no? I’m sure she is clever enough to narrow in one her prey’s identity on this list.
I can assure that this “richard” is NOT Richard Garmise, but another Richard that posts occasionally on opera-l, ballettalk, and other places. He’s a personal friend of mine.
Yes, I do, Richard, which is why, with all my charme I must wonder as a lonely soul and sing in Chad (Lowe Cuntries) or as Baudelaire has it “Ce qu’il y a d’ennuyeux dans l’amour, c’est que c’est un crime où l’on ne peut pas se passer d’un complice.” (Alice Goodman as you know is his equal and such insight and elegance shows in EVERY LINE of her work). I am accompanied mainly by the Siamese (Twins) Emma Albani and Mae Enid Magillicutty but also this time out by Robert Goodloe our Nabucco, and Morris Robinson our Zaccaria.
I am sorry if I have misidentified you and confused you with someone else with the same first name (at least as posted). But not to have played who’s the gerbil with Stephen Jay Taylor!!! What a loss. But I understand it. For me and my tastes, I must quote a famous diva of color who in my presence but not about me screamed: “Get that fucking thing away from my black ass!!!”
Thanks for the clarification, Loiterer. Now, do you think you could come up with a plausible explanation of the dirty diaper line? I only ask because I am working on my defense — “You see, your honor, I only shot him because I thought he was a feller I knew back in Yazoo City.”
For the sake of my sanity I chose *not* to seek out any further representations of the Biebs on this forum, I can always take a trip to Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood if I need to see lesbian haircuts in the wild.
As for Voigt, I don’t think we disagree really. I too see her as a vocally gifted, but uninteresting performer. And I’m also aware about the controversy surrounding those other artists in their prime. Ironically, I think the lack of major rancor about Voigt during her prime has hurt her. As the legends I named (and their fans) aged, the vehemence of the debates really died down. It becomes separated from whatever other emotional issue that drove one from appreciating the art to claque quackery. In fact I often wonder if part of that softening of opinion is folks looking back and having a little chuckle at themselves about how silly it got over Price v. Milanov, Verrett v. Bumbry, Sutherland v. Tebaldi v. Callas v. Scotto etc.
The difference for Voigt I think is that, sadly, she came along in an era where she didn’t really have big name rivals in her rep. In fact the poor thing (like Westbroek today) had to stand in for ever dramatic role out there, Ariadne to Aida to Isolde to Tosca to Chenier to Chrysothemis to Amelia. I’m surprised no one hooked the poor woman into a Norma or a Turandot. And while she wouldn’t be the only dramatic soprano to take on that many roles, unlike her predecessors she never was able to grab some clear vocal territory for herself ( outside of Ariadne I suppose). There’s a big contrast between 51yo Voigt taking on the Ring for the first time and 51yo Lee Price returning to the Forza Leonora where the audience’s ears mixed the current version to the former. Sure Price was adventurous and tried out an Ariadne, but homegirl only did it twice, committed it to record and got back to the business of Aidas and Leonoras to close out the career. Voigts unwillingness to clearly define her musical personality (or develop one) means that folks aren’t gradually softening up their opinions, the knives are taken out again and again as she keeps taking on new roles. Who knows, maybe in a few years she’ll pull a Rysanek and triumphantly return as Klytamnestra or something. I have a feeling if she did opinion would start to shift.
ON, Price only did two Ariadnes at the Met but she had previously done a whole run of them at SFO.
I’m in the minority with this but I saw one of the MEt Ariadnes and I didn’t really think it was all that bad. She was swooping a lot but she was in good voice and made a rather glamorous Ariadne. She also was pretty witty at parodying herself in the Prologue.
And really, as she gradually switched her voice production over from connecting the notes with legato to sliding and swooping the intervals, the way Strauss wrote was much, much more forgiving of this. I think you pointed out that she might have made a clever career choice concentrating more on R Strauss later in her career and I think you may be on to something.
So no, I didn’t think her Met Ariadne was “filth”, not at all. Her Met Manon Lescaut though………
I saw one of those SFO Ariadnes, and to my untrained ears she sounded just fine. My fondest Price memory remains her Primma Donna, regally glaring in Zerbinetta’s direction and agressively twirling her fan as though it were one of James Bond’s secret weapons, about to be deployed against the competition.
