La voce d’angela
When one has reached the pinnacle, a Heldentenor at the top of one’s profession, what indeed is left but to become Angela Gheorghiu? Says the Met press office, at 5:40 on a Friday afternoon, “Frank van Aken will make his Met debut as Siegmund in Die Walküre at tomorrow’s matinee performance, replacing Jonas Kaufmann who is ["]ill["].”
A glimpse of Mr. van Aken (with his Mrs.) from Frankfurt’s 2012-2011 Walküre.
Unforunately I had many distractions at home today for the broadcast, such as a hospitalized friend, may he get better quickly. But what I heard of EMW was moving and left me wanting more, and Dalayman was a great relief after last week, a moving timbre, if a bit worrisome at the top occasionally. Please, may there be more of both of them and less of those who should retire last year.
1986 Die Walküre with Caballe and Jerusalem:
How many sopranos have sung Lucia, Mimi, Norma, Aida Sieglinde and Salome all the in the same career? It’s rather amazing.(Mind you, I only like Caballe in a fraction of her chosen rep — bel canto and some Verdi).
You know it’s funny, but out of that list I’d say the only roles that didn’t suit her were Lucia and Sieglinde, the former being too high (given the edition she used for the recording at least -- don’t know anything about her stage experience with the role if any) and florid and the latter being too low and reliant on middle voice. Avoiding those extremes, I really think she had it all. Plenty of volume, flawless legato, wide dynamic range, ability to despatch blazers now and again (such as are required in Isolde’s curse and bits of Turandot for instance). All subject of course to the usual caveat about her needing to have been switched on.
Going back to the original subject, if Jonas is trying to emulate Angela, he’s doing it all wrong. He should be cancelling the performance before the radio broadcast, not the broadcast itself. Angela sang the La Rondine HD broadcast while still recovering from a cold.
I have now seen three of the four operas, albeit not in sequence, and will see Siegfried on Monday. All in all, a bit of a let down. While “the machine” has some great effects, it more often than not limits the singers to awkward or non-existent stage movement. For example, the singers coming in and going off into the wings repeatedly gets old quickly, and it is a severe limitation of the set’s flexibility as well as a lack of imagination from the director, and, I know I am among many who have already said this. But Lepage doesn’t care at this point saying we are “stuck” with this production until other obscenely wealthy donors can be found. The orchestra under Luisi was often wonderful, but there’s no pretending it was Levine. The vocal highlights for me were Blythe, Owens, who should be the Wotan, and Westbroek, sounding wonderful on Saturday. I was dissapointed not to hear Kaufmann, but given the circumstances Van Aken was servicable. I like Dalyman’s voice quite a bit, (better than Voigt’s at this point in her career), but I wished for more steel in the tone, expecially against Westbroek. I am simply not a fan of Terfel. There is no stature or nobility in his performance, with the voice leathery, lacking in line as well as a real bass-baritone resonance.
Flagstaff? timber? senstional? beleive? peopel? heights standards? differnce? Westboek?
Typo magnet in working order. Target way off.
And now Kaufmann is out of the May 7 Walkure.
true; Met just announced it will be Skelton for May 7. drat. although he is very helden, whatever that means these days…