Dessa!
UPDATE: It’s official. The Met press office just announced, “American soprano Latonia Moore will make her Met debut as the title character in Verdi’s Aida in the March 3 matinee performance, replacing Violeta Urmana, who is ill.”
EARLIER: La Cieca hears that soprano Latonia Moore will make her Metropolitan Opera debut this Saturday afternoon. What might she sound like?
Here’s a sneak preview of Ms. Moore’s Aïda.
BTW, I am listening again to yesterday’s Aida, broadcast form Alaska (YUCH!). I will never like that place again after learning too much about S.P.
“That even major artists have vocal imperfections was demonstrated by Marcello Giordani’s performance as Radamès. His big top notes rang out excitingly. But his lower range was sometimes weak and leathery. And he resorted to falsetto singing, it seemed, in high pianissimo phrases.”
“major artists”, ha, he is not an artist at all, major or minor, judging from the one time (quite enough) I saw him live and the broadcasts I have heard from him, more of a sort of circus trick performer who would give much better value if they just hired him to come out onstage, sing a couple of b-flats and then go home rather than degrading one operatic masterpiece after the other. This is the only good thing even his supporters say about him, he has loud high notes. It is a barbaric attitude, the antithesis of “opera as drama” or anything but the coarsest cheap thrills, artistically valueless.
I love the way people forgive shitty singing and strangulated, dry tones or toneless singing for a few ringing Bb’s.
TT’s review of Latonia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/arts/music/latonia-moore-steps-in-to-aida-at-the-metropolitan-opera.html
Yes, Blythe’s Amneris is a “force of nature” without a single flaw!
TT didn’t say that Blythe was flawless. And I think his description of her as a “force of nature” is quite accurate, whether one agrees with her blunt approach or not.