I think this is an analysis a step too far – the truth is much more simple. She was an excellent singer who had an onstage personality that didn’t particularly project very much, and without any special insights from a musical or dramatic point of view. That’s all – as a package even at her best, she was never going to be celebrated years after her retirement or death along Sutherland and Nilsson lines. And then she experienced sudden and rapid vocal decline and now she is what she is – a Stimm diva without the quality of Stimm she used to have. I don’t think it has anything to do with her repertoire choices, or being treated as the go-to girl for lots of roles. In truth, she may have been that at the Met, but that was how they chose to cast – there were always other people around who were singing her roles in other major houses. She seemed to make the biggest mark with Chrysothemis and Ariadne, and those weren’t even the 2 roles in her repertoire that were the hardest to cast.
Madame:
I would add to your post the following for your consideration:
I think the biggest problem for a singer like Voigt is that the career template started in the 50s by Maria, Big Renata and Zinka and perfected by Joan, Lee, Birgit and Montsy (you know, the career template that we APPLY to every singer who comes along these days – 1. big splash, 2. big recording contracts, 3. bigger splashes with TV appearances, 4. more recordings, FAME MONEY SEX DRUGS – no wait strike the last two – 5. farewell tours, 6. more TV appearances, 7. vanity recordings; AND 8. final ascension to ICON.) started to fray with Katia R. and Jessye (for different reasons), imploded with Studer and had become an ironic parody of itself by Renee.
There has been no new template created in this brave new world of ours. Dessay, and Netrebko, and Matilla et al have had to make there own career templates. Changes in the recording industry, changes in popular taste, worldwide shortage of adults (as opposed to fake wannabe teens, ewwww!) have all rendered the prior career template irrelevant, even toxic.
Truth is Debbie is like most singers. Except for the surgery and little black dress incident, none of us would be so tumulted by the vocal decline of a high-voiced jugend. Happens all the time. Indeed, it happens every time. The challenge for Voigt is that we are measuring her against singers whose success has defined success for us. And the longevity of that prior generation has created some pretty bizarre expectations for career length.
Debbie has lost some of her former security and vocal lustre. The middle is stringy, largely due to emphasis on the upper register, which itself no longer has the glory of a decade ago.
It happens.
I’ve seen MANY singers, male and female, pull those mid-performance bows during lengthy ovations after a really great performance of an aria. It’s all done subtly with small changes of the angle of the head and some movement of the arms that could JUST be in character but that we know aren’t, etc. They know how to do it.
Re Leonie’s screams: there was an interview with her that was telecast along with the film of Elektra in which she did the title role. She was charming and talked about the Walkure scream, looking at the camera with big, innocent eyes and saying modestly, “I always do my own screams, you know.” Yup, we knew!
That story is adorable, love!
You can see wonderful mid-performance bows in the youtube clip I posted as a reply to comment number 4 back at the beginning of this thread when June Anderson has finished singing Robert toi que j’aime from Robert le Diable and the audience at the Paris Opera in 1985 goes wild and won’t stop applauding and then goes into that rhythmic clapping Europeans do when they are all as one in acclaiming something. Nothing subtle or trying to stay in character about her bows though, it is true diva “thank you my adoring universe of people who love me, I am deeply touched” camp. Just scoot the cursor over to the end and watch her reaction to the ovation, it is really great stuff, if you don’t want to listen to the aria.
And on the subject of divas, people have always been NAS-TY about ones they don’t like, even the greatest like Callas or Sutherland or Caballe, you name it. As a fan you just have to not let it bother you when your idol is attacked. I remember once in the early 90”s I mentioned June Anderson’s name at a party and the queen I was speaking to pretended to be sick on the floor. People detested her with a passion, well, that’s OK, I love her.
“Is Debbie Voigt ever gonna ride out on an actual steed as Minnie?”
Actually, she did in San Francisco…and by Ride out, I mean she was sitting on a horse that was lead on by its handler, and then lead off. In the first few performances, they were able to get some momentum and it actually looked rather exciting (if very stagey). In the later performances, the horse just sauntered on. Didn’t really work.
At the performance I saw, Debbie’s entrance had all the excitement of watching your neighbor’s daughter astride a well-bred pony at the Children’s Zoo.
Well, not a Debbie fan , but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize her for being a dull equestrian. I don’t think that it’s really reasonable to expect a Minnie to also take riding lessons so she seems thrilling on horseback.
Tebaldi, who was thrilling as Minnie, wasn’t at her finest at that moment. She entered in act 3 sitting gingerly on the back of a very laid back horse who was being carefully walked on the stage by a handler tugging on a bridle.
It wasn’t a very effective moment to be sure!
I’ve just spotted the reference to Mordden’s ‘Demented’. It is THE opera book as far as I’m concerned and I dip into it regularly.
What always tickles me is the way that a book published 27 years ago dismisses as reactionary so many of the attitudes taken by some posters here when it comes to the ‘modern age’.
Take this, on Bing, for example:
‘He brought in directors from the theatre, drummed up headline business…and generally earned a showman’s image- meaning, to some, that he was cheapening the company with a popular infusion. On the contrary, he was trying to put zest back into the comedies and conviction into life-and-death.’
Ring any bells?
Well, who was it that said there is nothing new under the sun??????
Yes, I see your point and there are a lot of parallels there. And in fact Bing took over from a predecessor who had really allowed things to grow dull and stale and relied on aging star singers.
Johnson left the Met with only a few viable productions.
And Bing ruffled a lot of conservative feathers with his new broom policy.
Of course on a lot of other levels the Johnson to Bing sequence compared to the Volpe to Gelb sequences differs in many ways but there are some really striking parallels.
I come to the Bing years at the MEt from a different point of view. By the late 60s, Bing was hardened into a tired old crank. He always had a nasty streak and always was a snob but theose weren’t necessarilly critical flaws in running an opera house!
But the years of doing it wore him down and he had become pretty intolerant and no longer had too much vision. In some way late Bing paralleled late Johnson, he left the MEt with a stable of singer, many big names, but a lot of them who had slightly or clearly passed their peaks.
In the second category where Tebaldi, Tucker, Merrill, Peters, Moffo, and Corelli.
Interesting point, Armer!
Price more than had earned the right to that mid-performance bow in her final Aida. I don’t think she sang all that well, but by “O patria mia” it was like time stood still. Besides, the aria acquired a significance far beyond the dramatic situation being portrayed. So yes, not the greatest theatrical moment, but the love for a performer that Price, Scotto, and especially Tebaldi, earned, is something that Voigt, as much as I love her earlier singing the heck out of “Inflamatus, is never going to have. We don’t live in that age anymore, and she didn’t have that kind of career. I mean listen to a broadcast of Scotto singing Butterfly live. He mastery of the music and the interpretation of it is almost inhuman. The audience understood that degree of giving. I don’t doubt Voigt gives as much. I mean, she basically cut herself for the sake of her career, but in the end all that giving has to help you create a bond with your audience, and Voigt hasn’t really done that, and by now it is too late.
I think that milking the applause after an aria takes special skill and is best achieved with grandezza. I don’t want to see a characer break out of character completely and start bowing. But a small acknowledgement of the applause can make a big impact. When Norman sang Didon at the Met, she routinely got 3-minute ovations after “Adieu fiere cite”. From what I’ve read, halfway through ovation, she would raise her face slightly, thus simultaneously staying in character and acknowledging the applause. For enthusiastic fans, that small little gesture is enough to generate another minute of applause.
As it did with Gruberova after the ‘Al dolce guidami’ the other night- she did exactly the trick you describe, and it added another couple of minutes to what was already five minutes of applause.
Th exact opposite of what you describe:
Opening night of the Makroupolos Case (or however its spelled) in San Francisco. Maxi Hauk-Sendorf is always a scene-stealing role, and Matthew O’Neill was clearly an audience favorite, and his extreamly athletic scene with Mattila garnered him exit applause. Mattila is sitting downstage with her back to the audience and, completely in character, turns slowly to the audience with an icy stare. Laughter, and then the applause dies down and they continue with the opera.
Wow, this has continued to be a *really* interesting thread. Especially appreciate ON and Mrs. JC’s serious and thoughtful observations re Voigt, even if I have long responded far more favorably to her as an artist than they have and do. And their observations of fan comparisons of singers also reminded me of another personal bugaboo: evaluating – and arguing pro and con about – singers on the basis of recordings/broadcasts. So much of what we take as definitive knowledge about singers past and present is based on a canned sound experience. Take Matos: How many people have actually seen and heard her in an opera house? Many, and they are lucky, I’d be happy to be among them. But most opinions about her “greatness” are based on a Web stream or two plus a handful of YouTube clips. Enjoyable and even necessary as that experience is – and I wouldn’t give up such media for anything – there’s a huge difference between a CD/MP3/DVD and experirence the physical vibrations of the sound in a congenial acoustic. Example: I never cared much for Sutherland on record (yes, vinyl…). But when I finally heard her live, still in her prime, I was transfixed. The tone was so much brighter, the diction so much clearer, and the personality so much stronger than what came across on her recordings that I could hardly believe it was the same singer. This live/canned dissonance is actually why I decided to make the journey to NYC for Walkure this spring. I’m *very* interested in hearing Voigt’s Brunnhilde, but don’t want to base my opinion – positive, negative or neutral – of it on a Web stream, FM broadcast or HD. I want to experience it live, whether that be for better or for worse.
Even re that Verbier Salome I praised so highly, I still need to remind myself that I was thrilled by a compressed Web stream recorded at a live performance, *not* the performance itself. There really is a difference, although these days one could argue that maybe it “matters” less and less. Or not.
There’s been some good, thoughtful analysis re: “being there” vs “broadcast/recordings” recently. And its much more appreciated than the knee-jerk “you just had to be there” defenses of certain singers that reads as condescension. Before my experiences at the Met this winter I had been to about a dozen live opera performances at the Dallas Opera, Baltimore Opera, Washington National Opera and a live opera concert here and there. I would absolutely say that until my experience at the Met I didn’t appreciate that distinction between live and broadcast because all of the singers I heard live I heard live for the first time and rarely heard recorded after. The exception being Blythe, Futral and Brownlee who I heard in D.C. before they became big stars, well at least before he became a big star, this was 2006. But because all the other performers I heard weren’t big time enough to have been recorded I didn’t notice a difference. But having seen the *huge* difference between Popsy on broadcast and Popsy live I get the distinction.
But I’m not entirely willing to argue that the recorded or studio experience is less valuable than live ones. Some artists record wonderfully, they should be receive props for that. Some artists don’t and the evaluation of their talent should include the fact that they just aren’t that great in the studio. Case in point Shirley Verrett. I don’t think there’s a single studio recording of hers that I enjoy outside of her Orsini on Caballe’s Lucrezia Borgia. But we have to remember that many, many more people experience the opera via some kind of broadcast or recording than they do in the house, and they have a right to their opinions about singers without being told “well you just had to be there.”
p.s. I worship at the feet of Verrett in live recordings.
But we have to remember that many, many more people experience the opera via some kind of broadcast or recording than they do in the house, and they have a right to their opinions about singers without being told “well you just had to be there.
Mostly I tend to agree with you but I think there is a difference of some wording here.
Often the point is being made that singer x wasn’t different in the house than on recording.
That’s often said and I think it’s impossible to dispute.
It’s also non-disrepectful of anybody.
But you use the term “well you just had to be there”
That is sort of a charged term and does imply a kind of superiority but, honestly, is language with that kind of charged used all that much on this site?
The first version, yes. But the second? Not THAT much.
But some posters just throw them together in a bag and take it as an insult to the effect of “oh, you stupid fuck, you missed this, so your life is worthless”
Yes there are some assholes here that take their set of experiences and lord it over the rest in that manner, but really most posters do not, there is a resaonable amount of decent behavior here. Not all the time and not universal to be sure but this isn’t a snake pit.
ON, if you don’t like Verrett on record then you need to listen to her Eboli for Giulini over and over and over until you do.
I love my collection of Ponselle, Chaliapin, Tibbett and Nilsson recordings because they allow me to experience voices and talent I couldn’t have experienced live. But I have no doubt that these recordings only provide an approximation of hearing singers live and in person. I’d hope that lovers of singing and opera would attend live performances as much as they’re physically able.
Similarly, YouTube is an incredible resource for performances many of us could never have heard or seen otherwise. (E.g., the video of Jennifer Wilson that La Cieca posted a few days ago, but also most of these Price videos being posted today). But one of the things I don’t like about YouTube is that it leads some listeners to make definitive judgments (positive or negative) about singers or whole operas based solely on what they’ve seen there. (I guess I really shouldn’t be skeptical of YouTube itself but of the listeners who think they’ve seen and heard it all on their computer.)
EDIT: my third paragraph was meant to say “singer x WAS different in the house.
This whole Voigt thing bothers me. I keep wondering if there is anything she can do to help herself now? Take acting lessons? Get a new voice teacher and try to make up for deficiencies?
I saw Brownlee in Philly early in the aughts, and his mastery of Rossini was evident regardless of my own ignorance of same. I don’t think I would have understood just how terrific he was if I’d been hearing him on the radio or watching on HD or television. Same with JDF, whom I first caught at the WNO. Seeing them live and in person made all the difference.
No, there’s nothing Debbie can do to “help herself now” with folks here. The fact is, she’s 51, been singing over 25 years and is suffering the wear of a successful career.
Every vocal issue, every blink, is criticized here and magnified by those focusing like lasers, who then talk about outsiders (including critics) not noticing how badly she sings and treating her “with kid gloves.”
She’s doomed in here obviously, since so many know better.
But, she’ll be just fine out there . No, she won’t be the same as she was, she’ll have fewer opportunities, and she’ll need to struggle a bit, but that’s really not unusual at her age with her type of voice, from what I understand.
I wonder if this tearing apart of Voigt is the best example of why there are no singers with the aura of Price or Tebaldi or Callas today? Everyone sitting at their computer knows so very much more….